Lackey And Vazquez

Even before John Lackey signed with the Red Sox for a deal nearly identical to the 5 year, $82.5M one that the Yankees gave A.J. Burnett a year prior, many saw the two as being very similar. Both pitchers are right handed, oft-injured about six and a half feet tall and around 30 years old with intimidating on-the-mound demeanors. Today, however, I wanted to compare Lackey to Javer Vazquez given their parallel entrance to the Yankees vs. Red Sox rivalry and their disparate reputations in regards to handling pressure.

Lackey has been in the league since 2002 and has averaged 188 innings per season since then. Over that same time period, Vazquez has averaged 215. Lackey's ERA is about a quarter of a run lower over stretch, but that's essentially erased by having to fill in those extra 27 innings a year with a replacement level pitcher.

In general, when John Lackey is healthy, he's a better pitcher than Javy Vazquez. But he's also the Red Sox highest paid player ($18M this year) and is expected to contribute to the top of their rotation. The Yankees are paying Vazquez only about 2/3 as much and hoping that he slots in as their number four.

But what about their reputations under pressure? The idea for that comparison between the two comes from fellow LoHud pinch hitter and editor at the Harvard Crimson, Yair Rosenberg. On Sunday, Yair dropped me an email with the following suggestion/request:

I think the more productive comparison for AL East purposes would not be to Pettitte or Glavine, but to Lackey, whose reputation is that of a big game pitcher, and who is essentially the corresponding addition to this year's Red Sox as Vasquez is to the Yankees. It would be really interesting to see if the stats bear out Lackey's clutch rep - and might go a long way towards predicting the key factors in the coming Yankees-Red Sox race. I'd love to see a post on that.

So here we go. Fighting in the red corner, we have John "Big Game" Lackey, the winning pitcher in Game 7 of the 2002 World Series and supposed consummate clutch performer as anointed by his former manager. In the blue corner is Javier "Can't Handle New York" Vazquez, the man responsible for one of the more infamous home runs in Yankee history, who was called out publicly by Ozzie Guillen for not stepping up when it counts.

There is no question as to who has the better postseason resume. Lackey was thrust into the spotlight at an early age, his team reaching the playoffs in his first season in the majors and asking him to start Game 7 of the World Series only four days after his 24th birthday. Since then, he's been back to the postseason 5 times and pitched a total of 78 innings to a 3.12 ERA.

Vazquez, on the other hand, was trapped on bad Expos teams (no offense, Jonah) for the first six years of his career, and didn't pitch during October until 2004. His performance in the postseason has been pretty dreadful (10.34 ERA), but he's only had a chance to throw 15 2/3 innings in the playoffs.

Do these reputations carry over into the regular season? Do their postseason resumes line up with how they handle pressure during games throughout the year? We know the answer to that question when it comes to Vazquez, as we have assessed his clutch reputation at length here and in other places.

That first and more in-depth inquiry into Vazquez's purported lack of clutchiferousness began with his FIP/ERA differential. Coincidentally, Lackey and Vazquez have identical 3.83 career FIPs. However, Lackey's career ERA is 3.81 while Vazquez's is 4.19. Leaving aside team defense - which would be very difficult to quantify over multiple years and teams - it's helpful to look at situational and leverage statistics when trying to explain FIP/ERA differentials.

There are some notable similarities between the Vazquez and Lackey in the chart to the right. Both pitch better with the bases empty than with runners on. They have similar tOPS+ distributions when the score of the game is within 4 runs.

Naturally, the biggest differences come in the smallest sample sizes. Lackey has done much better with the bases loaded than Vazquez and far worse when the game is out of hand.

Both Lackey's distributions are optimal and both are significant. If you could choose a situation to pitch your best in, it would be when the bases were loaded. If you had to give up runs, you would prefer to allow them when the margin of the game was greater than four runs. But there is a limit to how much these numbers can tell us. Lackey has only 141 plate appearances with the bases loaded while Vazquez has 163.

The sample sizes are larger for when the margin is greater than four (394 for Lackey, 811 for Vazquez) but those at bats are by definition less important. Lackey is obviously better in those situations, but not likely by as much as the numbers indicate.

