Report From The Fort: Phil Hughes On The Backfield

“Neil’s been really harping on us this spring and change eye levels and back guys off the plate and 0-2 situation I thought it would be a good idea to go up-and-in and I felt really bad about that, to be honest,” Hughes said afterwards, saying that Harrison had attended his mother’s high school in Orange County so the pair have spent time together. “I really hope he’s all right.”

The Twins clearly don’t want to injure any member of their organization, Hughes executed the pitch well. Because of Hughes’ elite command, hitters have often become too cozy in the batter’s box in his starts. Plus, if his velocity doesn’t rebound to pre-surgery levels, he will need to make some changes to keep opponents from sitting fastball. Therefore, the coaching staff has wanted to see Hughes move more feet.

“Sometimes that it’ll happen this year because Phil Hughes has a reputation of throwing a lot of strikes -- and that’s a good reputation to have -- but you also want to make sure you make people uncomfortable too while remaining aggressive,” Neil Allen said.

The Harrison incident was the only blip on an otherwise over-matching performance from Hughes. His fastball reached 91 according to one radar reading and his pro-grade cutter appeared to be an otherworldly pitch to some of the minor league bats. However, the real focus for Hughes was to throw a healthy dose of changeups.

“It was a good opportunity to throw a ton of changeups, that was kind of the plan today,” Hughes said of his strategy. “A lot of times you get in the big league spring training games you get caught up in the competitiveness of everything and trying to just get outs, but today I really did throw as many changeups as I could just to get a nice feel for it.”

Since at least 2010, when he was pitching for the New York Yankees, Hughes has attempted to add a changeup to his arsenal, to no avail. According to ESPN/TruMedia’s database, Hughes threw just 14 changeups in his 2014 season, 104 in 2015, and 24 in his 12 starts last year. Why the renewed emphasis on the changeup for Hughes?

“A lot of times if you are a guy who is really firm, like Phil throws a hard cutter, he throws a hard four-seam and two-seam fastball, he throws a hard curveball,” Allen said. “A changeup is simply going to throw their timing off like that.”

Overall, Hughes was satisfied with the outing.

"Sometimes you don’t have the luxury of doing stuff like this. Sometimes you go into these spring games, the adrenaline ticks up and you want to just get outs but here it is nice just to throw all my pitches."