Hypothesis: The early season struggles of Javier Vazquez are magnified because of his second half of 2004 and those frustrations, and because the rest of the Yankee starting pitching staff has been performing so well in early 2010.
Through four starts, Vazquez’s numbers are not pretty.
He does not have a single quality start, and hasn’t completed six innings pitched in any of them. He has more earned runs (20) than innings pitched (19), and could not even make it out of four innings today.
However, Vazquez is far from the only Yankee start to have ever had problems to start a season–last season, Sabathia started at 1-3 as well, and while the one win was dominant, he had two starts where he was charged with six earned runs. Check out the gamelogs.
Now, obviously, no one expects Vazquez to be Sabathia…but then, that begs the question, why is Vazquez being showered with boos, when the expectations are so much lower, and Sabathia was not?
You can, of course, argue that everyone knew Sabathia was going to shape up, except that we didn’t know that for sure, and Yankee fans aren’t exactly known for being patient.
So what gives?
Despite Sabathia’s poor start, he was far from the worst starter in the Yankees’ early-season rotation. No, that honor went to Chien Ming Wang, who was so disastrous he was placed on the disabled list after his third start (by the end of his third start, Wang had an ERA of over 34.00. Vazquez has been nowhere near that bad).
Add in the fact that we were still watching Cody Ransom play third base, while Alex Rodriguez was on the DL, and Jose Veras and Edwar Ramirez were our “setup” men–not to mention that both the first and second string catchers (Posada and Molina) went down within days of each other in the early goings, too.
In other words, the April 2009 Yankees had some other concerns.
In 2010, much is right in the Yankee world.
No player–knock on wood–normally in the starting lineup or rotation is on the disabled list (only Chan Ho Park), and while Mark Teixeira is allergic to April, everyone else is mostly doing their part.
The starters, especially, have performed well–in the fourteen games the Yankees have played not started by Javier Vazquez, they’ve received quality starts in nine of them, and ones that haven’t been include the recent Sabathia and Burnett losses, where they still pitched deep enough into the ballgame to (mostly) save the bullpen. While you can argue if a six inning, three run appearance is really quality or not, the fact is that most of the time that will keep your team in the ballgame.
So when you have four starters rolling along like they own the place, and then have a fifth one come in and struggle, and when that same pitcher was the one on the mound in October 2004, giving up *that* grand slam to Johnny Damon, a dagger in the heart of Yankee fans everywhere, fans are going to notice. When those fans happen to be Yankee fans…
When one starting pitcher is statistically responsible for half of your team’s losses, there probably is a very real issue that needs to be examined. This, however, does not mean that calls for Vazquez to be bumped from the rotation in favor of Kei Igawa (no joke, someone actually tweeted this) are necessary.
Vazquez wasn’t brought on the Yankees to become their new ace; he was brought on to be better than Sergio Mitre. Whether or not he has done that is up for question, but it seems that the early season hate may be just a little misplaced.
Vazquez has been the worst starter on the Yankees thus far, and it’s not particularly close–but that might say more for the quality of starts the Yankees are getting from the other pitchers in their rotation than it does about Vazquez himself.
Original Story:
http://www.puristbleedspinstripes.com...
