Doesn’t matter if it’s hot or cold, new Yankee Stadium or old, good team or bad, Javier Vazquez showed again yesterday that he can’t handle the job the Yankees are paying him $11.5 million to do this season.
The Yankees can’t trust him, and most damaging of all, you can tell that Vazquez does not trust himself. That is the point of no return for a pitcher.
The only solution for the Vazquez Problem is to remove him from the rotation. There is no way he should be on the mound Friday in Boston.
Put him in the bullpen, try to get his head right and if that doesn’t work, the next step is a trade. Bite the bullet and move on.
At this point Vazquez is a lost cause as a Yankee. He has entered Kei Igawa territory, go to Tampa and work it out territory. He cannot be given the baseball Friday after yesterday’s sorrowful 7-6 loss to the White Sox at Yankee Stadium.
Joe Girardi avoided answering directly if Vazquez is still his starter for the first game in Boston.
“That’s not a concern of mine right now,” he said. “My thought process is how we get through tomorrow first.
“There’s no doubt about it, he’s scuffling and we have to find a way to get him back on track. My concern is right now, tomorrow and the next day and how we deal with some of the things we’re dealing with right now.”
The Yankees not only lost the game, after coming back to take the lead in the sixth inning, they lost center fielder Curtis Granderson to a groin injury when he slipped rounding the bag at second. The Granderson injury is a major loss.
In Vazquez’s past three appearances in Yankee Stadium (new and old) as a Yankee, he has thrown 10 1/3 innings and surrendered 15 hits, 11 walks, 12 runs and five home runs. One of those home runs was a grand slam by Johnny Damon in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS.
After surrendering his third home run of the day, a second-deck job to .108-hitting Mark Kotsay, he allowed a four-pitch walk to Juan Pierre, who came to the plate batting .191. Vazquez retired only nine White Sox.
Vazquez was worse than his numbers. The White Sox should have scored 10 runs against him, but they ran themselves out of two innings.
The only thing worse than Vazquez’s line (three innings, five runs, seven hits, four walks, two strikeouts and a wild pitch) was his mound demeanor. He was excruciating to watch. He didn’t want to throw the ball. His teammates fell asleep in the field behind him. The first four innings took an hour and 47 minutes.
Vazquez was booed with a vengeance by the crowd of 45,265 that came to the Stadium on a sun-splashed day expecting the worst and getting it.
Vazquez said the booing was deserved. He is being realistic after saying in his previous home start that the boos were unfair.
“You do badly you expect to get booed, that’s something I’m clear [about],” he said. “You do badly here, you’re going to get booed.”
It was not a good day for Girardi, either, who put what turned out to be the winning run on base in the seventh via an intentional walk.
Everything went wrong for Vazquez: At one point the umpires made him change gloves because his regular glove was multi-colored. It’s not the glove, though; it’s the head and arm.
Vazquez surrendered two home runs to Andruw Jones in a battle of ex-Braves. Jones has eight home runs this season, seven lifetime against Vazquez and bats .416 against him. Vazquez’s mechanics are garbled and he has a weird follow-through.
“I’m trying hard,” he said. “I want to do good.”
There are no answers, only questions at this point. But one thing is certain, come Friday in Boston, Vazquez should not be on that mound.