Zell's Pinstriped Blog, A New York Yankees Fan Blog

This just in: Javier Vazquez must be the most hated man in the clubhouse. Why? Because the Yankees simply refuse to score whenever he starts.

You could forgive the man if he is starting to feel that way. As the chart below shows, Javy not only doesn’t get run support – the Yankees bats virtually go into hibernation on days he starts. For the season, the team scores an average of 5.47 runs per game. Yet when Javy gets the ball, they only score 3.71. In case you’re wondering, in all games not started by Vazquez, the average runs per game scored jumps to 5.87 – so, the team scores more than 2 runs per game more, on average, for everyone else.

Talk about your red-headed step-children (apologies to anyone who happens to be a red-headed step-child)!

Look, I’m hardly a Javier Vazquez fan. His ERA is about where I expected it would be, in the mid-4’s, and he certainly has thrown some awful ballgames this year. But when you look at the numbers objectively, you begin to wonder how he managed to win half of his starts. The generally accepted adage is that a quality start – one where the pitcher gives his team a good chance of winning – is 6 innings of three run ball. Yet in Javy’s case, the Yankees have failed to score more than three runs 11 times in his 18 starts. Of the 4 times the offense has been shut out this year, 3 of them have come in games started by him. You put all of this together, and the Yankees offense is twice as likely to go in the tank when Vazquez pitches as any other starter.

You could expect those types of results if Vazquez were going up against other team’s aces. But, as the nominal #4 starter, he doesn’t. Last night is a prime example: Javy pitched about as well as you can expect, allowing 2 runs over 7 innings. The only problem was the Yanks made Jake Westbrook (he of the 4.74 ERA entering last night’s game) look like an ace, only managing 4 hits off the righty.

I’m not certain what the reason is for this, other than every year there seems to be one guy on a pitching staff who could sue his teammates for run support. This year, that guy is Javy.