WHY WE NEED A HEALTHY HUGHES BACK

The way the Yankees are handling Phil Hughes is really shocking to me. Why? Because this is the Golden Boy of the franchise. They took very good care of Hughes for a long time. They gave him innings limits, they babied him if he had a blister. Now, the kids been pitching for a few years and there is a "dead arm" issue and my question is, why didn't they give this kid an MRI weeks ago? Yes, it's true, Hughes is experiencing no pain, and that's usually a reason you get and MRI, but all I'm saying is, at least rule it out. What would it hurt? Yes, anti-inflammatory drugs may help, bullpen sessions could help, long toss could help, but an MRI may have been the smartest thing they could have done weeks ago. At least if they didn't find anything, they could have crossed it off the list. Instead, Hughes still feels like his arm is "lifeless" and to me, that's a major red flag, especially on April 27th. Put this in perspective...this has been going on for a month, or longer if you factor in Spring training. That's no episode at this point, that's a problem.

Why are the Yankees handling Hughes this way? It's odd. Now, he had 4 hours of testing yesterday including a body scan and more tests are expected today. The other tests were two MRI’s and reports are the Yanks were concerned about a non-structural issue, such as an aneurysm. Look, I'm very happy about then looking into to all this now, but, we could have been way ahead of this if they reacted sooner.Then I got to thinking about innings and workload. Seems obvious, I know, but I remember Verducci talking on MLB this winter about workload and young pitchers and how the following year, they struggle. Could it be that Tom Verducci was right? Verducci did stress they don't bounce back because of the increase in innings the year before and Hughes definitely increased from 2009 to 2010. Could his arm have just gone into shock? What is it?

Hopefully we get an idea of what is wrong soon. As far as I'm concerned, Hughes is still my Golden Boy and the last thing I want is for the Yanks to have drug their feet on something that could have possibly been fixed weeks ago. It's terrible and they could have potentially damaged his kid's career. I'm being alittle dramatic but really, am I? He's describing his arm as "lifeless". He's said after a bullpen of 10 pitches that he felt as though he threw 100. Come on. Let's hope this gets pinpointed soon, or Golden Boy could be put on the shelf and nobody, I mean NOBODY wants that.

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