Over at the Pinstriped Bible, Jay Jaffe weighs in on Javier Vazquez being skipped a turn:
Like an injured wasp, Javier Vazquez is still able to sting once in awhile, but he’s desperately in need of being relieved of his misery with a rolled-up newspaper, or at the very least swatted to the sidelines. On Saturday, his season reached another low point, as he yielded four runs in three innings against the Mariners, the majors’ lowest-scoring team. While the Yankees nonetheless emerged with a win thanks to strong work from Chad Gaudin and a late offensive burst which produced five unanswered runs, the start marked the third straight time that Vazquez had failed to reach five innings.
Alas, this should surprise exactly no one. After Vazquez allowed 10 baserunners and six runs (three earned) in 5.1 innings during his first start of the month, manager Joe Girardi admitted that his velocity was down, while pitching coach Dave Eiland conceded, “He has a little dead arm,” which isn’t as serious as it sounds. “Dead arm” is a term for muscular fatigue, a warning sign from the body but something which will improve with rest, rather than a structural problem with ligaments or cartilage which would require intervention.
I'm still not convinced that this just isn't Javy Vazquez. Is the velocity that much lower than it was earlier in the year when he wasn't armdead?
Just don't hire National League pitchers. Javy never did well in the AL, but managed to pitch fine in the NL. That should tell you something. AL has rteal hitters. Nuff said.
[1] http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfxo.aspx?playerid=801&position=P&pitch=FA
Unfortunately, you can't hover over the midpoint to get appearance info, so I'm not sure which starts are specifically which starts (By my count, there are 20 appearances recorded for 2010, but Javy is at 24 (23 starts) so something's missing somewhere).
[2] i don't buy this. javy was our best pitcher for two months. He is clearly capable of being good in the AL. Well, so long as he can keep his velocity up anyhow.