Javier Vazquez will not pitch for the Yankees against the Red Sox this weekend, instead making his next start Monday in Detroit, Joe Girardi said today.
Vazquez will throw extra side sessions then make his sixth start against a Tigers lineup with the highest team average in baseball.
“He’s struggling. We’ve got to find a way to get him back on line,” Brian Cashman said of Vazquez, agreeing a Yankees-Red Sox game in Fenway Park is “certainly not an easy place” to rectify matters. “Unfortunately there’s a clear recognition that we’ve got some major struggling going on. …We’re going to do everything we can to fix this on the run.”
Boston is a tough place to get fixed, The Bronx is tougher. So with the upcoming schedule, the Yankees can send Vazquez, in his second tour of duty as a Yankee, back to the mound on the road. The off day Thursday allows them to use Vazquez on Monday and give Andy Pettitte an extra day of rest.
Joe Girardi delivered the news to Vazquez, who did not make himself available to the media before the game with Baltimore at Yankee Stadium. Vazquez last pitched Saturday (no decision), giving up seven hits – three homers – and five earned runs in three innings against the White Sox.
“We’re just going to move him back a few days, give him a couple bullpen sessions and see where we’re at,” Girardi said. “He wants to get back out there and pitch, and that’s how I would expect him to be. I just thought he could use a little time to catch his breath.”
Girardi said he would have made the same decision whether Vazquez’s turn came up Boston or not. There are some mechanical issues the 33-year-old righty is dealing with, but Girardi agreed with Cashman there also are mental and emotional matters the pitcher must overcome. Physically, “I believe he is healthy,” Girardi said.
“He’s hurting right now,” Cashman said of Vazquez’s emotional state, stressing that in Monday’s start the Yankees will have fingers crossed for improvement and progress, not a miraculous cure.
Girardi noted the drop in the pitcher’s overall velocity. He has touched 94 mph but not with anything resembling consistency.
There are the notions that Vazquez is not tough enough for New York or the American League. He won 15 games with the Braves last season and Girardi quickly reminded that the 13th-season vet had good success with the Yankees in the first half of his one season in the Bronx (2004) then was a 15-game winner with the White Sox.
But Chicago’s pitching coach, Don Cooper, who watched Vazquez get rocked Saturday, said he thinks his former pupil is struggling with confidence and aggressiveness.
“People can take a lot from you but they can’t take away confidence and aggressiveness unless you let them. That’s the one thing I saw,” Cooper said.
So with a New York environment that has turned Vazquez into something of a public enemy, the Yankees are hopeful Vazquez can turn his season around.
“I haven’t known him long, (but) to do what he’s done in his career, you’ll have to assume he’ll overcome it,” Girardi said.