{"id":4776,"date":"2010-05-01T18:46:41","date_gmt":"2010-05-02T01:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.seamheads.com\/?p=4776"},"modified":"2010-05-01T18:46:41","modified_gmt":"2010-05-02T01:46:41","slug":"i-told-you-so%e2%80%a6-or-how-javier-vazquez-almost-broke-my-leg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/01\/i-told-you-so%e2%80%a6-or-how-javier-vazquez-almost-broke-my-leg\/","title":{"rendered":"I Told You So\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 or How Javier Vazquez Almost Broke My Leg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Javier Vazquez.\u00c2\u00a0 Saying I told you so just doesn’t cut it.<\/em><\/p>\n

I told you so.<\/p>\n

In a season where teams are almost guaranteed to lose 60 times, and the mathematical probability of winning the final game played stands at 3.3%, fans have to find optimism and reason for hope in smaller events throughout the season.\u00c2\u00a0 A breakout season by a highly touted rookie, a hard-fought win over a hated rival, or a short line at the concession stand that sells the gourmet steak sandwich keep us hooked.\u00c2\u00a0 Why do you think Vegas sports books offer proposition bets?\u00c2\u00a0 Everyone needs something to keep them interested for three hours at a time for more than 160 dates a year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>That compulsive need for some small victory has given birth to the sports fan I refer to as the Negative Man.\u00c2\u00a0 The Negative Man can always be found in some corner of the man cave, morosely sipping a beer, saying things like, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Qualls\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll blow the game here, you just watch.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 The Negative Man hedges his bets.\u00c2\u00a0 He can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t allow himself to feel loss and despair as his favorite team loses a game, so he makes a side wager.\u00c2\u00a0 If Qualls does in fact lose the game, Negative Man has triumphed!\u00c2\u00a0 His prediction has come true!\u00c2\u00a0 Even though the team lost, Negative Man won.<\/p>\n

He told you so.<\/p>\n

So, what does all this have to do with baseball?\u00c2\u00a0 For Yankee fans, Javier Vazquez is Negative Man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wet dream.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the ultimate \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I told you so\u00e2\u20ac\u009d player.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody who watched the Yankees during their 2004 meltdown against the Red Sox thought this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s offseason trade for Javier Vazquez was a good idea.<\/p>\n

I was on the treadmill, watching the scrawl on ESPN, when news of the trade scrolled across the bottom of my screen.\u00c2\u00a0 My knees buckled.\u00c2\u00a0 I nearly fell off the treadmill.\u00c2\u00a0 My mind raced.<\/p>\n

How could they do this?\u00c2\u00a0 Didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t anybody watch Vazquez while he was in New York the first time around?\u00c2\u00a0 Did Javier Vazquez nearly break my leg?<\/p>\n

Forget that Vazquez is widely blamed\u00e2\u20ac\u201dunfairly I might add\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfor the Yankees\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 2004 collapse.\u00c2\u00a0 Here was a fly-ball pitcher who had succeeded in the National League in a pitcher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s park.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, the Yankees were going to bring him to the pitcher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s graveyard known as the American League East and the launching pad that is Yankees Stadium 2.0?\u00c2\u00a0 The fans in the Bronx actually gave Vazquez more leeway than I thought they would.\u00c2\u00a0\"\"<\/a> They didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t boo him upon his introduction at Opening Day.\u00c2\u00a0 Vazquez had the same chance of succeeding as the new MacGruber<\/em> movie.<\/p>\n

The problem with Vazquez isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mechanical.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not his environment.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not his stuff.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s him.\u00c2\u00a0 He walks to the mound wearing the same look as the abusive psychiatrist when Hannibal Lecter escaped his cell in Silence of the Lambs<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a look that says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I emptied my bowels directly into my pants right before I stepped on the field.\u00c2\u00a0 So please don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ask me to move too quickly, because things could get very messy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Would you want anybody taking the mound for your team with a load in his pants?<\/p>\n

These are the questions I wish the Yankees front office had asked before they traded away Melky Cabrera.\u00c2\u00a0 For me, along with 99.9% of the Yankees fans out there, Vazquez was dead to us.\u00c2\u00a0 It didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter what he had done in Chicago or Atlanta, he was a rotting corpse since 2004.<\/p>\n

