Javier Vazquez III

Alternately, this post could be titled what might have been.

Sanity check please: After asking a bunch of questions here, doing some analysis myself, and reading other opinions (like Fangraphs), I dropped Javier Vazquez eight starts into the season with an ERA and WHIP just shy of 8 and 2. Of course, hindsight is always 20/20. Now I'm locked in a very tight race, and I'm kicking myself for dropping him. Since then, he's posted over a 100 K's, a mid 3's ERA, and a sub 1.2 WHIP, all for one of the other contenders. I've had basically a combination of Dillon Gee and Mike Minor in his spot, for about a mid 4's ERA and 1.4 WHIP.

Based on the information we had at the time, the right move was the drop him. Right?

As the title of this post alludes to, this is the third time this year I've written about Vazquez. I advised way back in late April to stay away from him. If you dumped Vazquez, you're probably feeling sore about how this worked out.

However, I maintain this was the correct play. Vazquez worked out, but he just as easily might not have.

Worst 2011 April ERAs (Min 20 IP)

#	Pitcher	April ERA	Non-April ERA	April K/9	April BB/9
1	Ryan Dempster	9.58	3.82	8.42	4.65
2	Francisco Liriano	9.13	3.90	6.85	6.85
3	Nelson Figueroa	8.28	11.25	5.04	4.68
4	Kyle Davies	7.98	5.63	7.06	3.07
5	James McDonald	7.66	3.45	5.47	5.84
6	Mike Pelfrey	7.39	4.15	5.14	4.18
7	Brett Cecil	6.86	3.83	6.43	4.71
8	Travis Wood	6.82	3.99	7.67	2.56
9	Jake Westbrook	6.53	4.20	4.15	5.64
10	Javier Vazquez	6.39	3.73	4.97	6.75

Nearly all of these pitchers improved to the point that they were usable in Rotisserie leagues; only Figueroa and Davies did not, and if you were using either one of these guys for any appreciable stretch you probably didn't deserve to win anyway.

I include the K/9 and BB/9 markers for April because they're more telling than anything else. You didn't need a velocity chart to tell you that Vazquez was having problems.

To me, a better question than "should I have dropped Javy Vazquez?" is "should I have purchased him in the first place?"

If you had a weak freeze list and needed to gamble, then Vazquez was OK. If you came in with a strong freeze list, he probably didn't belong on your roster. I understand that at some point you have to bid and probably couldn't let him go for $1-2. But players like Vazquez are not for teams with strong freeze lists. If you absolutely needed to roll the dice, then fine. But Vazquez was a risky proposition heading into 2011. It probably would have been best to shy away from him in early April entirely.