Report From The Fort 2017: It Begins

Well, 90mph ain't terrible but it's not good enough, either... Here's to hoping Hughes is taking time to ramp up to full velocity.

At 90mph, it's likely Hughes is virtually worthless as a starter and marginal as a reliever.

Hughes doesn't have a very good curve though and he's barely thrown a change up in five years and it wasn't very good when he did. He just doesn't seem to have very usable off speed stuff.

 

Also, Buerhle was a lefty. Lefties just seem to have so much more leeway when it comes to velocity than righties do.

Yep and yep.

Lots of pitchers succeed at 90mph. We have a pretty lengthy record that shows Hughes is not one of those pitchers.

If Hughes could get to 92mph in the pen, he might be serviceable. As a 90mph starter, not so much.

Isnt it kind of ridiculous to have Hughes in the rotation, anyway?

It's a rebuilding team with no chance of competing, extremely young, with Santana anchoring the rotation (which tells you something), and a load of young guys with more upside that Hughes that just need innings (Gibson, to some extent, Berrios, Duffey, Mejia, May--yes, I think, May should be giving a shot, Gonsalves, etc).

I get that Hughes is getting paid, and that's why, but they just need to commit to the rebuild.

It's only ridiculous to have Hughes in the rotation if he's throwing 89-90mph. If he's 92-93mph, he's easily one of the best five starters in the franchise, possibly on par with or better than Santana. Hughes' 2014 is better than any season posted by Santana and the last time Ervin even came close to Hughes' 2014 was way back in 2008 with the Angels.

You can make this case for Santiago but not really Hughes. He's can be a really good pitcher if he has velocity.