(Jared Wickerham/Getty)

When Phil Hughes throws his first pitch tonight, he’ll set all sorts of new career-highs. In fact, pretty much everything he does from here on out will represent some kind of new personal best. Phil has already set career-highs in starts (30), innings (180), batters faced (764), pitches thrown (3,027), strikeouts (157), and yes, homers allowed (34) this year. The various WAR metrics ding him hard for the homers, but I still feel comfortable saying this season is better than his 2010 campaign.

With all of these new career-highs comes a lot of uncertainty. If Hughes manages to throw at least six innings in each of his final two regular seasons starts — something he’s been able to do in five of his last seven outings — he’ll have thrown as many innings this season as he did in the 2010 regular season and postseason combined. The workload has started to manifest itself in Phil’s fastball velocity, which has gradually declined from 93-95 earlier in the year to 91-93 nowadays…

Fastball velocity isn’t everything, far from it, but it sure is a nice thing to have in your back pocket. You’re more likely to get away with mistakes throwing mid-90s than you are low-90s. Hughes still isn’t walking anyone (2.15 BB/9 and 5.6 BB%), so he hasn’t shield away from the strike zone as the season has progressed. In fact, his pitches per batter faced has dropped from the 4.0-4.2 range in April and May to around 3.9 in August and September. Not a huge drop, but it actually runs counter to what I expected. It feels like he’s needed more pitches per batter lately, not fewer.

Hughes is one of only two starters to remain in the rotation all season, and the Yankees haven’t babied him at all. Sure, they have given him an extra day of rest here and there just like they have everyone else, but he hasn’t had a start skipped or anything like that. Hughes isn’t a kid anymore at age 26, but it’s still fair to wonder how well he’ll hold up now that he has more single-season mileage on his arm than ever before. Tonight’s start is important not just in the standings, but also as a sort of check-up on Phil and how he’s throwing the ball this late in the season.

(Jeff Zelevansky/Getty)

The Yankees won last night’s game over the Blue Jays thanks primarily to their pitching staff, as David Robertson and Rafael Soriano combined for two dominant innings at the end of the game even though both were pitching for the third consecutive day. Phil Hughes stepped up and handled the first seven innings, allowing just one run on four hits. It was his thirth straight start of at least seven innings and no more than two earned runs, continuing a stretch of really strong pitching that started back in mid-May (3.44 ERA and 4.46 FIP in 128.1 innings).

That stretch started when Hughes decided to scrap his cutter, a pitch that helped him earlier in his career but had essentially transformed into a batting practice fastball. He started varying the break on his curveball soon thereafter to give hitters a look at two different breaking pitches, and in his two starts prior to last night, he really started emphasized his changeup. Last night against the Blue Jays, Hughes broke out another pitch, this one a little slider.

“I was working on a little cutter/slider hybrid deal in the bullpen and I figured this would be a good team to use it against because they have a lot of right-handed bats in that lineup,” said Hughes after last night’s game. “I was just kind of messing around with it during catch, threw a few at the end of a bullpen one time and it was decent, so I just kind of started to mix it a little more in. In our scouting report meetings before today’s game, [pitching coach Larry Rothschild] said, ‘Do you feel comfortable going to it if you need to? Not a whole lot obviously, but just something?’ I said, yeah. The first one was a 3-2 to (Yorvit Torrealba) that I threw. After that, (Russell Martin) and I found a few more spots to use it.”

According to the PitchFX data at Brooks Baseball, Hughes threw this cutter/slider hybrid thing about ten times against Toronto. Six of the ten went for strikes, including a trio of swings and misses. It has slider velocity in the low-80s, with more break than a cutter but less than a slider. I’ve heard of these being called “loaded cutters,” which are thrown with the fingers more off to the side of the ball and with less velocity by design. It’s a baby slider more than a cutter, really. Regular old cutters are thrown just like a fastball with a slightly different grip and finger pressure, but I digress.

Hughes threw all ten of his cutter/sliders to right-handed batters as you’d expect, and the pitch helped him hold the Blue Jays’ righties to four hits and two walks in 22 plate appearances. Same-side hitters went into last night’s game with a .327/.359/.622 batting line (.415 wOBA) against Phil, so he was doing something right against Toronto. The fact that half their regulars are injured and that this is a one-start sample certainly work in his favor, so we’re stuck in wait-and-see mode as far as whether this new pitch can actually help against righties.

Although he has been maddeningly homer-prone this season, Hughes has remained effective because he does a good job of limiting the damage to solo shots. He’s struggled against left-handed hitters in the past but for whatever reason that platoon split has been reversed this summer, so hopefully this new cutter/slider thing will help even it out. Phil seemed to make it clear after last night’s outing that it will remain his third or fourth offering, not something he’ll rely on heavily for the time being. He did throw a slider in high school, so this isn’t an entirely new experience, and working the pitch into game situations will be the next challenge.

Changeup! (Jason Szenes/Getty Images)

A usable changeup has long been Phil Hughes‘ white whale, that reliable third pitch he’s been unable to develop to help take his game to the next level. Outside of his injury-plagued 2011 season, Phil’s fastball-curveball combination has been strong enough to allow him to survive as a league average starter in the AL East. The kind of guy you’ll take towards the back of the rotation but will leave you wanting more.

