SNY.tv: Online Home of All Things Sports

The move strains credulity, that's for sure. No mention of this after the miserable outing versus the Tigers on Tuesday. And no mention, either, from manager Joe Girardi when he was getting snippy with reporters for pressing him for more clarity when he only said that Hughes was "scheduled" to make his next start and refused to commit beyond that or admit that Hughes' big-league status was in jeopardy.

Inventing an injury is a clever way to handle a demotion, I'll admit. It protects Hughes from the embarrassment while achieving the same result. He gets time to clear his head before beginning what likely will be a slow climb back into the Major League rotation. Don't expect to see Hughes back in the Bronx before the All-Star Break.

Hughes is now, officially, "The Guy the Yankees wouldn't trade for Johan Santana." That's a tough burden for the youngest pitcher in the league to carry. There were extenuating factors in that decision. The Yankees' payroll required a 40-percent premium on the market deal that Santana would require as part of that trade. It was this fact combined with Hughes' prospective value and guaranteed low salary for the next couple of seasons that tilted the scales against the trade. But the sound bite that the ignoramuses have walked away with is, "The Yankees think Hughes is better than Santana."

Worse, they judge Hughes right now. But he was always a projection. You can't expect a 21-year-old pitcher to walk into the big leagues and dominate. That happens one or twice a generation. Most guys, even those who end up great, are either toiling in the Minors at that age or struggling in the Majors. Look at the first 30 starts of Hall of Fame-caliber pitchers, and you'll see lots of ugly lines.

A team must decide whether they will invest in guys like Hughes, who have decent prospects for greatness. This necessarily means that there will be pain along the way. It seems obvious, but it's easy to forget as the bad outings pile up. You pay now so you can profit later.

Learning how to overcome failure and, more precisely, the fear of failure is the biggest hurdle for the professional athlete. Hughes, for example, knows how to pitch. He's been doing that his whole life. He now needs to learn how to pitch against the best hitters in the world. That can't happen in the minors, where he's already dominated.

Only bad things can happen there. If he pitches well, big deal. He's proved nothing that will aid him when he again steps on the big-league mound. And if he gets hit in the minors, then you really have a crisis.

This isn't conjecture. There's 100 years of science supporting it. It's called the Yerkes-Dodson Law and it was first postulated in 1908.

The law says that what we understand as "the zone" in sports is really an arousal curve. Performance for all of us, not just athletes (but especially athletes), improves as we are mentally excited, even fearful. The pulse quickens and our focus narrows; time seems to slow down. This is our body's way of sharpening us for battles that were once literally life or death.

So, it pays to be nervous. But only up to a point. Yerkes-Dodson says the arousal curve is an inverted U-shape. Once you pass the narrow range of useful arousal and get too nervous or excited, performance craters. You don't eat the bear. The bear eats you.

The problem for guys like Hughes who have been special talents their whole lives is that they've never really experienced any lasting struggles. They've always dominated and never had to conquer doubt and the fear of failure, harnessing it into something constructive that actually improves performance.

Teams have no blueprint for getting players over this hurdle. Smart teams would have psychologists working on the mind just like trainers work on the body. Alas, a good number of sports psychologists are hacks. Good ones, though, are incredibly valuable.

Roy Halladay was on his way out of baseball when the Blue Jays shipped him all the way to A-ball in 2001 at age 24. Halladay then consulted two sports psychologists.

"I did everything I thought I could do, but there was one part I didn't understand," Halladay told Baseball Digest in 2002. "I really had no comprehension of the mental part of baseball. I'd get negative things in my head. I just kind of always pitched that way. You kind of let your mind overtake what you want to do."

Halladay said his pitching "was real passive. It was almost like you surrender sometimes."

After just 80 innings, he was back in Toronto and finally dominating big leaguers.

Halladay said the key for him was realizing that there was a life beyond baseball and the worst thing that could happen to him -- not being a professional pitcher -- wasn't so bad. Once freed from this crushing fear, he was then able to focus on baseball and the batter in front of him "one pitch at a time." Prior to this though, and unlike Hughes, Halladay consistently underachieved in the Minors, too.

You would think that teams would have lined up to hire the psychologist that got Halladay on track after he posted that 10.64 ERA for the Blue Jays in 67-plus innings, followed by a 5.50 ERA in 74 more in Syracuse -- all in 2000. That was not the case. He was hired, all right -- but by agent Scott Boras.