What about the leverage index, though? While Lackey's numbers don't tell a coherent, progressive story like Vazquez's do, it's still clear that he pitches his worst in high leverage situations. Again, high leverage is based on the smallest sample size among the three levels, but each pitcher has over 1000 plate appearances to draw upon. So perhaps Lackey can't simply summon his best performances when the stakes increase.

If there was something about Lackey's internal constitution that gave him to ability to elevate his performance under pressure, wouldn't it show up in the leverage index? Shouldn't he be able to sense when the game is on the line and reach back for a little extra?

This contradiction begins to chip away not at Lackey's resume in particular but at the manufactured archetype of the "big game pitcher". It's one thing to have had good results in the postseason but it's another entirely to universally improve as the leverage increases. You can argue that the playoff results are more important, but Lackey has only faced 328 batters in postseason play. I think the regular season numbers tell us more.

While it may be convenient to label certain pitchers as big time performers and others as choke artists, they rarely fall neatly into one category or another. More correctly, there are players who have performed well in certain situations and others who have not.

As far as this season goes, it will be interesting to see who is better, Lackey or Vazquez. It's very likely that Lackey will have a lower ERA than Vazquez but based on their respective histories, Vazquez should be the better bet to throw more than 200 innings. However, perhaps this is the year that Vazquez's heroic workload over the past decade-plus catches up with him and it's also the first time in 3 years Lackey makes more than 30 starts.

Time will tell, but remember that the Yankees only need to get 2/3 the performance out of Vazquez to get as much value as the Sox do out of Lackey.

Friday Morning Link Party

This has been by far the slowest week of the offseason around these parts with a slow drip of news and a heavy dose of manual labor keeping me away from my computer. Things will get better soon as we will be dusting off our Countdown to Spring Training via uniform number starting tomorrow morning and running every day through February 16th. The Yanks hurlers and backstops report on the 17th, giving us 26 days and counting until Spring Training begins.

For now, here are some links to propel you towards the weekend.

Our buddy Jason lays out an exhaustive rubric you can use to determine whether you are "new school" or "old school" in your tastes as a baseball fan. I'm somewhere in the middle because I have the most respect for the great players who aren't demonstrative but understand that amount of money that guys are making has changed a lot of aspects of the game.

Javier Vazquez told a Spanish language newspaper in his native Puerto Rico that he doesn't know how much longer he wants to play and might be willing to go year to year with his contracts a la Andy Pettitte. Or at least that's what I'm told. Me Espanol es muy mal. And before you go off the deep end like this guy about it, remember that Pettitte doesn't seem to have lost any of his "desire" over the past couple of years.

Minor league guru John Sickels has some very nice things to say about Jesus Montero. He released them in the hopes that they might get you to buy his book but that doesn't make them any less true. I hope.

The Royals signed Rick Ankiel for $3.25M with a $6M mutual option for next year. Stop it. It's not funny. Okay, it's pretty funny.

If you were wondering why Jason Bay didn't re-sign with the Red Sox, here's why.

Bruce Markusen from the Hardball Times (and Bronx Banter) lists off some of today's best baseball nicknames and then goes back in history position but position to find the all-time greats.

Patrick Sullivan at Baseball Analysts demonstrates to Murray Chass how someone's opinion can matter even if they don't have a Hall of Fame vote.

Beyond the Box Score is continuing their effort to honor the best in statistically-slanted baseball writing with the BtB Sabermetric Awards. There are seven categories to vote on which are sure to contain excellent pieces of analytical baseball thinking that you were not aware of.

Larry from Wezen-Ball earned himself a radio interview as a result of his widely acclaimed Charlie Brown baseball posts. His plot to take over the world continued yesterday with the official release of his iPhone/Android app.

In case you were wondering, Hideki Irabu still retired. For real this time.

And finally a bit of fun non-baseball reading. Joe Posnanski picks apart a bunch of infomercials for your entertainment.

We'll be back with more before the day is done.

Vazquez's Pitch Selection

One of the things we touched upon towards the end of our post about Javier Vazquez's clutch ability was his pitch selection in 2009. Here is what Tyler Kepner said shortly after the trade was completed:

Scouts believe Vazquez’s changeup improved a lot with Atlanta last season, giving him a second swing-and-miss pitch to go with his curveball.

A quick look at the Pitch Type data at FanGraphs shows that his fastball, slider and change were all significantly better in terms of run value while his slider was about the same.

