Phil Hughes New Britain Rehab Start

Its very nice to get a post in dealing with some real Yankees news that's happening in CT and since I go to school in New Britain getting to the game was fairly easy. When I saw that the Trenton Thunder were coming to play the New Britain Rock Cats I had already decided to go back in April due to my hope of seeing Manny Banuelos, Dellin Betances, Pat Venditte, Melky Mesa and Austin Romine. Then of course it was announced that Hughes would make his rehab start at Fridays game and I was very excited to go, especially since there was no chance of Venditte pitching due to throwing 60 pitches the day before and Mesa has been on the DL. It also looked like Romine would not play but he was activated for that game. Hughes start was printed in the local paper and a lot of Connecticut Yankee fans came out to see him pitch.
I came with my girlfriend who is an even bigger fan than I and we were handed a pair of free tickets as we walked up to the box office which was cool. Hughes  fastball velocity was consistent in the low 90's staying at 91-92 for the entire game with one 89 mph fastball that I saw during his outing. He did seem to be having some issues with locating the ball, however he did seem to be dealing with a slightly erratic strike zone. He did seem to struggle to put away batters which concerns me because that was his issue last year, he would get 2 strikes on a batter and be unable to put them away. He did also suffer from a poor defensive play that likely should have gotten him out of the inning. I don't know why it wasnt scored an error but Jose Pirella, who already has 17 errors in 63 games at SS this year, caught the ball on the ground and instead of immediately doing a quick throw to the second baseman he laid on the ground for several seconds and then threw the ball to second baseman Corban Joseph who then tried to get the out at first. If the play had been done correctly the run would not have scored and Hughes would have completed 4 innings instead of 3.1. That being said Hughes definitely needs some more rehab work because if he was MLB ready then he never should have had an issue at all. I expect that Hughes will make another rehab start in AA and then move on to AAA. Here are some photos and video of a fly out that Hughes got in the game.

Romine did a good job behind the plate and made a good block on a breaking ball in the dirt and I was very happy to see him catch. Also Kruml's HR was an absolute bomb that went out to right center and was a good 6 feet above the 20ft wall out there. I would have liked to have stayed the whole game but my girlfriend was suffering from a massive migraine and the screaming kids and stadium lights did not help, so I did not get to see the walk off walk that was achieved by the Rock Cats. Here are some more photos.

Kruml High Five after hitting his HR

Lyerlay at 1B

Lyerlay at bat

Austin Romine during infield warmups