Hughes, not so young anymore at 26, has ridden his fastball and two curveballs to a 4.15 ERA and 4.70 FIP in 149.2 innings this year. He’s maddeningly homer prone, but outside of a disastrous April — how stupid does this look in retrospect? — he’s pitching to a 3.70 ERA and 4.46 FIP in his last 21 starts (133.2 IP). Last night’s outing against the White Sox was about as it good as it gets, seven innings of two-run ball against a club with the sixth-highest runs per game average in baseball. The Yankees lost, but not because of their starter.

Against the ChiSox, Phil threw that white whale changeup a total of 17 times out of 98 pitches according to PitchFX. A dozen of those 17 changeups were strikes, including a pair of swings and misses. The last batter he faced, former Yankee Dewayne Wise, saw nothing but changeups in a five-pitch at-bat. Five of those 17 changeups were thrown to right-handed batters, which is notable because Hughes threw a total of four changeups to right-handers in 12 starts from mid-June through mid-August according to Will Cohen.

This isn’t a one-start blip either. Against the Red Sox last week he threw a whopping 29 changeups (106 total pitches), the most he’s ever thrown in a single outing during the PitchFX era. Nineteen of those 29 were strikes and six were thrown to righties. As a result, Hughes threw just seven curveballs. Last night it was a much more normal 18 curveballs. Perhaps all these changeups is an adjustment he’s made after getting shellacked by the Tigers and Blue Jays in back-to-back starts two weeks ago, when just seven of his 182 total pitches were changeups.

Hughes doesn’t need a knockout changeup, just a serviceable third offering that will keep hitters off the fastball and curveball. I feel like I’ve been saying that for five years now. He has really emphasized the pitch these last two times out, and not just against left-handers either. Whether he continues to use the pitch this much in the future remains to be seen, but the fact that he’s been able to use it this heavily and remain effective against good offenses these last two times out is encouraging.

(REUTERS/Rebecca Cook)

This has been a very … unique season for Phil Hughes. I really don’t know how else to describe it. The 26-year-old right-hander is coming off a disastrous and injury-plagued 2011 campaign, one that spurred him to (finally?) take his conditioning more seriously during the winter. Hughes looked like the best Yankees’ pitcher in Spring Training by no small margin, but he opened the season with a dud April before settling into a grove in May.

Since the calendar has flipped over to May, Phil has pitched to a 3.58 ERA (4.44 FIP) in 18 starts and 115.2 innings. The elephant in the room is his propensity to give up the long ball, though he’s managed to curtail that ever so slightly as the season has progressed. Still, I (and I’m sure many of you) get uncomfortable watching his starts — especially close games — just because I know a homerun could be coming at any moment. It’s a very uneasy feeling, like you’re watching a game while walking on eggshells or something.

Anyway, Hughes had one of his worst starts in quite some time last night, laboring particularly in the fourth and fifth innings. It was the first time he allowed more than three earned runs in a start since late-June and in 34 starts since coming off the DL last year, he’s allowed more than two earned runs just 12 times. That’s getting the job done, but I do want to focus on this year and not so much last year. Here is a month-by-month breakdown of Phil’s core statistics…

HR/CON is homers per plate appearances with contact, so HR/(TBF-BB-K-HBP). That’s a far more accurate way to measure a pitcher’s ability to limit dingers than something like regular old HR/9. The AL average this season is 4.0% HR/CON.

Other that the decision to essentially cut his changeup usage in half at the outset of June, Hughes hasn’t changed his pitch selection much this season. His walk rate has dropped considerably since April and as I mentioned this morning, the strikeout rate has been trending downward a bit as well outside of that June spike (interleague play!). Obviously the August numbers are a tiny two-start sample, so don’t spend too much time focusing on them. The progress in the homerun department is encouraging, but again we’re still talking about someone giving up dingers at ~150% of the league average rate. At least it’s not almost 230% like it was in April.

Other than the homers, my one big concern going forward is durability. I don’t mean injuries or anything like that, I’m talking about Hughes getting fatigued down the stretch. He threw just 91 total innings last year (Majors plus minors plus playoffs) and is already at 131.2 innings this year. This is only the third time in his career that Hughes has exceeded the 130-inning plateau, joining 2006 (146 IP) and 2010 (192 IP). Coming off the shoulder issue last year, I think it’s fair to be concerned about his ability to remain effective through the end of the regular season and into the postseason. For what it’s worth, his fastball velocity has held relatively steady so far this summer, though that isn’t exactly definitive proof of anything.

Assuming the Yankees get their collective heads out of their behinds at some point and get back to winning games consistently, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give Hughes a little rest in September. Maybe skip a start or two just for a late-season breather. Of course that depends on Andy Pettitte coming back healthy and Ivan Nova not pitching like one of the least effective hurlers in the league. The Yankees showed a little faith in Hughes by installing him as the number three starter and they remained patient through April, and for the most part he has rewarded them with three strong months at midseason. Staying effective through the end of the season and potentially into the playoffs is the next challenge.