Today, SG at over at the Replacement Level Yankees Weblog took a look at his pitch selection over the last three years in terms of quantity, run value, velocity, strike percentage, and break. For the first time in his career in 2009, Vazquez threw fewer than 50% fastballs while using each off-speed pitch slightly more than in 2008. Last year he also threw significantly more sliders and curveballs than in 2007.

How much of his standout 2009 campaign you want to attribute to this is up to you, but it looks like mixing in more of his off-speed stuff was beneficial. Anecdotally and with small sample size caveats, his leverage numbers were the same as usual - worse as it increased.

There's a lot of data over there, so be sure to check it out and peruse the comments for some other cracks at explaining what's going on.

Is Javier Vazquez Unclutch?

Throughout his career it has been intimated that Javier Vazquez has the stuff of an ace but the track record of a back of the rotation starter. He has excellent peripheral numbers (3.45 K/BB), a better than league average ERA (107 ERA+) and averages well over 200 innings per season. Above average performance and lots of innings should be a winning combination, but Vazquez has always seemed to underachieve when it comes to his won-lost record. His four postseason appearances haven't been pretty either.

Plenty of Yankee fans are worried that he doesn't have the make up to pitch in New York. Vazquez bombed in the second half of his only season with the Yankees and served up perhaps the most infamous home run in Yankee history. But all of that was more than 5 years ago and the latter was the result of one pitch. Ozzie Guillen ran him out of town in Chicago after calling him out for not being a big game pitcher, but Guillen was supposedly responsible for ousting Nick Swisher too and that worked out pretty well for the Yankees.

Does Javier Vazquez's performance get demonstrably worse under pressure, or has he been a victim of marginal teams and bad luck? Is his reputation as someone who shrinks as the expectations grow deserved, or is it the conflation of a few unrelated events?

As I attempt to take a deeper look into these questions, I'm going to go back to something Tom Tango said during his Q & A with Mike Silva last week. In the process of justifying FIP as a useful statistic, Tango pointed out that there is a strong correlation between the best pitchers in the league over a long period of time when ranked by FIP and ERA.

Those familiar with the two stats might take that for granted at this point, but it's fairly remarkable considering all the things that FIP totally disregards that factor into ERA: singles, doubles, triples, runs allowed, etc. What's more intriguing, he contends, is what the significant gaps between FIP and ERA over the long term can tell us:

Tom Glavine’s career FIP is about 0.50 runs worse than his career ERA. This signals that Glavine does something extra, either he can sequence his events better (leaves alot of runners on base for example), or he has better control on his balls in play. And Javy Vazquez’s ERA is about 0.30 runs worse than his FIP, which signals something different, that perhaps he gives up alot of doubles, or doesn’t sequence his events well, etc.

Overall, two-thirds of pitchers will have their FIP and ERA be within 0.20 runs of each other, and almost all will be within 0.40 runs of each other.

That’s the power of FIP: that it’s designed to tell you one specific thing, and it tells you a second, perhaps even more important, thing.

So what's that thing? That's the million dollar question.

One interesting fact is that Vazquez has been extremely consistent in under performing his FIP throughout his career. He's only had an ERA lower than his FIP twice in his 12 professional seasons and only then by the slimmest of margins.

Even in his career year with the Braves last season, his FIP was lower than his ERA (his low FIP was one of the reasons Keith Law included him on his Cy Young ballot). I think we can agree that this not just the result of random chance: there is something about the way that Vazquez pitches that causes him to have an FIP lower than his ERA.

So what is it about Vazquez's pitching that could be causing this? Let's look at the career FIP/ERA differentials for Vazquez, Glavine as well as Andy Pettitte:

Above, Tango says that almost all pitchers will have an FIP and ERA within .4 of each other, so keep in mind that we are looking at two outliers extreme outliers here in Vazquez and Glavine. This is the main reason I chose to include Pettitte, who is closer to the norm.

If you're a Yankee fan, I bet you're a little surprised that Pettitte's differential is closer to Vazquez's than Glavine's. Pettitte has the reputation of being able to bear down and pitch better when it matters and seems to induce a lot of double plays, both of which would lower his ERA but not FIP. But the numbers indicate that he's not as great at controlling his outcomes as many assume.

