Javier Vazquez

Javier Vazquez pitched for the New York Yankees twice, which means the Yankees front office tried to fix a mistake by making it again. The first stint ended with him serving up the most infamous grand slam in franchise history, in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS collapse against Boston. The second stint, six years later, ended with a 5.32 ERA and a quiet exit to Florida. Neither one is what you'd call a highlight reel. (There's a version of this story where Vazquez is remembered as a very good pitcher who had one brutal month in pinstripes. This is not that version. This is the Bronx Pinstripes version, and we remember everything.)

Path to the Bronx

Vazquez arrived with real credentials. A 5th-round pick by the Montreal Expos back in 1994, he'd made himself into the ace of a team nobody watched, throwing 200-plus innings four years running and racking up a 3.24 ERA with 241 strikeouts -- third in the National League -- in his walk year of 2003. That platform season made him the return the Yankees wanted. On December 16, 2003, they sent Nick Johnson, Juan Rivera, and Randy Choate to Montreal for him, then locked him up on a four-year extension through 2007.

It was the same winter George Steinbrenner's front office went absolutely feral rebuilding the rotation after losing the 2003 World Series to Florida -- Kevin Brown arrived from the Dodgers five days earlier, on December 11. Add Vazquez, and the Yankees figured they'd just bought themselves a decade of pitching depth. (They hadn't. They'd bought themselves one really bad October.)

The 2004 Season: All-Star, Then a Different Pitcher Entirely

For half a season, this trade looked like a heist. Vazquez went 10-5 with a 3.56 ERA before the break and made his only career All-Star team. Then the second half happened, and he turned into someone else entirely -- his ERA nearly doubled down the stretch, and the stuff that made him an All-Star in July looked borrowed by September. On August 31, it all came apart in one afternoon: he started against Cleveland and lasted just 1.1 innings, getting torched for six earned runs (Travis Hafner's bases-clearing triple did the damage) in a 22-0 final. That's still the most lopsided loss in Yankees history. In the same season as the ALCS collapse. The 2004 Yankees were built to win a title and instead produced two separate historical humiliations with the same pitcher on the mound for one of them.

Game 7: The Grand Slam

Here's the sequence, and it's worse in real time than it sounds in a stat line. Mariano Rivera and the bullpen had already blown Games 4 and 5. Kevin Brown got the ball for Game 7 at the Stadium and lasted barely more than an inning -- he gave up a two-run homer to David Ortiz in the 1st, then got pulled with one out in the 2nd. Joe Torre called on Vazquez with the bases loaded and the Yankees already down 2-0.

Johnny Damon had gone 3-for-29 in the series to that point. He'd also homered off Vazquez twice earlier that season, back on June 29. None of that history mattered for the outcome of the next ten seconds -- Damon turned on Vazquez's very first pitch and lofted it into the right-field seats. Grand slam. 6-0, just like that, with the season barely three innings old. Vazquez stayed in the game, because somebody had to, and Damon took him deep again in the 4th for a two-run shot, 8-1. Final score: Red Sox 10, Yankees 3. Boston completed the only 3-0 collapse in postseason history, on the Yankees' own field, off a pitcher the Yankees had traded for specifically to prevent nights like this one.

Vazquez actually had a mixed October before that start -- he'd allowed five runs in five innings in a Game 4 ALDS win over Minnesota, then relieved Brown again in Game 3 of the ALCS and picked up the win in the Yankees' 19-8 blowout. None of it survives the way people remember 2004. Nobody remembers the ALDS line or the Game 3 win. Everybody remembers the slam.

Traded for Randy Johnson

The Yankees didn't wait around. On January 11, 2005, less than three months after Game 7, they shipped Vazquez -- along with Brad Halsey and a catching prospect named Dioner Navarro -- to Arizona for Randy Johnson. Vazquez had arrived in the same winter as Kevin Brown and left as the centerpiece return for the Big Unit a little over a year later. That's a hell of a demotion for a guy who'd been an All-Star five months earlier.

The Wilderness Years, Sort Of

Vazquez didn't fall off the map. He bounced from Arizona to the Chicago White Sox, had a genuinely excellent 2007 there (15-8, 3.74 ERA, 213 strikeouts), then got traded to Atlanta after 2008. And in 2009, wearing a Braves uniform, he had the best season of his career -- 15-10, a career-best 2.87 ERA, 238 strikeouts, and a 4th-place finish in the NL Cy Young voting. The version of Javier Vazquez that terrorized National League lineups in 2009 bore almost no resemblance to the guy who lasted 1.1 innings against Cleveland five years earlier. (Baseball's funny that way. Or cruel. Pick one.)

The Second Stint

That career year is exactly why the Yankees called again. On December 22, 2009, Atlanta traded Vazquez and lefty Boone Logan to New York for outfielder Melky Cabrera and pitching prospects Mike Dunn and Arodys Vizcaino.

It didn't go the way the front office hoped. Vazquez posted a 10-10 record and a 5.32 ERA in 2010, his lowest strikeout total since 1999 and his most walks since his rookie year. Rookie Ivan Nova started eating into his rotation spot by the end of the season, and this time there was no career year waiting on the other side to save the story. The Yankees let him walk that December, and he signed with the Marlins to finish out his career close to home in Puerto Rico.

Two stints, six years apart, and the through-line is the same guy who never quite matched the stuff to the moment in pinstripes -- not the All-Star first half of 2004, not the 22-0 disaster three weeks later, not the return engagement in 2010. The Yankees traded good players to get him twice. Both times, they were happier once he was gone.

Key Moments