JOSE Veras's current designation is to frustrate the Indians, and Brian Bruney and Edwar Ramirez are brought in to mop up games with 10-run leads. So here are our questions: Where would the Yankees be and - more important - where would they be going if Phil Hughes had not morphed into a version of Mariano Rivera, circa 1996? "Look at the last 10 years," Alex Rodriguez said. "You don't find many championship teams who did not have a lockdown guy in the eighth inning." There are two key launching points for this Yankee season: When Rodriguez returned from hip surgery on May 8 to turn the offense from good to dynamic. And June 8, when Hughes was made a reliever and flipped the set-up slot from worry to strength. Now the next question will be whether Hughes can be as serene and supreme in October as he has been during the regular season. Hughes says he's "pumped" for the postseason, and anticipates that nerves will not be a factor for him. We'll see. But so far, Hughes has been a revelation. He comes in, as he did with a 5-3 lead over the Orioles in the eighth inning yesterday and the mood of the team and the home crowd is uniform confidence, or the polar opposite to what it was in the first two months when Veras, Bruney and Ramirez were channeling Kyle Farnsworth.