As Tango mentioned above, one thing that might inflate ERA independently of FIP is giving up a lot of doubles. (Numbers are normalized over 200 IP to account for different career lengths):

Vazquez and Pettitte give up more two-baggers than Glavine does, but four over the course of 200 innings doesn't seem like enough to account for a shift in 3/4 of a run in ERA. Furthermore, Vazquez and Pettitte give up doubles at a nearly identical rate, but the latter has an FIP significantly closer to his ERA. There's something else at work here.

The other possibility that is mentioned above is "sequencing". Maybe Vazquez gives up hits in a way that hurts him. For example, starting an inning with a walk before a double often results in a run scored and a man on second. Conversely, a double before a walk likely means men on first and second without a run scoring. Vazquez gives up his fair share of home runs as well, and they are obviously more harmful with men on base (something that doesn't show up in FIP but does in ERA).

A quick and dirty way of teasing this out of the data is to look at a pitcher's stats with men on base. The numbers below are shown in tOPS+, which compares a pitcher's performance in a given scenario to his performance in other situations. (A score of 100 means is a pitcher is average in that situation while anything lower means they were better and higher means they were worse)

One caveat: the bases loaded data is by far the smallest sample size of the bunch. Vazquez has faced 163 batters with the bases loaded while Glavine and Pettitte have 428 and 237, respectively. That said, there is a major difference between Vazquez and the other two (particularly Glavine) when it comes to their performance with men on base and especially with the bags packed. And those situations are the ones that separate FIP from ERA the most.

Now let's look at how each pitcher performed based on the score of the game, again using tOPS+:

The smallest sample size in this case is "> 4R", but even for Vazquez that includes 811 plate appearances. Pettitte has the most favorable distribution, pitching his best when the game is close and his worst when it is out of hand. Vazquez, however, is just about average in tight games but much better when the lead or deficit is greater than 4.

Now let's put the last two items together. Baseball-Reference's Leverage stats take into account the occupancy of the bases as well as the score of the game, as does FanGraphs Clutch stat:

This tells a slighty different story about Pettitte but affirms what's becoming a trend for Vazquez - he doesn't perform as well in high leverage situations as he does in lower ones.

Does WPA agree?

Yes. It appears that Vazquez has not given his team as good of a chance to win as either Pettitte over Glavine over the course of his career, but this is to be expected to a certain degree because WPA is tied more closely to ERA then FIP. In a sense, we already knew this.

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So what do we make of all this?

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It's tempting to use these stats to claim that Vazquez can't handle pitching in New York. His data seem to trend very uniformly (remarkably so) from good to poor as the leverage increases. However, why didn't he cripple under the weight of the New York media in the first half of 2004 when he had a 3.56 ERA in 118 2/3 IP and won 10 games?

To say that he can't handle New York not only gives too much weight to a small sample size but requires a jump that conflates the pressure of in-game situations to be analogous to the demands of pitching for one franchise or another. Does the weight of overall expectations have the same effect on performance that increases in in-game leverage do?

Well, maybe. As 'Duk from Big League Stew pointed out in September, Vazquez's best seasons in terms of ERA+ have come with teams that were out of contention and his worst years came with teams in playoff races:

Three of his top ERA+ years came in the anonymity of Montreal and one came for the 2007 White Sox, who went 72-90. This year's ERA+ of 139 equals his career-best with the 2003 Expos, but while the Braves stuck around as a potential contender for longer than expected, they didn't occupy striking distance space for long.

Meanwhile, Vazquez's worst ERA+ years — with the exception of his first two seasons — all came with contenders: the '04 Yankees, the '05 D'Backs and the '06 and '08 White Sox.

So what is he doing wrong? As we saw when trying to identify some differences between A.J. Burnett's good and bad starts last week, it's extremely difficult isolate any one underlying factor or find a specific reason that Vazquez's numbers go bad as the leverage of the game increases. Javy's K/BB ratio slips from 4.34 to 3.26 to 2.57 as the leverage rises from low to medium to high. His batting average, on-base and slugging percentages all ascend with the gravity of the situation as well.

Even if you grant that Vazquez gets worse under pressure and will pitch worse just by virtue of being a Yankee, he's still likely to be better than league average and throw more than 200 innings. It would be extremely difficult to do that and not add significant value to a team regardless of how his performance is distributed by leverage.

