Phil Hughes, whose 2011 season has consisted of three disastrous starts and a rub-your-eyes-in-disbelief 13.94 earned run average, was put on the 15-day disabled list Friday. Yankees Manager Joe Girardi declared that Hughes, a 25-year-old right-hander, was going through a “dead-arm period.’’
That expression is normally used to describe pitchers who hit a lull during spring training and less commonly heard when the season begins. But the Yankees continue to maintain that Hughes is not injured and do not seem to have another logical explanation why he has lost the oomph on his fastball.
Taking Hughes’s place in the starting rotation will be 37-year-old Bartolo Colon, who pitched three scoreless innings in relief of Hughes on Thursday night as the Yankees rallied from a five-run deficit to beat Baltimore, 6-5, in 10 innings.
Colon was scooped up by General Manager Brian Cashman in a minor league deal in the off-season to give the Yankees some added pitching options. He has an 0-1 record with a 3.97 E.R.A. over 11 1/3 innings.
Freddy Garcia, another veteran pitcher whom Cashman acquired with a minor league deal before spring training, will make his first start of 2011 on Saturday. That Garcia and Colon are together in the rotation underscores how tentative the Yankees’ starting pitching has become midway through the first month of the season.
At some point, Cashman will no doubt try to address the issue by acquiring a front-line starter from another team. Hughes’s struggles may quicken his efforts.
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