touche. you win, you always do. Someone start up the Minn @ Yanks thread. Use pictures and logos too, we seem to have success with that.
Yes, he was. Lester had pitched a no hitter, won a clinching WS game, had a 2.25 postseason ERA, and a 3.81 regular season ERA through 34 starts. Hughes has poor results overall in the playoffs (and has yet to even START a game, let alone throw 5+ shutout innings in 3 different ones) and in 34 regular season starts has a 4.39 ERA.
No hitters are rather fluky. You know that. You'll recall that Hughes has taken no-hitters deep into two games. Whether he gets a chance to clinch a WS is also rather fluky. Is that really how you define how "accomplished" a pitcher is? Aside from the obvious issues of sample size in the playoffs, you're talking about one season of poor results out of the pen (2009) and one postseason of good results (2007) for Hughes (also out of the pen). His bullpen performance last year during the regular season should not be discounted, etiher. But never mind that. Remember, what we're talking about here is offering the extension to Hughes at the end of this season. If Hughes continues his breakout season here, he'll be in the same range as Lester, probably minus the no-hitter, but still... if you're paying for future performance based on what you've seen from them on the baseball field so far, their paths would be seen as very similar, except Hughes' breakout season would have come when he was a year younger than Lester. As for the AAV of the contract, that really depends on whether they're only buying out one year or two of his free agency years. If you buy out two or more, you're going to have to pay more per year. The Sox only bought out one of Lester's FA years, so it makes sense that the AAV is lower.
Well, fluky or not, they ARE accomplishments. Maybe not the most important accomplishments, but they are things that Lester had done at the Major League level that Hughes has not. I do discount bullpen performance. It's a lot easier to be a reliever than a starter. The fact that you don't have go through the lineup multiple times alone is huge. Also, you get deployed based on favorable matchups a lot of times. So yes, I completely discount it. It's not just the no hitter, it's the excellent postseason performance. Hughes has never started a playoff game. Now he may very well this year (but maybe not if they give Pettitte the third spot) but the chance that he matches what Lester did (3 games with 5+ shutout innings) are slim to none. Not really. In terms of performance as a starter they are sort of similar, but the paths are VERY different. Lester's breakout was a year later, but he missed a year with cancer. Hughes was pretty atrocious his first two part seasons, certainly worse than Lester, and then had a full year in the Majors in the bullpen. Lester has always been a starter, save for one relief appearance in 2007 on the last day of the season. Not really similar paths at all.
Of course they are accomplishments. Lester is also an accomplished cancer survivor, and maybe an accomplished guitarist or novelist. Who knows? Are they relevant accomplishments? Some more so than others. Context matters, and I don't think either team would consider the completion of a no-hitter to be worth extra dollars (if the comparison is to a pitcher who has had a few almost no-hitters) because they understand that it's fluky. Except when it suits your purposes not to discount it, like the ridiculously small sample size of recent playoff performance? So you're saying that - despite the small sample size - he has to match EXACTLY what Lester has done in order to be as accomplished? What if Hughes has a run in the playoffs like he has had to start this year? What if he pitches three games, averages seven innings and gives up 2 runs total. Are you really going say, "Nope, sorry, not as accomplished"? You're reaching. And last year the Yanks went with three pitchers out of necessity. If Hughes is throwing this well come October, there's no way they don't start him. You're reaching again. We could spend all day finding differences. Hughes is righty, Lester's lefty, blah blah blah. The overall arc is the same. Come up. Struggle. (You seem to want to mitigate Lester's struggles because of cancer, but Hughes' struggles were also due in part to physical ailments.) They both found success after a couple of years and start living up to the original hype. Remember the context. It's about what they'd command for a salary if the teams bought them out of FA years. In that context, if Hughes' performance this year continues, they're close enough... especially if you consider both age and number of FA years bought out. You also say Hughes was "certainly worse than Lester," which I would disagree with. In both years that Hughes struggled, his FIP was below his ERA. Well below it in 2008, when he should have had an ERA 1.50 runs lower. In 2006, Lester was a bit unlucky, but in 2007 he was pretty damn lucky. His ERA was almost three quarters of a run better than expected.
