WAS BILL MASSE RIGHT ABOUT HUGHES?

(Photo: Corey Sipkin)
I was doing what I always do in the morning, looking for interesting nuggets related to the New York Yankees and I stumbled across something that I had forgotten about. I was reminded by Anthony Coleman, read him HERE, about a controversy in reference to Phil Hughes and Bill Masse from back in the day when Hughes was in the minors.

Who’s Bill Masse you ask? Well, in a nutshell, he was a former ballplayer who just didn’t quite have to stuff to make it to the pros. He did coach in the minors for a while though and was the manager while Phil Hughes was with the Trenton Thunder.

Back when Hughes was with the Thunder, Masse was heavily criticized by Yankee Brass and eventually let go for making critical comments about the way the Yankees handled a very young Phil Hughes. As Coleman puts it “Back then, the Yankees allowed him to pitch just 5 innings each start.” Masse thought the idea of that was absolutely ridiculous and said so:

“We get so ridiculous with this dumb pitch count stuff… Somebody came up with a pitch count thing (like) this is going to decide if a kid’s arm is going to be healthy or not. It’s like predicting the weather sometimes. ‘If he throws 66 pitches, he will be fine, but if he throws 81, he is going to get hurt.’ No one can predict that.”

OK, look, that’s his opinion and if I’m the Yankees, I'm sure I would reprimand Masse for speaking out of turn. They make the rules and Phil Hughes was our Golden Boy. We were grooming and breeding him to be a winner. We didn’t want him to blow out his arm at a young age and we knew that slow and steady would essentially win the race. So, right there, I get what the Yankees were doing, so we move on.

Masse: “The only negative you run into is that he never learns how to pitch when he is tired. He never learns how to pitch when he is a little bit fatigued. I think you run into those problems because he is always fresh. Also, he is never in trouble. He needs to learn how to pitch out of his second or third jam in the seventh inning with two outs and he’s throwing 90 mph instead of 94.”

Now, that I find interesting. Yes, it’s obvious, but it’s something that pitching coaches and Yankee brass never talk about. Masse may not have ever been a major league sensation, but maybe he was on to something. Do these guys that only pitch a certain number of pitches or set innings each game not know what it's like to pitch tired? Is there a better way to keep their arm healthy and strengthen them at the same time? It's something to think about. Look, it’s not the first time people have made this suggestion.

Nolan Ryan banished the pitch count so he could strengthen his starters in the Texas organization, (Read it HERE) and that goes back to Ryan's mentality of when he pitched until his arm fell off during his career. (Not literally.)

Yes, it was a different time then and pitch count came into play later than when Ryan pitched but that was because a lot of pitchers, were starting to get hurt and it was a way to monitor the young pitching a farm system had.

But to me, Masse makes a valid point. Am I suggesting young pitchers just throw all day long? No, I'm saying maybe, just maybe this mystery "Dead Arm" inflammation issue Hughes is trying to over come is related. Could it be? I'm just asking because I don't know.

Masse was fired by the Yankees shortly after his comments. Anthony Coleman goes on to say: “The 'kids’ glove approach' has all been brought back up with Hughes having arm troubles now and the handling of star prospects Manny Banuelos and Dellin Betances.”

Coleman also says that Cashman denied the conservative approach to pitching Hughes the way they allegedly do and is not connecting any dots to the recent arm problems Hughes has had.

Now, again, you have to wonder. Phil Hughes mystery illness came out of no where and if you think about the amount of innings Phil pitched in 2010(176.1) compared to 2009 (86.1), there is a considerable increase with no gradual work to get him there. Masse may have been muzzled, but I did want to bring this up to all of you. It’s interesting. Thank you Anthony Coleman for putting it out there to make people think.

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