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Despite rumors that the Yankees have been aggressively shopping Phil Hughes to the teams around Baseball, Ken Rosenthal reports that the team is yet to receive an offer for the right-handed pitcher just days before the 2013 trade deadline. That doesn't bode well if the Yankees were looking to get some kind of return for their impending free agent beyond the draft pick they'd receive if he declines their qualifying offer this offseason.
After seeing what the Chicago Cubs got in return for Matt Garza, who will also be hitting the open market this winter, it's no surprise that the Yankees would be interested in seeing if they could get a team to bite on a deal for Hughes that would send a couple of nice prospects back to New York. It seems like almost a foregone conclusion that Hughes will not be in pinstripes for the 2014 season, so getting as much value as possible out of him should be the goal. His flyball tendencies don't play well in Yankee Stadium and in many of the ballparks around the AL East. Sending him to a team that could attempt to mitigate his inability to keep the ball on the ground with a bigger park seems like the best way to find that value.
The clock is ticking on the time to make deals and the Yankees could find themselves waiting for the phone to ring with interest for Hughes when the clock strikes 5:00 pm on Wednesday. Perhaps they should be making the calls instead if they have reached a point of desperation to move him. Keeping him wouldn't be the biggest disaster, because at this point we already know that you can expect too many home runs and that's about it. The rest of what you'll get from Hughes seems to change from start to start. He isn't the worst pitcher you could have at the back of your rotation, but with CC Sabathia and Andy Pettitte struggling, the Yankees needed him to be more than that. Maybe another team will be willing to take a chance on him being more than that on their team before it's too late for a deal to be made.