And of course, there's a big difference between "hasn't" and "can't". I'm willing to say that Vazquez certainly hasn't pitched well under pressure in his career, but not that he can't. He clearly had a great year in Atlanta and some of that has been attributed to an improved change up, giving him a second pitch to miss bats with in addition to his curveball. FanGraphs shows that his curveball was what stood out last year, but his change up looked to be improved as well.

It's certainly not impossible that Javy has a good year and surprises his doubters (and even some of his supporters). Vazquez might be frustrating to watch at times in 2010, but the beauty of the situation is that our expectations for him shouldn't be that high to begin with. Not too many teams have the luxury of acquiring a very good pitcher and hoping that he's just average.

Is Vazquez A One Year Rental?

Good morning Fackers. It's been a week now since the Javier Vazquez trade. Aside from the non-sensical talk of "he can't pitch in NY!!!11!1", "home run Javy", and the focus on the small role he played in a team wide failure that resulted in the greatest post-season collapse in baseball history, the post-trade talking point that I'm most tired of is the presumption that this is a one year pick-up.

Yes. Javier Vazquez is only signed through the 2010 season. Yes, Cliff Lee, Josh Beckett, Brandon Webb, and others are slated to hit the free agent market following the 2010 season. Heck, maybe the Mariners are willing to shop King Felix at that point, or the Royals Zack Greinke. But at this point there's no telling who will be shopped or who will sign an extension by this time next year.

What we do know is that by this time next year, Andy Pettitte will be 38, a free agent, and doing the will-he-or-won't-he retirement dance for the fifth consecutive off-seeason. CC Sabathia will have one year left before before he has the right to opt out of his contract, and A.J. Burnett will be nearly 34 years old and either coming off his third consecutive injury free season or facing health concerns for the umpteenth time in his career.

So why do we just assume that the Yankees are going to let Vazquez walk? Sure the draft picks would be nice, but so would a pitcher who could give you 200 above average innings each year. Maybe the club wouldn't want to commit even a three year deal to the then 34 year old Vazquez, especially considering that he'll have about 2,700 ML innings on his arm by then.

But presuming that 2010 is the last year of Andy Pettitte's career, allowing Vazquez to walk would leave the Yankees with two openings in their rotation. One would go to the loser of this coming spring's Joba/Hughes competition. The other? If the likes of Lee or Beckett fail to hit the market or land in the Bronx the next tier of free agent pitchers is no better than Vazquez, and the same is likely to hold true for any of the in-house options (McAllister, Nova, Bleich).

I'm not saying the Yankees should sign Vazquez at the conclusion of next season. But before we presume that this will be another one and done stint in the Bronx, I think should consider some of the pitching situations the Yankees may be facing at this time next year and let the 2010 season play out.

How Good Is Too Good?

Good morning Fackers. Yesterday, when I first heard about the Javier Vazquez trade, I had an inescapable, reluctant sort of a feeling. I knew the trade was one that would make the Yankees a better team next year without question, but I wasn't excited about it by any stretch.

It was unfortunate to see Arodys Vizcaino get sent to Atlanta just days after he been placed in the top half of the Yankees' top 10 prospects by both FanGraphs and Baseball America, but that wasn't what was bothering me. I had no particular attachment to Mike Dunn, so his loss certainly wasn't it. You don't want to part with a homegrown switch-hitting center fielder like Melky Cabrera who is only 25 years old and has already put in four years for the Yanks, but I don't think I'm going to miss him that much either.

Who we got back wasn't the issue. I don't expect Vazquez to have a year that in any way resembles his dominance in Atlanta, but he'll go a long way towards rounding out the Yankees rotation. What happened during his previous tenure in Pinstripes doesn't bother me at all.

The Braves were looking to unload payroll and the $11.5M Vazquez was making was the next best thing to dumping Derek Lowe. Regardless of what Mark Feinsand's source told him yesterday, this trade was a salary dump to some extent and I think that's what made the deal seem so uncouth. It's not to say that it wasn't a move that made sense for both teams - the Braves had six starting pitchers and the Yankees had four center fielders - but something still feels wrong about it.

