Matt Slocum / AP

New York Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, second from left, talks with Yankees staff members after pitcher Phil Hughes, left, was injured in the seventh inning on Tuesday.

In spring training, his teammates had compared him to Roger Clemens, who is just the best right-hander the game has seen in 75 years. Still not old enough to buy a six-pack, he had, they said, the best arm in camp.

Yankee management didn’t care.

Hughes wasn’t even supposed to be in the bigs, not this year and not with his 21st birthday still two months away and most of his experience accumulated in AA ball. The one thing the Yankees, as desperate for pitching as they are, didn’t want to do was to push him into the big leagues too soon and maybe destroy his career before it even got started.

New Yorkers are sensitive about such matters. It was 23 years ago when Dwight Gooden, all of 19 years old, debuted with the New York Mets. Like Hughes, he had a live fastball, a knee-buckling curve and the kind of control pitchers fantasize about having. He was rookie of the year in 1984 and the following year, he led the league in wins, ERA and strikeouts and won the Cy Young Award at the age of 20.

Little more than a year later, Gooden made his first trip to rehab. He was effective and would pitch a no-hitter late in his interrupted career with the Yankees, but he was never again the same pitcher he was in 1984-85.

Still, there was no question about Hughes’ talent. In two full minor-league seasons, he was 21-7 with an ERA just above 2.00 and a average of better than ten Ks per nine innings of work. He wasn’t just the best pitching prospect in the Yankees’ organization, he was the best in anyone’s organization.

How much do Yankee fans expect from this kid? Well, they gave him a standing “O” for giving up four runs in less than five innings in his first major-league start last week. New York has seen plenty of four-run, four-inning performances this year – enough to last the season – but none of the others were applauded, because none of the others were started by the kid who’s supposed to carry the franchise.

In his second start, he had already begun to shoulder the load and was on his way to one of the more spectacular achievements ever – a no-hitter in his second major-league start. And then the hamstring went.

Is it just another unlucky break for a team off to its worst start in years?

Or a sign of things to come?

It’ll be four to six weeks before we begin to find out.

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