Our defining memory of Javier Vazquez will always be the grand slam served up to Johnny Damon.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not because it was a momentum changing homerun that forever altered anything\u00e2\u20ac\u201dKevin Brown had already done that.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that Vazquez approached the at-bat with his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153oops I crapped my pants\u00e2\u20ac\u009d mentality.\u00c2\u00a0 By the time Vazquez faced Johnny Damon in the top of the second in game seven, he was a defeated pitcher.\u00c2\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>Damon was supremely confident.\u00c2\u00a0 Vazquez wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t.\u00c2\u00a0 Damon had the battle won before he ever stepped into the batter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s box.<\/p>\n

Vazquez dominated last season in Quadruple-A.\u00c2\u00a0 His groundball percentage received a two percent bump, probably because he got to face the pitcher or an unimpressive pinch hitter 10% of the time.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a mathematician.\u00c2\u00a0 I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how to assign a value to the difference in offensive production between the American and National Leagues.<\/p>\n

Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I do know.\u00c2\u00a0 Javier Vazquez has evolved as a pitcher since 2004.\u00c2\u00a0 In 2004, he threw his fastball with an average velocity of 90.1 MPH 56.9% of the time, his slider 5.5%, curve 15%, and change 23.6%.\u00c2\u00a0 Last season, for the first time in his career, he threw his fastball less than a majority of the time.\u00c2\u00a0 Why?\u00c2\u00a0 I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe the weaker hitters at the bottom of the National League lineups don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t hit off-speed stuff as well.<\/p>\n

This season, his percentages have continued to skew away from the heat.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clearly not a successful strategy.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s throwing his fastball an average of 89 MPH 48.7% of the time.\u00c2\u00a0 His slider has jumped to 21.2%, his curve 16.1%, and his changeup 14%.\u00c2\u00a0 That says he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trust himself, because he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trust the pitch he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been throwing since Little League.<\/p>\n

When you trust your stuff, you throw your fastball.\u00c2\u00a0 You throw it for strikes.\u00c2\u00a0 You get ahead of hitters with it and then you put them away with it (See Hughes, Phil 2009).\u00c2\u00a0 You work fast.\u00c2\u00a0 You get outs.\u00c2\u00a0 You want to pitch every five days.\u00c2\u00a0 When a tubby, retired mouthpiece like Curt Schilling calls you out, you fire back at him.\u00c2\u00a0 You don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mess your pants before you take the mound.<\/p>\n

A pitcher not confident in his stuff nibbles.\u00c2\u00a0 He slings off-speed pitches off the plate, hoping to entice a swing.\u00c2\u00a0 He throws his heater slower, aiming it, worried that anything too good will be hit a long way.\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the type of pitcher I see in Javier Vazquez.<\/p>\n

He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not trying to get outs and win baseball games.\u00c2\u00a0 He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying to avoid being on the back page of the Daily News<\/em>, his hat pulled down over his eyes, his head tilted downward, walking off the mound as manager Joe Girardi waits to hand the ball to reliever Sergio Mitre.\u00c2\u00a0 Tiger Woods doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t line up a putt hoping not to miss.\u00c2\u00a0 Kobe Bryant doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stand at the free throw line hoping not to brick it.\u00c2\u00a0 Mariano Rivera doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t throw a change up, because a hitter just missed taking his cutter deep.\u00c2\u00a0 You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t compete when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re worried about screwing up.<\/p>\n

Saturday, when Mark Kotsay lifted a Vazquez offering into the right field seats to make a 3-1 White Sox lead 5-1, guess what pitch he hit.\u00c2\u00a0 Curveball.<\/p>\n

I told you so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not trying to get outs and win baseball games. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trying to avoid being on the back page of the Daily News, his hat pulled down over his eyes, his head tilted downward, walking off the mound as manager Joe Girardi waits to hand the ball to reliever Sergio Mitre. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,9],"tags":[6832,3552,6825,6823,1371,1700,1791,6822,6826,6819,6820,6817,6818,6828,3304,6831,6827,6830,6824,6816,6829,6821],"class_list":["post-4776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","category-general","tag-ball-pit","tag-breakout-season","tag-compulsive-need","tag-concession-stand","tag-espn","tag-final-game","tag-fly-ball","tag-gourmet-steak","tag-javier-vazquez","tag-mathematical-probability","tag-negative-man","tag-offseason-trade","tag-proposition-bets","tag-qualls","tag-saying-things","tag-scrolled","tag-small-victory","tag-sports-fan","tag-steak-sandwich","tag-vegas-sports-books","tag-wet-dream","tag-yankee-fans"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t