Vizcaino Troubles...

It started out looking good. Thought maybe this guy was for real. Between Opening Day and April 14th, Vizcaino appeared 8 times. During those 8 appearances, he allowed just 2 hits and 1 earned run, all coming on April 5th against the Devil Rays. April 2nd he shut down the Rays for an inning. Appeared in back to back games against the Orioles on April 7th and 8th and was able to shut them down both days. 2 days later he would start a string where he would appear in 4 games over a 5 day span. April 10th and 11th he pitched 2.1 innings against the Twins in which he did not surrender any runs or hits. April 13th and 14th, over 2.2 innings against Oakland, same results, no runs, no hits. However and ugly trend was beginning to brew.
On April 13th, Vizcaino walked Jason Kendall to lead off the 9th inning. (Note: He is credited with 2 walks for this game, but the second walk was and intentional walk to Nick Swisher with 2 outs.) The next game he gave up one walk, to Travis Buck, in one inning of work.
Vizcaino’s next outing would be 5 days later on April 19th against Cleveland. This would be one of those nights you just want to forget. The Yanks were up 2-1 in the top of the 7th. Torre, no doubt feeling confident in Luis after such a positive start to the year, called upon him to keep the game in check and lead the way to Mo. What actually took place was slightly different. Right off the bat, a walk was issued to Jason Michaels. Grady Sizemore took two called strikes and then laced a third pitch, in the exact same spot as the two pitchers before it, to right field for a double, advancing Michaels to 3rd. Next batter David Delucci grounds outs to first advancing both runners and tying the score at 2 a piece. With nobody on 1st Hafner is issued a free pass only to have Vizcaino fall behind 3-1 to Victor Martinez, and then watch him take the next pitch downtown scoring 3 and putting the Indians up 5-2. The Yanks would eventually come back and win 8-6 but what a rough night for Vizcaino, and for Yankee fans, a huge sign of things to come.
I mentioned earlier that the 2 walks surrendered in back to back games against the A’s was the start of an ugly trend. Since that series, Vizcaino has allowed 16 walks in 15.8 innings after allowing just one through his first 5.2 innings of the year. (He would give up walks in 8 consecutive appearances between April 13th,the start of the A's series, and April 27th, giving up a total of 10 during the stretch.)
After the Cleveland series, he pitched 1.1 innings at Fenway over 2 days and didn’t allow any earned runs. He would appear four more times in April, having a good day, and then a bad day then a good day and another bad day. When May came, well things got kind of ugly. Vizcaino would pitch just 12 innings during the month. Over those 12 innings his numbers look like this:

12IP, 14H, 12R, 12ER, 2HR, 9BB, and 7K, adding up to a grand total ERA of 9.00 for the month.

Ouch!

The worst showings of the month came on May 4th, SEA, 1.0IP, 4H, 2ER, May 10th, TEX, 1.0IP, 2H, 3ER, 2BB, and May 25th, LAA, 1.0IP, 3H, 4ER, 3BB! The Halo’s weren’t too kind when they administered that beating.
And as for June, well it’s early. Possibly I’ll provide an update later in the month to how he’s stacking up, but I doubt it. Possibly he’ll be pitching in Triple-A where he’ll be trying to rediscover the plate and I’ll get to see what Britton can do on a Major League mound. Well, at least I can hope for now.