Cheapy McBigHead

via TheHardballTimes

The Yankees were right not to trade Phil Hughes

Despite our forecast for Santana’s dominance, that doesn’t mean that the Yankees will be despairing too much when he pitches across town every fifth day. That’s because they’ll get to have a poor man’s Santana in Hughes, and at a much poorer salary.

We project a 4.12 ERA for Hughes in the much tougher American League, and more importantly, our three-year forecast sees that number dropping to 3.84 by 2010. If we put Santana on the Yankees, his forecast for 2010 would be a 3.76 ERA—pretty much equivalent to Hughes! While Santana is the better pitcher now, he probably won’t be any more valuable over the life of his contract than Hughes, if Hughes can stay healthy (or if Santana cannot, I suppose).

Now that’s a big if, but the Yankees have 137 million reasons to feel pretty good about taking that chance.

I have such a boner for Phil.