Phil-er-up

Phil Hughes is a bad young man. His dominance of minor league hitters continued on Wednesday as he earned a victory against New Hampshire 5-3.

If you read my last post on Hughes, you'll know that there are crazy ideas floating around in my head. His latest win has me thinking funny again. 1 hit and 1 walk in 5 innings of work to go along with 3 Ks. He retired the first 14 batters he faced. Not sure what the story is with taking the kid out after only 5 innings, but it doesn't appear anything was weird about it. With no pitch count numbers available, I'd have to imagine that they had him on a ceiling for pitches for some reason. With only 3 Ks, he couldn't have thrown more than 70-80 pitches or so. 15 outs, plus 2 base runners, 4-5 pitches per batter....

Anyway, in his last 5 starts at AA he has thrown 33 innings, with 14 hits and 8 walks for a WHIP of 0.67 and with only 3 earned runs allowed in that same timeframe his ERA is a clean 0.82! 36 strikeouts in 33 innings is beautiful, and three of the five starts have been 1 hitters. Time to move him up to AAA, you think?