Yanks won’t skip Burnett despite recent struggles

New York Yankees RHP AJ Burnett has been a big wad of suck recently. In his last four starts, he is 0-4 with a 10.35 ERA. Many experts think that this isn’t good enough for a guy getting paid what he gets paid. And even more experts would agree that this isn’t major-league level.

Javier Vasquez was so bad during a five-game stretch that manager Joe Girardi skipped him in the rotation in order to try to right the ship. So will he do that with Burnett?

“We won’t do that,” he said. “You’re talking about four starts. Javy was a few more than that. And we just felt we needed to work with Javy. But we’re skipping Hughsie and that’s what we’re doing and we’re not going to change that just because a guy has had a couple of bad outings.”

Girardi is referring to the fact that they are skipping Phil Hughes in the rotation. But in Hughes’ case, that’s because he’s been a stud at 10-1 with an ERA in the low 3′s. They just want to limit his pitches and not run him into the ground.

SIDE NOTE: Is any other team as weird with their pitchers as the Yankees? I mostly referring to the Joba Chamberlain mess, but the Yanks seem to tinker with their pitchers a lot. We’re torn on whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Probably a bit of both.

As for Burnett, he’s just not comfortable right now.

“I don’t feel like myself,” Burnett said. “I’m not having fun right now. I mean, who would in a stretch like this? The game’s supposed to be fun. But when you come out and take the air out of your team right away for a handful starts it gets quite frustrating.”