The Yankees just won the World Series and they added a pitcher who was among the four or five best in the National League last year to be their third or fourth starter. With CC Sabathia making $23.5M, A.J. Burnett $16.5, Andy Pettitte $11.5, and now Vasquez another $11.5, their top four starters will make $62.5M in 2010, or more than the A's, Pirates, Padres and Marlins spent on their entire teams last year. Sure, the Yanks' total payroll bill for next year will probably come in somewhere near $200M, but staying close to that massive, arbitrary number isn't exactly something to be proud of.

Spending a ridiculous amount of money is nothing new to the Yankees - in 2005, they paid out $85M more than their closest competitor - but it's not as much the dollar amount as it is the players. Now that the Bombers are allocating those resources efficiently, it's hard not to understand how much money $200M actually is. Throughout the middle of this decade, the Yanks were continually paying the likes of Jason Giambi, Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Jose Contreras, Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano and Hideki Matsui far more than they were worth. Now survey the current roster. It looks pretty damn lean by comparison.

I know that it's borderline irrational for a Yankees fan to feel any sort of guilt about the amount the team spends. They make a ton of money - some of which comes from me - and if they don't spend it on players, it's just going to be sucked up into a corporate vacuum, never to be seen again. The more they spend on payroll, the more enjoyable it is going to be to watch them on any given day during the season.

And perhaps that's the issue. Maybe this is just an offseason problem. As the summer moves along and the season develops, it's likely that the Yankees won't actually be as good as they are on paper right now and it won't seem as unfair that they have assembled an absolutely ridiculous collection of current and former All-Stars and future Hall of Famers. Even if they win 110 games next year, they are still going to lose at a 32% clip. Given that a 94 win team loses 42% of the time, it doesn't seem all that different over the long run - one game out of every 10.

Everyone wants their team to be awesome. But I think people want to see their team come together and exceed expectations rather than attempt to live up to impossibly high ones. Ideally, you'd like your team to be better than others by virtue of something other than their relative willingness to shell out tens of millions of dollars. Being a bona fide Goliath doesn't take away from the satisfaction of winning a World Series, but it tempers the enjoyment of every step along the way.

As it stands, the 2010 season will end in one of two ways: an expected victory or a major failure. So while the moves the Yankees have made this offseason have ensured they have a better chance to win a World Series coming into the season than they have had in quite some time, they have also guaranteed that they will have more to lose than ever before.

Vazquez Trade Reactions

We posted our initial take on the deal earlier this morning, but here is a collection of what else is being said around these here internets about the acquisition of Javier Vazquez:

Will from IIATMS looks at what this might mean for the Yankees' defense. Aaron Gleeman from Circling the Bases asks a similar question.

Ben from River Ave. Blues revisits Vazquez's last time in the Bronx.

Craig Calcaterra correctly guessed that it was Vazquez this morning, posted a quick reaction to the deal and as a Braves fan, explained why the deal wasn't so bad.

Joel Sherman was the first to name Vazquez as the target this morning and has an in-depth breakdown of the trade. He also explained that the Yankees valued a starting pitcher over a left fielder and are still looking to keep their payroll under $200M, meaning LF will likely be filled on the cheap. They are also planning to deal either Chad Gaudin or Sergio Mitre before spring training.

There are over 200 comments on the BBTF trade dedicated to the trade as well.

And some quick quotes, taken completely out of context:

Dave Cameron, FanGraphs: "The reaction to this deal on Twitter has not been kind to Atlanta, with most people concluding that the Yankees got Vazquez for peanuts. I’m not so sure."

Joe Posnanski: Sigh. The Yankees traded for Vazquez to be their NUMBER FOUR starter. And the Royals signed Jason Kendall to be their starting catcher.

Keith Law: "At this point, the Yankees now have a rotation close to that of the Red Sox, and they could very well enter 2010 a better team on paper than they were at the same time before 2009.

Peter Abraham, Boston Globe: "You knew this was coming. Once the Red Sox signed John Lackey, there was no way the Yankees would go into next season with a rotation of CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, Andy Pettitte and two question marks."

Jonah Keri, via Twitter: "To be fair to the #Braves, any time you can acquire dryer lint for one of the best SP in baseball, you gotta do it.

Tyler Kepner, via Twitter: "Yanks use 6 prospects to get Granderson and Vazquez, yet keep Hughes, Joba, Montero, Melancon, Romine, McAllister. Not bad."

