Former Gonzaga, Indians pitcher Gabriel Hughes sterling in first MLB start for Rockies

Last month, Gabriel Hughes was mowing down batters at Avista Stadium for the Spokane Indians. On Wednesday, he struck out Shohei Ohtani on his latest bobblehead night at Dodger Stadium.

Hughes was the latest former Indians player to make his MLB debut with the Colorado Rockies when he was brought up to the big leagues on July 1, then provided three innings of shutout relief two nights later against the San Francisco Giants to earn his first MLB save in his first appearance.

Tasked with facing the Los Angeles Dodgers on the road on Wednesday in a starting role, Hughes was up to the challenge.

After a bit of a rocky first inning – including a couple of walks and a run-scoring wild pitch – Hughes settled down for a quality start, allowing three runs on four hits and two walks over six innings and 94 pitches. He recorded seven strikeouts and held Ohtani hitless in three at-bats – but the Dodgers got a run in the eighth inning off the bullpen and won 4-3.

It’s been something of a whirlwind season for Hughes, the former Gonzaga University star who was the Rockies’ first-round pick (No. 10 overall) in the 2022 MLB draft. Now fully recovered from Tommy John surgery, which robbed him of half of the 2023 season and all of ’24, he started the season – and struggled with an ERA over 5.00 – with the Triple-A Albuquerque Isotopes.

During his start on April 29, he felt discomfort in his side and spent the next month on the shelf with a rib cage muscle injury.

“It was definitely frustrating, because there was one pitch where it just kind of locked up on me, and I pitched another couple innings, kind of hoping that it would get better, and just didn’t,” he told The Spokesman-Review in June.

The Rockies sent him to the Indians on May 29 for a rehab assignment, where he spent eight games in High-A in 2023, and he did not allow a run in two appearances covering six innings.

“It’s really special being able to come back to somewhere where I spent so long in college, and then another couple months in High-A,” Hughes said at the time. “It’s cool to see so many ‘Go Zags’ billboards and everything around the area.”

He was activated off the minor league injured list and returned to Albuquerque, and his excellence continued. The 24-year-old made three starts, combining for 152/3 innings, and did not allow a run – striking out 16 in the process.

That led to his call to the majors, where he’s been almost as stingy as he was recently in the minors.

“It’s nice knowing that I’m on the cusp,” he told The Spokesman-Review in early June. “But obviously I’m not where I want to end up. There is still more that I want to accomplish in this game.”

Hughes was a star player at Rocky Mountain High School in Meridian, Idaho, before joining the Zags from 2020-22. He earned first-team All-American honors in his junior year after recording 138 strikeouts, the second highest total in a single season by a Gonzaga pitcher. The Rockies made him the highest drafted player in Gonzaga history and the 33rd Zags player overall to appear in the majors.

Across three years at GU, Hughes compiled a career 3.05 ERA with 218 strikeouts over 171 innings. Originally a two-way player for the Zags, he started 40 games in the field in his first two seasons in addition to making 30 career appearances on the mound. Batters hit for just a .208 average, the second lowest batting average of any pitcher in Gonzaga history.