Random thoughts on yesterday's loss

Photo courtesy of the NY Daily News

-First and foremost, Javier Vazquez. Yes, it’s time to start worrying about him. He clearly has no confidence in his fastball, and for good reason. He’s only throwing it about 1/3 of the time, so from a hitters’ perspective pretty much everything is off speed. He needs to challenge hitters and set up his breaking stuff with the fastball, or else hitters can just sit back and look for the slow stuff. He says he feels fine physically, so much like with Phil Hughes in recent years it’s just a matter of getting him to trust his stuff more and let it loose. I wouldn’t go so far as bumping him from the rotation, but with the off days coming up it may be time to let him skip a start and clear his head.

-Marcus Thames. Have you ever seen a worse defensive Left Fielder? He makes me pine for Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui’s gloves. You can tell me all you want that he’s hitting .500 with an .857 SLG, but that’s not going to last while his bad defense will. I get that the ball from yesterday had some topspin on it, but once again we find ourselves saying that Brett Gardner makes that play standing up, and the damage from a bad inning could have been minimized. Don’t underestimate minimizing damage with Javier, he’s been prone to the big inning his entire career. Right now, the first priority has to be getting Vazquez going, so you have to put your best defensive team out there behind him. I don’t care if Randy  Johnson circa 1997 is pitching.

-Joe Girardi cleared up the confusion about the Morales AB in the 7th. He said that at first he gave the intentional walk sign, and then changed his mind. He obviously wished he went with his first instinct with the way things worked out. He screwed up, admitted he screwed up, so at least he gets credit for that. But what was already an ugly game got even uglier with his goof.

-Can’t be too upset with the loss. The Yanks are still 12-6 coming out of a very tough stretch facing some of the best competition in the AL and having major pieces of the team still trying to get on track. They can now look forward to playing  at Baltimore, then the ChiSox and Baltimore at home before heading back to Boston. 12-6 may not sound like a big deal, but it is in Baseball. If you did it all year you’d win 108 games.

-Next up the Yanks head to Washington, to get congrats from President Obama. Derek Jeter compared walking into the Oval Office to walking into George Steinbrenner’s office. What does he think, that this is going to happen?