Again, whether they equate to money or not, or are fluky or not doesn't really matter to my point. All I said was Lester was a more accomplished pitcher than Hughes. Those are things he's done in Major League Baseball. Accomplishments if you will. Accomplishments that Hughes doesn't have. That means Lester is more accomplished. That's all I'm saying with those. I'm not counting that either. To me, Hughes doesn't have meaningful postseason experience. The little he does have hasn't been very good, but it isn't meaningful. However, Lester had made 5 starts at that point, and had a 2.25 ERA. Small sample? Sure, statistically, but in terms of experience it's a fair amount. No, I'm not saying that, and common sense should lead a reasonable person to conclude that if he does what you said, then yes, I would agree that he matched Lester's performance. Just because you invented me claiming that he had to do EXACTLY what Lester did doesn't make that my actual position. A different debate, but that's no sure thing. If Pettitte is pitching the way he is now, they may very well see Hughes as a better option to come out of the bullpen since he's done it before. It would be a very tough call either way. There is a huge difference in the arc. Lester spent a calender year not playing baseball and recovering from chemotherapy. Hughes spent an entire season in a Major League bullpen. Those are two huge differences. It really isn't close. To be clear, I don't claim that he struggled early on BECAUSE of the cancer. He struggled because of his control. His second season was about regaining strength, and he was fantastic over his last 5 starts as he did so. Then in 2008 he broke out. The biggest impact the cancer had was it caused him to lose a lot of strength and time during his development.
Well then I'm confused. The context you brought it up in was that Hughes won't be offered $10M/year if he received a contract extension because Lester only received X and he is a much more accomplished pitcher. It kind of seems like you were bringing it up as though it very much DID matter to your point. Please correct me if I am mistaken here. Then why bother pointing it out if you acknowledge that it's not meaningful? Well then, I'm confused again. If all you were essentially saying was that Lester pitched really well in those games, then why say that the chances were "slim to none" that Hughes would be able to pitch really well? You don't think he has that talent? Or you don't think he'll get the opportunity. I mean, you specifically pointed out three games of 5+ innings of shutout ball a few times, as though it had special meaning. I'm not "inventing" that... I'm just not sure there's a reasonable point to be made if it's not the one I "invented." What are you talking about? Last year, the Yanks went with three pitchers in the postseason (CC > AJ > Pettitte) out of necessity. They were fortunate the schedule allowed for that. MLB has changed the schedule so it will no longer be possible for teams to line up three man rotations. So it's either CC > AJ > Pettitte > Hughes or CC > AJ > Pettitte > Vazquez. I promise you, how Pettitte is pitching will have almost zero effect on whether Hughes starts in the postseason. Noted. And still nitpicking in the context of the discussion. There are multiple ways you can set up these comparisons to make it look as though Lester is A while Hughes is B. Whether it means anything to the point at hand is something else. Look, if you're just keen on having some kind of dick measuring contest between Hughes and Lester that has Lester winning (and it kind of seems like you are), then you're on your own. I'm not interested in that. Lester might have overcome cancer, amoebic dysentery from the Dirty Water, and even miraculously remained immune to the herpes that Varitek tries to give him during their pregame warm-up sessions, and that's all fantastic and amazing and heart warming and he's such a warrior OMG, etc... but I think it all misses the point. So let's get back to the original statement that started this, okay? All I'm saying is this (and it's the same thing I've been saying from the start): You are incorrect to say that Lester is more accomplished in any way that affects the AAV Hughes might get in a contract extension, and you are incorrect for a couple of reasons. 1. In all the relevant areas (i.e. the areas that a GM will be looking at when deciding how much money to dole out), they are very similar in their career arc... or similar enough that - if Hughes continues on his breakout seasons - no one is going to say, "Well, Lester's accomplished X, Y, and Z, and Hughes, you really struggled in five innings out of the pen in the 2009 playoffs, so we're not giving you Lester money." 2. Lester's AAV was determined in no small part by the number of guaranteed FA years that were bought out. If you disagree with either of those two reasons above, please let me know. But the rest of the stuff? Don't matter to me none.
