“I’ll take ill-advised logic for $500, Alex”

Argument: Skipping one of Hughes’ starts was a bad idea.

Supporting evidence: Look at what happened to Joba!

*****

Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes are not the same person. Both debuted in 2007, both are roughly the same age, and both are Yankees, but in terms of almost everything else, Joba is Joba and Hughes is Hughes.

Arguing that the Yankees’ poor handling of the Chamberlain situation last year automatically means that Hughes is screwed for this season is faulty at best. It’s like saying that just because you had one bad meal at that fancy restaurant, all other meals are also going to be bad.

The problem with Joba, as it seemed to be, was two-fold: 1) he never really ‘got going’ in the first half and was marred by inefficiency, and more importantly, 2) the Yankees changed their plan as they went along, which ultimately does no one any favors.

Hughes, on the other hand, has for the most part been pitching well, and thus far, the Yankees seem to have a plan in mind and are sticking to it. If they didn’t learn from last season that changing a plan halfway through ain’t the world’s greatest idea, then there may be an issue, but normally teams that can’t handle developing a pitching staff don’t win World Series.