Rays Homer Past Yankees 5-1

The Tampa Bay Rays used the power of the home run against the New York Yankees on Friday night by smacking five solo shots during the game, all off of Yankee starter CC Sabathia, for the 5-1 victory.

I'll tell you why CC had this poor outing and who will be moving to the Yanks bullpen after this weekend.

The Yankees up to now have been temporarily going with a 6-man starting rotation of Sabathia, Burnett, Hughes, Nova, Colon, and Garcia. It appears the extra day of rest for CC may have hurt Sabathia rather than help him as he gave up a career-high five home runs in the game. His previous career high was three in one game. CC went 8 innings giving up 1- hits (5 of them solo home runs), 5 runs, walking none and striking out 7.

So this brings up the question, who is the odd man out of the starting rotation? Since Burnett is glued to the rotation due to his contract and his lack of experience coming out of the bullpen, it appears the most feasible solution is to place Phil Hughes into the bullpen. Hughes pitches Saturday in what could be his final start of the season if he is indeed the odd man out. A huge starting performance by him may prove that move to be much tougher.

Phil Hughes was a very important piece in the Yankee bullpen in 2009 when the Yanks won their 27th  World Series championship. Hughes was the main setup man in front of Joba Chamberlain as they handed the ball off to Mariano Rivera.

Hughes has the best experience pitching out of the bullpen and has proven to be quite successful both in a long-relief role and in a late-innings role as mentioned in 2009. If anyone else is moved, then you're rolling the dice on how that particular player will perform coming out of the bullpen.