Riding the heels of a four game losing streak that included some downright embarrassing losses, Phil Hughes delivered everything the Yanks needed from him last night and then some. He twirled six shutout innings against the fourth best offense in the league, allowing just two hits and two walks against six strikeouts. Even though Hughes returned to the team last September with two strong starts, the horrors of last April are still firmly engrained in everyone’s head, and there was a still a sense of skepticism when he took to the mound last night. He made good on his promise for at least one night, earning himself a second turn in the rotation.
Instead of just taking a look at Hughes’ performance last night, I wanted to compare his stuff last night to his stuff last April. We’ll start off with the good ol’ number one, the fastball. Remember to click each graph for a larger, easy to read view. There’s lots of colorful graphs and stuff in this post, so I’m going to hide it behind the jump to keep the server gods happy. Enjoy.