[閒聊] Vazquez vanishes again in pinstripes
來自Yahoo! Sport:
http://tinyurl.com/3xbzl4f
有興趣的可以看看,
不好意思我沒翻譯,因為現在是腦殘狀態(據說此為不可逆而且沒藥醫)
It was supposed to be different because he was supposed to be different. Ed
Whitson and Kenny Rogers and Carl Pavano never could come back to New York
again. They hated the city and the city hated them, a relationship of mutual
revulsion. Javier Vazquez, though? Well, Yankees fans slaughtered their
figurative fatted calves upon his return this offseason.
Prodigal, unfortunately, he ain’t. The same Vazquez who toiled in mediocrity
six years ago for the Yankees is back, and so as the biggest week of their
season yet dawned, Yankees manager Joe Girardi for the second time this
season said he was skipping Vazquez in the rotation.
No Javy in the two games against Boston. He will park his 8.10 earned-run
average on the bench for the team’s first two games against its biggest
threat, first-place Tampa Bay, too. Girardi will call upon him for the first
game of the Yankees’ interleague series against the New York Mets. Perhaps
a different borough – and a National League opponent – will treat him better.
Because until he proves otherwise, the prevailing thought – the Pinstripes
are a pox on Vazquez – is as apropos as it was for the handful of other
pitchers allergic to New York. The psychological often manifests itself
physically, and for every time Vazquez pronounces his arm fine, the question
arises: What, then, is causing the 2-mph dip in fastball velocity?
Pitching takes brain and body working in concert, and Vazquez’s are working
like a ukulele and didgeridoo. And with the baseball world this week revolving
around New York – and rightfully so – its eyes aren’t as much on the big
stars as …
1. The one who seems as sick of the Yankee aura as anyone else, Javier
Vazquez. And it’s not just the fastball velocity that’s his demise. Last
season, Vazquez’s fastball was his third-most effective pitch, behind his
curveball and changeup.
Vazquez’s hallmark, dynamite command, has disappeared. In 30 innings, he has
walked 17. Last season, in 219 1/3 innings with Atlanta, he walked 44.
Vazquez has allowed 37 hits, eight of them home runs. Among current starters,
not one has a worse opponent OPS than Vazquez’s .962, and that’s after his
most recent start, a seven-inning, two-run step in the right direction.
Girardi is giving Vazquez nine days to think about how he can turn his last
start into something sustained. Last year, when the Yankees subsisted on
three consistent starters, it would’ve been problematic. Today, it’s
perfectly fine …
2. As long as Phil Hughes makes the reliever-to-starter transition look this
easy. No starter – not even Ubaldo Jimenez – has silenced bats like Hughes,
the 23-year-old who entered this season with an 8-9 record and 5.22 ERA as a
starter.
Opponents are hitting .165 against him, the lowest batting average off a
starter. They are slugging .203, also the lowest in the majors. In 39 innings,
Hughes has allowed 22 hits, only three for extra bases, and his 1.38 ERA
leads the AL.
After his rebirth last season in the bullpen, Hughes pilfered another
Yankee’s signature pitch and watched it grow into one of the big leagues’
best. He started throwing a cut fastball, the pitch Mariano Rivera perfected.
And this year, he employs it more than a quarter of the time – and, according
to FanGraphs data, better than anybody, like …
3. Tim Lincecum and his world-class changeup. It’s every bit the pitch it
was the last two years when he won the NL Cy Young award, which is what makes
it so frightening to think Lincecum may be better now than he has ever been.
Between Lincecum, Roy Halladay, Ubaldo Jimenez and Adam Wainwright, the race
for the Cy Young is fierce earlier than any time in recent memory. The first
three continue to own ERAs below 2.00 nearly six weeks into the season, where
they’re joined by guys who, in all likelihood, won’t remain by June: Jaime
Garcia, Livan Hernandez and Jon Garland.
Jimenez leads this week’s 10 best pitching matchups, opposing another player
putting up all sorts of good numbers.
Ubaldo Jimenez vs. Roy Oswalt, Thursday
Francisco Liriano vs. Jon Lester, Thursday
Jered Weaver vs. C.J. Wilson, Tuesday
John Danks vs. Justin Verlander, Tuesday
Josh Beckett vs. CC Sabathia, Tuesday
Wade LeBlanc vs. Cliff Lee, Friday
Phil Hughes vs. Mike Pelfrey, Saturday
Jonathan Sanchez vs. Mat Latos, Tuesday
Kevin Correia vs. Clayton Kershaw, Thursday
Tommy Hanson vs. Mike Leake …
4. Off of whom Andre Ethier hit his fifth home run of the season, one of his
six go-ahead homers for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Leake starts Thursday. When
Ethier next can play remains unknown.
