SEATTLE – Twins manager Paul Molitor said before Friday’s game that righthander Phil Hughes “hasn’t pitched that bad.” While true, the standards for a pitcher at the front of a rotation should be higher.
But Hughes is not an ace. There’s a select group of arms who fit that description — with Seattle’s Felix Hernandez perhaps the best of them all.
That makes for a tough matchup for Hughes, who already has faced aces in Detroit’s David Price and Chicago’s Chris Sale. With Hernandez in full control on Friday, Hughes paid the price for two bad pitches as the Twins lost 2-0 to the Mariners.