Ben Kabak, River Ave. Blues: "As much as it strengthens the team’s rotation, it also weakens their outfield. The leftfield situation currently looks like a Brett Gardner/Jamie Hoffmann platoon, which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence."

Rob Iracane, Walkoff Walk: "Let it be known that this guy (points to self) would rather have dismissed Nick Swisher, who cannot field his position, run the bases, or dress like a grown-up. But hey, Vazquez strikes out batters like it's his job (note: it is his job) so as a Yankees fan, I am pleased."

Satchel Price, Beyond the Box Score: "Considering what the Phillies landed for one year of Cliff Lee, arguably a superior pitcher, at a cheaper salary, I think that Atlanta got a pretty solid return for Vazquez, even if it doesn't include the impact bat that Atlanta sorely needs."

Kevin Kaduk, Big League Stew: "It's often been said that Vazquez is a pitcher that throws best when the expectations are low and his stats do back that up. "

Josh, Jorge Says No!: "Make no mistake about it though, if Vazquez can give the Yankees 200 IP with 190+ K's, and a 3.75 ERA, then there is no reason why he won't be able to win 15+ games with the Yankees the way this team is constructed."

And It Comes Full Circle: Javy Vazquez Returns

When Matt created the Nick Johnson trade tree last week, he had to go all the way back to the trade that sent Johnson to the Expos for Javier Vazquez. Since then, Johnson's been oft-injured but productive when healthy, putting up .402 career OBP. A year after being acquired from Montreal, Vazquez was traded to Arizona for Randy Johnson, who was disappointing in his tenure in Pinstripes. In the five years since that trade, he's thrown over 200 innings every season, with a combined ERA+ of 110.

It seems that Brian Cashman is now attempting to right those wrongs as the Yankees have reportedly acquired Javier Vazquez from the Braves along with lefty reliever Boone Logan in exchange for Melky Cabrera, Mike Dunn and Arodys Vizcaino, who was just named the Yankees third best prospect by Baseball America after an excellent campaign in short-season Staten Island.

Vazquez is coming off a terrific season for the Braves in which he threw 219 innings to a 2.87 ERA. He'll be making $11.5M next year (the last on his contract), so he won't come cheap, but he's very similar to Andy Pettitte in that he's likely to pitch a whole lot of innings at a better than average ERA. The Yankees might have bought at the peak of his value, but this is a salary dump to a certain exent as well because they didn't give up a whole lot.

Boone Logan is a 25 year old lefty who was traded to the Braves along with Vazquez from the White Sox last winter in exchange for two minor leaguers and two of the least manly-named baseball players imaginable - Tyler Flowers and Brent Lillibridge. Logan's career ERA is north of 5.00 and it's not a whole lot better in the minors, but he'll likely compete for a spot in the bullpen now that both Mike Dunn and Phil Coke are gone.

It's sad to see Melky go, but he's starting to get fairly expensive and hasn't displayed the kind of tantalizing ceiling that makes you think he is going to be an All-Star caliber player in the future. Dunn is a converted outfielder, so he is still early in his development as a pitcher. He could very well turn out to be a solid reliever, but for now his walk rate is awfully high. Arodys Vizcaino is a long, long way from the Majors, but he flashed a lot of potential this year and is the one piece that could be the most painful to see in another uniform in the long run.

My overall impression is that this is a great deal for the Yankees for this year. They get a very solid starter to fill out the back of their rotation (and a possibly lefty for the 'pen) in exchange for two fringe MLB players and a pitcher that is still several leaps and bounds from the Big League club.

However, this means that top 4 members of the Yanks' starting rotation will be making $62.5M this year. It also means the Yanks will most likely have to go outside of the organization to fill the hole in left field. I guess it's good that the Yankees are spending the money they are making instead of stuffing it in the coffers, but the talk of a "budget" that was prevalent early in this offseason is getting more and more laughable by the day.

Today In Dumb Headlines

"CC Sabathia proves he's a winner by earning fifteenth victory against Boston"

I'm glad that we now have this "proof", because had he earned his 15th victory against the Angels, he still would have been a total loser. Or if it was his only his 14 victory, we would still have to suspend our judgement. We can't blame John Harper for the writing that, but we sure can for this:

On the matter of pitching, after all, regardless of the era there are the Javier Vasquez types, pitchers whose stuff always seems to be better than their records, and then there are the Jack Morris types, pitchers whose records are more impressive than their ERA because they know how to win.

