If You Can’t Make it Here Can You Make it Anywhere?

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s different playing in New York and different still playing for the Yankees.  

Boston is the only other American city where baseball is closer to religion than sport for the city’s population. Fan scrutiny, fan intensity, press coverage, management expectations all weigh more heavily on players in cities like these, but in New York, by virtue of it’s sheer size, the intensity like the population is 4-times that of Boston. In New York there are two full time sports TV networks, two full time sports talk radio stations, and in the greater metro area, at least 9 newspapers covering baseball. That opens up a lot of airtime and column inches for the exercise of examing at length every passed ball, 4-pitch walk, and missed hit-and-run sign among other minor baseball infractions.

 

I’m not crying for New York athletes. The pressures they face mirror in macrocosm the pressures many professional New Yorkers feel, competing as they do in the top of the market in their professions in a city full of quality competitors out to each their lunch. Nor am I whining, nor apologizing for New York. It’s really true that if you can make it here you can make it anywhere. That’s not to say it’s better or worse than working or playing in small, less intense places like Kansas City or San Diego. Some people like a quiet life, a nice climate, and little to do. For me sleepy laid back towns are great places for vacations but give me the center of world capital, the home of dozens of major museums, concert halls, jazz clubs, 4-star restaurants, over a second city with a good climate any day.

 

But even stipulating all the ways in which playing in New York is different, harder, more intense; even admitting that some players struggle here while succeeding elsewhere (Steve Trout–although he pitched well in a tough city, maybe it was just an NL/AL thing; Randy Johnson–maybe he was just getting old), I still think it’s completely off base to point to pitching in New York or for the Yankees as the problem with Javier Vazquez.

 

As I wrote yesterday, the simple fact is that Vazquez has reached the point in his career–at 33 years of age with  13 big league seasons behind him–when fans, scouts, GMs have to admit that this is the best Javier Vazquez is going to be: a .500 pitcher with an ERA in the mid 4.00s who can pitch 200 innings with 200 strike outs. Madden writes that Vazquez has pitched well enough to earn a top-starter’s salary, but in truth the back of his baseball card doesn’t show anything like a top of the rotation career.  Perry Arnold at Bleacher Report got it about right when he wrote:

Vazquez entered this season with 142 wins and 139 losses. He has a career ERA of 4.21, a career ERA-plus of 107, and a career WHIP of 1.246.

 Those numbers are not sufficient to heap praise on Javy’s head or believe that he comes as a savior.

 And in his four years in the American League, the numbers are even worse. His winning percentage in the AL is actually a little better at 52-46. But his AL ERA before this year was 4.54 and in three of those four years his ERA-plus was below the average of 100 with 92, 98, and 98.

 Vazquez put up impressive numbers in Atlanta last year with an ERA of 2.78 and 15 wins.

 But no one should realistically expect Vazquez to do much of anything now that he is back in the American League East.

Arnold over plays his point writing: If the Yankees were looking for an “above average” starter, one must wonder why they gave up so much valuable talent for a hurler who is absolutely nothing but average.Vazquez of course HAS had better than average seasons, like last year, which is why teams keep taking a chance on his best-season upside. And, most importantly, the Yankees gave up precisely NO valuable talent to acquire him. Melky Cabrera ain’t Oscar Azocar, but he’s closer to Azocar than he is to Johnny Damon. Expectations for Vazquez aren’t super high–200 innings, 200 strike outs, 14-10, ERA around 4.25 would be fine for him in the 4th spot–but he’ll have to outperform them if he wants a new contract from the Yanks.

 

But it’s interesting to see how the promise of Vazquez’s early stuff and best seasons has created a perception of the man as a pitcher that is out of step with the numbers. Good stuff and his one or two strong seasons have created the perception of Vazquez as a better pitcher than he is  and for me raise the question: When does baseball acknowledge that a “talent” just is never going to be the best he can be? When should we expect average performance from a player and when should we gamble on higher-ceiling upside?  When does a player go from prospect, or mercurial talent to mediocre mid-career pro?

 

It’s obvious to me that Vazquez is there (though I admit I too expected something more like the high ceiling Vazquez this year). And Scott Kazmir is perhaps too. He looked horrible yesterday as the Yankees raked him.  He was a lousy pitcher last year–and obviously he is oft-injured–and even in his best years he’s never been a prolific winner–in his best seasons he was only 4 games over .500 with 12 and 13 wins and a WHIP of  around 1.3.  At 26 Kazmir is still young, especially for a lefty and his arm is still a live one. But it should give Mets fans some comfort that he’s beginning to look less like the big one that got away (say, Nolan Ryan) and more like another prospect who ran out of gas on the road to greatness.