Baseball

This week, the race for the Yankees' fifth starter spot finally ended.

In what started out as a five man race, ended up having one clear winner for the job.

Phil Hughes won the fifth and final starting job for the 2010 season and will be in the rotation with CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Andy Pettitte, and Javier Vazquez.

Say what you want about George Steinbrenner and his management style, but I guarantee that the Joba Chamberlain debacle would not have happened under his watch.

The word came down today that Phil Hughes has won the fifth starter spot over Joba. It's the right decision–I'm not arguing that. The problem is that the Yankees have spent the last three years messing with Joba's head and because of it, he may very well end up needing a one-way ticket out of the Bronx to get his career back on track.

So it was all for nothing.

The innings limits, the pitch limits, the extra days off between starts the Yankees forced Joba Chamberlain to undergo during the second half of 2009—that rendered him impotent come the playoffs—under the guise that they were "protecting his arm" so that he could at long last become a full fledged starter this season...it was all a lie.

Tossed aside because of 3 2/3 spring innings.

Manager Joe Girardi and the Yankees staff evaluated the entire spring training and came to the same conclusion I did: Phil Hughes should be the fifth starter.

Hughes beat out Joba Chamberlain, Alfredo Aceves, Sergio Mitre, and the recently released Chad Gaudin.

Girardi has been very impressed with the much-improved changeup that Hughes has been using and working on throughout the spring.

Chamberlain, Aceves, and Mitre are all now competing for spots in the Yankees bullpen. Nobody, including Chamberlain, is guaranteed a role. Each player will need to earn it.

At this point in spring training the players have settled into their routines.

Starting pitchers are stretching themselves out to five to seven innings, building arm strength as they make their final push to Opening Day.

This is usually the time when position players try to quickly get their work in, hopefully overcome any bad habits, and most importantly, avoid injury.

The last thing a player or the team wants is to lose someone to injury just over a week before the end of spring training.

Some say that "play ball" is the greatest phrase in baseball.

While I would tend to agree, there is another phrase that carries equal greatness in the game.

"If."

It qualifies every statement that people tend to make when talking about their team at this point in the season.

And for Cleveland Indians fans, such as myself, we've been throwing the "If" word around a lot. Actually, a lot seems like a little. The word has been thrown around a whole heck of a lot more than you can imagine.

I've made no bones about my overall feeling for this beloved Cleveland fan base.

As a Yankee fan born and raised in the heart of the land that sports the pinstripes, the last thing I and many other dedicated fans want to see is a slump in the 2010 season, especially after nine seasons of lacking a championship win. 

Fellow fans of Bronx Bomber nation, it’s possible that we may be facing some hard times this season. 

Let’s take a look at some of the issues that can derail the Yankees this season.

First up—Alex Rodriguez’s injury.  

This announcement doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, but Yankees manager Joe Girardi made it official today, Phil Hughes—not Joba Chamberlain—will be the Yankees fifth starter going into the season.

The New York Post's Joel Sherman , among others, is reporting that Joe Girardi has officially named Phil Hughes as the Yankees' fifth starter. This has been heavily debated over the course of spring training, but I'm still not sure what the Yankees plan was here.

Before I started playing fantasy football back in 1998 — in a four-man league, nonetheless — I played fantasy baseball. I used to be a huge baseball fan as a kid, only to find my interest in the sport fade over time.

Probably has a little something to do with all the steroids, human growth hormone, All-Star Game determining home team for the World Series, no more Cal Ripken, Jr., etc.