Ethier, leading the NL in all three Triple Crown categories (as well as on-
base and slugging percentages), broke his right pinkie during batting
practice Saturday in a freak injury. He wasn’t hit by an errant pitch. A
small bone simply cracked during a swing.
He sat out Sunday and will get his hand examined this week by a specialist.
He could be back soon. He could hit the disabled list. The Dodgers are base-
ball’s hottest team, having won seven straight to creep within two games of
NL West-leading San Diego, and they need Ethier almost as much as …
5. Seattle needs Ichiro Suzuki. Before an 0-for-4 showing Sunday against Matt
Garza and a potpourri of Tampa Bay relievers, Ichiro was on a typical Ichiro
jag: 17 for 30, to raise his average from .308 to .360. At one point, he went
26 at-bats without a strikeout.
Ichiro is 36, and perhaps because he’s buried in the Pacific Northwest, or
perhaps because his team has devolved into stories about Milton Bradley’s
mental issues and Ken Griffey Jr.’s narcolepsy, we do not properly
appreciate him. So do yourself a favor: Watch one game of Ichiro’s this
season, just to remember how different he is, how finesse mastered can blow
us away just as easily as …
6. A fastball from Joel Zumaya. He’s back to his old antics: throwing a
baseball harder than any human being ever has. Though Bob Feller and Steve
Dalkowski may disagree, Zumaya’s fastball deserves recognition from the
Guinness book as the fastest – single-pitch (104 mph) and consistent
categories.
He’s averaging 99.1 mph this year – a tick lower than last season velocity-
wise but infinitely more effective. Last season, hitters teed off on Zumaya’s
fastball. This year, they can’t touch it, a rather good description for all
the other pitches thrown by his Detroit bullpen mates.
Tigers relievers threw 3 1/3 scoreless innings Sunday, lowering their ERA to
2.45. Between Zumaya (1.90 ERA, 26-to-4 strikeout-to-walk ratio) and Jose
Valverde(0.51 ERA, seven hits in 17 2/3 innings), Detroit’s eighth-and-ninth-
inning punch has been the game’s best. The Tigers are six games above .500
due in large part to their bullpen …
7. While the Arizona Diamondbacks are eight games below .500 because of Juan
Gutierrez and theirs. Fine, so it’s not fair to single out Gutierrez. Bob
Howry, Blaine Boyer, Esmerling Vasquez and closer Chad Qualls deserve a
scarlet A for awful (or H for horrendous or E for embarrassing). Really, an
entire alphabet’s worth of epithets wouldn’t aptly describe the misery that
grips the Diamondbacks’ relievers.
Six runs in 3 2/3 innings Sunday bumped their collective ERA more than a
quarter run, to 7.68. It’s the worst mid-May ERA for a bullpen since the
Cubs’ was at 7.65 on May 15, 2000, according to the Arizona Republic. And to
think, for only $1.5 million …
8. The Diamondbacks – actually, anyone – could’ve had Jose Contreras. Or,
as he’s now known, closer for the best team in the NL.
The 38-year-old’s ascent to ace reliever for Philadelphia took a descent
last season, when the Chicago White Sox tired of his helter-skelter performances
and sent him to Colorado. The Rockies experimented with him as a reliever
toward the end of the season, and his fastball’s giddy-up returned. It sits
at 95 mph today, and with a reinvigorated split-fingered fastball and slider
that has turned into more of a cutter, the re-imagined Contreras took the job
from Brad Lidge, who is turning into …
9. More of an injury risk than Nick Johnson.
OK, no he isn’t.
Johnson needs to retire from baseball, commiserate with M. Night Shyamalan
and star in a new movie: “Breakable.” He landed on the disabled list this
week for the 10th time in his career. In December, when the Yankees signed
Johnson, GM Brian Cashman told the Daily News: “We’re going to go into the
laboratory and experiment with the ability to provide him with most of his
playing time in the DH slot and see if that provides a higher degree of
health.”
The lab blew up this week. Johnson received a cortisone shot in hopes that
his season isn’t over. If it is, he’ll have banked $5.5 million for 12 hits,
24 walks and a .694 OPS. Though he is the biggest Yankees disappointment this
season …
10. Time remains for Javier Vazquez to catch him. Already he has played
himself into general irrelevance, the fifth starter drawing a short straw
down the stretch and come playoff time. Among Sabathia, Andy Pettitte and
A.J. Burnett, the Yankees have a trio of proven postseason starters, and
Hughes certainly is pitching himself into the fourth slot.
Which makes not just Friday’s start at Citi Field but the next few so
imperative for Vazquez. He can play things the way he did in 2004, his lone
season in the Bronx: get worse as the year wanes, finish with a thud and
skulk along to another team. Or he can do what Sabathia and Burnett did and
what Hughes is doing: embrace New York, love it, live it and learn that an
arm as gifted as his can only go so far when the brain is playing Ke$ha
instead of Mozart.
(直接end的請舉手?)
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