Sabathia gave the Yankees something of a Jack Morris game Sunday night, at least by the pitch-count limits of today's game, going 6 2/3 innings, allowing four runs, three earned.

Harper then cites affirmative quotes from Joe Girardi, but oddly finishes by talking about Sabathia's shortcomings in the postseason, apparently implying that he forgets how to win once the playoffs roll around.

I get the feeling a lot of pitchers "know how to win" games when the guy who they are opposing gives up 8 runs. Craig from Shysterball points us to a Baseball Prospectus article which shows that Jack Morris was not uniquely adept at "pitching to the scoreboard" and shuns the notion in general. Pitchers shouldn't ever want to give up runs, and just like hitters trying to score them, can't really control when it happens, just how often it does in the long run.

Earlier this year, we noted that the Yankees were 11-11 in Sabathia's starts primarily because he was receiving the least run support out of any of their 4 regular starters. Since then, he's ripped off 5 straight victories while the team has averaged just under 8 runs per game in support of him. It's not rocket science or psychology here, folks. The guy is a good pitcher and when he's backed by a strong offensive performance, he's likely to walk away with the win.

Countdown To Opening Day: #41

The Yankees have a long history of getting great players just as they are exiting their prime and their 2005 aquisition of Randy Johnson was a perfect example.

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When the Yankees got The Big Unit, I couldn't have been more excited. I got a call from my roommate Kevin and we were both downright giddy. We had known him as an ageless wonder who had just hit his stride at age 35 and taken down four straight Cy Young awards.

At a time when the rest of the Yankees' rotation was Mike Mussina, Kevin Brown, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright, it looked like a move that should have pushed them over the top. The Red Sox had just won the World Series and it seemed like sending Javier Vasquez, Brad Hallsey, Dioner Navarro and $9M to the Diamondbacks was going to right the baseball universe once again.

In retrospect, there were a ton of warning signs, land mines, red flags and caution tape that Yankee fans probably should have noticed.

1. He was 41 years old
2. He had spent his last six seasons in the National League West
3. After pitching 244 or more innings in 5 consecutive seasons, he was hurt in 2003 and started only 18 games at a 4.26 ERA
4. He was making $16M a year
5. His K/9 had been declining for 4 years
6. Being 6'10" is as much of a liability as it is an asset

I don't put much stock in whether people in the New York media think a player can "handle the New York media", but that scuffle with a cameraman on the way to his Yankee physical certainly wasn't a good omen.

After posting ERAs 2.64 or below in 5 out of his 6 years in Arizona the Big Unit threw 225 2/3 innings of 3.79 ball for the Yanks in 2005. Mostly attributed to his "hanging sliders", he gave up 32 home runs and 207 hits, the highest totals of his career. It was a respectable season overall, but it fell far short of even the most conservative expectations of Yankees fans, players and executives. The prevailing thought at the time was that Johnson would rebound the following year and return to his dominant form.

The result was quite the opposite, in fact. He started 33 games but threw only 205 innings, an average of under 6 1/3 innings per outing, the lowest of his career. His K/BB ratio fell from 4.48 to 2.86 (also the worst of his career). For the first time since his rookie season in 1989 and only time since, he posted an ERA worse than league average.

Late in the season it was revealed that Johnson was pitching with a herniated disc. He received treatments and ended up starting Game 3 of the ALDS against Detroit. It was his last game in Pinstripes and he gave up 5 runs in a contest the Yanks went on to lose 6-0.

The Yanks ended up trading Johnson back to the D-Backs for Luiz Visciano, Ross Olendorf, Alberto Gonzalez and Stephen Jackson. It was a pretty fair haul for a 43 year old pitcher with a bad back coming off what was easily the worst full season of his career.

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After getting it right (for the most part) with guys like David Cone, David Wells, El Duque and Roger Clemens during the last 90's and Mike Mussina in 2001, the aughts have been filled with a minefield of pitching acquisitions that just didn't work out.

In addition to Johnson and Vasquez: Kevin Brown, Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano, Jon Lieber, Jose Contreras, Esteban Loaiza, Jeff Weaver...

If the Yanks are going to return to the promised land this year, they need two big double-initialed additions to the rotation buck that trend.