(REUTERS/Mike Stone)

As awful as he’s been this season — 7.88 ERA and 6.39 FIP — Phil Hughes has actually been pretty lucky. He’s lucky in the sense that Freddy Garcia has performed even worse — 12.51 ERA and 5.51 FIP — and has drawn most of the negative attention. The security blanket is gone now, however. Garcia is out of the rotation and the focus turns to Hughes, the current weak link in the rotation.

The Yankees have given Phil every opportunity to succeed as a starting pitcher in his career, but outside of late-2007 and early-2010, their patience has not been rewarded. Dating back to mid-May of 2010 — an admittedly arbitrary endpoint — Hughes has pitched to a 5.45 ERA (~4.85 FIP) in 228 innings across 41 starts. The nearly 1,000 batters he faced (997 to be exact) during that time have tagged him for a .275/.334/.467 batting line. That’s almost exactly what Howie Kendrick hit last season. So yeah, it hasn’t been pretty.

Because of his recent awfulness and that long stretch of below average performance, tonight’s start against the Orioles just might be the Hughes’ last chance to show the team he can be effective in the rotation. Not only is Andy Pettitte‘s return drawing closer, but David Phelps will begin his starting pitcher audition later this week. As I said this morning, the Yankees can use Monday’s scheduled day off to rearrange the rotation and give his rotation spot to Pettitte if they so chose. The schedule isn’t going to handcuff them.

Phil’s days as a starting pitcher for the Yankees are numbered. It seems inevitable that the team will remove him from the rotation as some point relatively soon, whether it be after tonight’s start, next week, or next month. The Yankees have to stop kidding themselves if they want to improve their starting staff. There are better options on the way, and unless he comes out tonight and shows 2-3 pitches with command, there’s little Hughes can do to save his rotation spot.

Phrustrated Phil. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

After last night’s game Joe Girardi settled into his usual routine of defending his guys. “We believe he can do it, and I know he believes he can do it,” he said of Phil Hughes, who allowed four runs in 2.2 innings last night. After going into some details of what went wrong, Girardi gave Hughes a vote of confidence. “Our plans are to send him out there again.” That will come Tuesday against Baltimore. But could his leash be shorter than Girardi is letting on?

While Girardi verbally backs his players when the media comes knocking, his actions in this instance say something different. Hughes actually looked decent in the early goings, using just 11 pitches to work through the first, and then getting through the second on 14. His one mistake came on the first pitch of the second, when Adrian Beltre got out in front of a first-pitch fastball and crushed it. But after that Hughes recorded three straight weak grounders. Everything appeared in order.

The third started off well enough, with a strikeout of power threat Mike Napoli. But then things turned for the worse. Mitch Moreland singled, and then Ian Kinsler stayed back on a first-pitch curveball and hit a ball high enough, and far enough away from Nick Swisher, that he trotted into second base. A weak groundout followed, and while it allowed a run to score it did show another positive sign for Hughes. Two outs and a runner on third is no huge jam. But then he hit Josh Hamilton. Then came a single. Then a double. And then another hit by pitch. That left the bases loaded, still with two outs.

Girardi needed just one more out, and he needed it before the game, already 4-0 Texas, got out of hand. But Girardi did not trust Hughes to get the job done, even against the bottom of the Rangers order. Instead he put his trust in Clay Rapada, to get the lefty David Murphy, and then David Phelps, to stanch the bleeding and keep the game close for the Yankees’ offense. Things didn’t turn out well for them, as Phelps gave back a run immediately after the Yankees plated two in the top of the fourth. But it’s not the results so much as the decision to remove Hughes that stands out.

It could be that Girardi noticed that Hughes was overthrowing and failing to locate his fastball. Russell Martin certainly noticed it, saying, “We were missing, and in counts where guys were ready to hit the ball.” Hughes himself admitted to overthrowing, saying, “A little too much frustration probably came out physically. I try not to do that, but sometimes it gets to be too much.” If Girardi made the change based on these specific observations, in this specific game, then this might be nothing.

Given Hughes’s performances to date, however, Girardi’s early hook probably speaks his mind more accurately than his post-game press briefing. If he is losing faith in Hughes, and shows faith in Phelps, we could see a change on the horizon. That might not come within the next few starts, especially if Hughes handles Baltimore’s lineup on Tuesday. But changes will be coming in a few weeks, when Andy Pettitte returns. Freddy Garcia might be the victim in that case, but if Hughes considers to falter could the Yankees make an additional change and swap him with Phelps? After starts like last night, it certainly seems like a possibility.

(Chris Trotman/Getty Images)

The early returns have not been all that good for Phil Hughes this season. He labored through 4.2 IP of two-run ball against the Rays in his first start, got pounded by the Angels in his second start, then had a disaster first inning against the Twins before settling down for the next four innings in his third start. About the only positive you can take from his overall performance is his strikeout rate, though his 22.7 K% does a better job of reflecting his performance than his 10.13 K/9.

