The Yankees Hughes-Wang Problem

The Yankees had back-to-back years with perfect games as David Cone and David Wells became "baseball immortality". In 2001, Mike Mussina took an September ESPN start to two strikes and two outs in the bottom of the 9th inning with a perfect game. And then Carl Everett broke it up. Since then, Yankees pitchers have come oh-so-close to no-no's only to fall short. So far this year the Yankees had CC Sabathia and Phil Hughes throw 1-hit gems. This is the second time that Hughes has come close--but failed--to throw the no-hitter, joining former Yankee Chien-Ming Wang among the unlucky this past decade. So for Hughes to Wang (by the way, I've wanted to use that title for a while), the Yankees have been unlucky in finishing out the no-hit bids.

So close. Near no-no's. The forgotten games. Moose's I will never forget. He was dealing and looked totally unhittable. He dominated a really tough Boston lineup in a really tough ballpark. 26 up, 26 down. 13 K. And Carl Everett ruined it. You wonder how many times Mussina goes back to that 0-2 pitch and wishes he would have wasted one there instead of throwing a meaty pitch for Everett (a Yankee foe, indeed) to club.

35 times the Yankees have had a pitcher go 7 innings and give up two hits or less since the beginning of the 2000 season. Mike Mussina has 6 such games in his Yankee tenure. Chien-Ming Wang and El Duque are tied for second with four each. Sabathia, Andy Pettitte, Randy Johnson and A.J. Burnett have each had 3. 

Some of them stick out in your mind.  

In July of 2005, Johnson went 5 2/3 innings of no-hit ball against the Twins and in September of 2006, the Big Unit went 6 full innings against the Royals. In August of 2007, Wang went 6 1/3 against the Red Sox, but that came after the Wanger had gone 7 1/3 against the Mariners in May of that year. Phil Hughes start where he strained his hamstring against the Texas Rangers came to mind last night as he was dealing and you were glad to see him walk off under his own power when he looked like he might have gotten injured again last night from Eric Chavez's smash.
Hughes became the first Yankee pitcher since Moose against the Red Sox to go at least 7.1 innings, give up only one hit and strike out at least 10 (A.J. Burnett did that in 7 innings last season against the Mets). Tamar @ IIATMS called it an "incredible performance" and Mike from River Ave Blues writes "Hughes the man." ESPN's TMI blog has some great stats about why Hughes was effective. Mark Feinsand of the Daily News writes about one of the coolest parts of the night: that Hughes' parents were in the stands. It was awesome watching Phil's dad (who is named Phil) doing the "HHHUUGGGGHHHHESSSS" chant with the Yankee-heavy crowd last night as his son came off the mound. I was with HardballTalk's Craig Calcaterra in Team Joba's camp but Hughes has impressed so far and is making Girardi's call look good (well, that is until his innings run out, I guess). The Post's Joel Sherman tempers some of the talk by comparing Hughes to Clay Buchholz and Mike Pelfrey. Here's my one digression from being excited about last night: the Athletics are a terrible hitting team and some of those pitches were left over the plate and seemingly hittable. But good for Hughes that he kept them off-balance enough that they were unable to touch him for a large part of the game. After his walk in the first inning to Barton, he mowed down the A's one-by-one.

A personal note: one of the coolest things about last night's near-no-no was staying up later with the rest of the Yankees Tweeters and watching everyone's excitement grow as the outs continued to be recorded. We hung on every pitch, wondered why the Yankees would try to run on every 3-2 count, joked about Jeremy Blevins vs. Edwar Ramirez in a skinny contest, pointed out Enrico Palazzo behind the plate, and got "Phil Hughes" to 8th in the top 10 of trending Twitter topics. Twitter is the most fun when it becomes a big community and last night, Twitter became just that (so thanks all who are following @NoYoureATowel). 

Though the best Tweets of the night may have been from Baseball Prospectus' Jay Jaffe who after an adventure into Professor Thom's Red Sox/LOST bar in New York City trying to find a place to watch the end of the game, ended them with this: @jay_jaffe: Moral of the story, pt. 2: the only reason I enter a Red Sox bar will be to commit arson