Phil Hughes Pitching for New York Yankees Tonight After All

Via Bryan Hoch:

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"The Yankees have made a change for tonight against the Red Sox, scrapping their plan to pitch Dustin Moseley and putting Phil Hughes back into the rotation for the final home game of the regular season.

"At first glance, you have to wonder if this is a knee-jerk reaction to the Yankees losing the first two games this weekend to the Red Sox and now pressing the panic button, with Boston now 5 1/2 games behind New York for the American League Wild Card and seeing glimmers of hope.

"That will certainly be asked of Joe Girardi when he is made available to the media today. It’s also possible that something is wrong with Moseley, especially because the Yankees have been so adamant that there is a plan in place for Hughes and that they were going to stick to it.

"Hughes had been pushed back to pitch Wednesday at Toronto with an eye toward his innings limits, or so we’d thought. Making such a change less than five hours before first pitch certainly raises some question marks."

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It certainly does raise some question marks, but I think the Yankees know that with a magic number of just three, a win against Boston counts as two. So a win tonight would mean that they only have to win just one more game or Boston just has to lose one more, and the Yankees are in the playoffs.

So while it might be a panic move, winning tonight would be big, and Hughes gives them a much better shot at it than Moseley does.

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