Tonight’s start against the Rangers will be both Hughes’ toughest assignment and most important start of the season to date. A scoreless first inning would be a great start, something he’s been unable to provide in two of his three starts. In the one exception, he had men on the corners with one out before escaping the jam. He escaped that mess with two strikeouts on his bread-and-butter pitch, the fastball.

“My velocity is good and hopefully I can keep it going,’’ said Hughes yesterday. “The second and third time through the lineup you need something else, but at the same time I like to work the fastball a lot and try to [use] that as long as I can.’’

The velocity has been a non-issue; he’s sat in the 91-94 range and averaged 92.41 mph with his four-seamer according to the manually classified data at Brooks Baseball. Hitters have come up empty on 27.62% of the swings they’ve taken against Phil’s fastball, which is pretty awesome. As Joe explained last week, the curveball has been a problem. Batters aren’t missing the pitch — 11.76% whiff/swing — and although the changeup has been encouraging this year, it hasn’t developed to point of being a true third pitch, nevermind a potential second pitch. Man can not live on fastball alone.

Hughes and Freddy Garcia are both on the rotation bubble with Andy Pettitte — who will throw 80-85 pitches for Double-A Trenton today — on the way. The Yankees aren’t going to use tomorrow’s off-day to skip Garcia, so apparently they want to see as much of him as possible before having to make any kind of decision about who to replace. Hughes has thrown two gems in Texas, but those games were a long time ago. Hanging in against a Rangers team that has scored a dozen runs in their last 44 offensive innings would go a long way towards helping him keep his starting job. If he doesn’t at least hold his own, then the ball will be in Freddy’s court on Saturday.

(Nick Laham/Getty Images)

Tonight Phil Hughes takes the mound in a pretty big start during a pretty big season for him. We all know the story, so there’s no need to rehash. He’s probably not in immediate danger of losing his rotation spot; the Yankees will likely wait for Andy Pettitte and Michael Pineda to make any non-injury changes. But he’s already dug himself a hole, and if he doesn’t start climbing out of it tonight it might be too late. The hole might be too deep by the time Pettitte and Pineda are ready.

If we can take one thing away from Hughes’s first two starts it’s that his four-seam fastball is in peak form. He’s thrown it nearly 60 percent of the time, which shows you how much he relies on it. The results have been there in a way, as he’s getting swings and misses more than a quarter of the time when the batter swings. He’s also inducing some poor contact, getting a pop-up 30 percent of the time when hitters put the ball in play. It’s when he turns away from his fastball that he runs into heaps of trouble.

When he turned pro, Hughes featured a slider that Baseball America said had “good bite and depth.” The projected it to be at least average. In 2005, however, the Yankees had him scrap that slider for a curveball. That seems odd, to take away an effective and projectable pitch. But that turned out as well as possible. In an oft-quoted line, Baseball America said before the 2007 season: “Hughes’ greatest accomplishment as a pro has been to forsake his slider in favor of a knockout curveball, which is more of a strikeout pitch and produces less stress on his arm.” Yet in recent years that curveball has faded considerably.

In recent years Hughes actually dumped the 1-to-7 breaking ball for a knuckle curve, a la A.J. Burnett and Mike Mussina. Last year, during his struggles, he switched back to the straight grip on the curve. It hasn’t helped him much. Part of the problem is that he’s rarely throwing the pitch. He’s thrown just 33 curveballs this year, compared to 32 cutters, 28 changeups, and 142 four-seamers. But what’s most striking about the curveball is its complete ineffectiveness to date.

For starters, hitters are rarely swinging at old Uncle Charlie. Of the 33 times he’s thrown it, they’ve swung 12 times and taken 21 — 11 balls and 10 strikes. Of those 12 swings he’s generated zero misses. That is, every time he’s gone to bury a curveball in the dirt, the hitter has laid off. Even worse, the Pitch F/X data has recorded four line drives out of seven balls put in play. We’re dealing with a sample of only 18 hitters, but it sure seems as though those 18 hitters saw Hughes’s curve very well.

The changeup hasn’t been that effective for Hughes, either. He’s thrown more of them, as shown above, which is a good start. But he has little control of it, as 15 of the 28 times he’s thrown it the batter has taken it for a ball. He has generated four swings and misses, however, so he does stand some chance of getting guys to chase it. While it’s tough to make the comparison, since he’s thrown the fastball five times more often than the changeup, his swing and miss percentage is roughly the same with both pitches. Of course, the fastball has been called for a ball roughly half as frequently as the changeup.

It’s understandable why Hughes has gone to his four-seamer so often. He can overpower hitters with it, as he throws it high in the zone with late life. But he can’t continue throwing it almost 60 percent of the time and expect to succeed in the rotation. He’s going to have to get that curveball going if he wants to stand a chance. The changeup will have to come along as well. If not, Hughes could find himself in the bullpen for good, at least in pinstripes, come early May. That’s usually where they send guys who rely on just one or two good pitches.