Yankees' Randy Vásquez clearly earned another chance with dominance vs White Sox

Due to the unprecedented concept of off days (thank you, MLB!), the Yankees actually won't need anyone to occupy the fifth spot in their rotation until Sunday, June 24 against the hard-hitting Texas Rangers.

Pending injuries that require his assistance earlier, that start should belong to one man and one man only: curveball-twirling, zone-attacking right-hander Randy Vásquez, who proved his debut against the San Diego Padres was no fluke when he tamed the White Sox lineup in a way Luis Severino simply refused to earlier on Thursday.

Vásquez's two-start debut has combined the stuff of Luis Gil with the command of Jhony Brito. He's shown off a mid-90s fastball with ride, a devastating breaker and, most importantly for a "jittery" rookie, the ability to live in and around the zone with all his pitches.

Want to get depressing? On a day when nervous Yankee fans were hoping for a split, with Severino in the opener and a wild card rookie in the finale, Vásquez instead showed Sevy what a big-league fastball should look like at 95-96, nipping corners and getting the last-second hop the veteran lacked throughout his ill-fated start.

Will we see Vásquez fire us up next against the Rangers? Or will we see him sooner, helping to push back one of Severino's next few starts as he attempts to figure out what exactly he does here?

Yankees starter Randy Vásquez is your new No. 5

It's far too soon to call Vásquez a rotation cornerstone; it's not lost on us what happened in Brito's first two starts back in April. The four remaining incumbents (Severino, Gerrit Cole, Clarke Schmidt, Domingo Germán) have all earned some degree of rope for the time being, as the Yankees try to tiptoe through Aaron Judge's injury.

But it is refreshing that, after Brian Cashman gutted the upper minors at last year's trade deadline, the few remaining arms at least had enough magic to deliver the Yankees a few wins in the season's first two months and give them something to dream on.

Vásquez has now gone 10.1 out of nowhere against two hard-hitting offenses (the White Sox are, sneakily, 21-15 since April 30, "first place" in the AL Central during that timeframe). His WHIP? A satisfying and un-rookie-like 0.97. The Yankees may not have JP Sears and Ken Waldichuk anymore, but they're not going to Matt Dermody-types in a pinch like Boston.

Vásquez's long-term future in the Yankees' rotation is entirely unwritten. He could be Randy Johnson. He could be Javy Vázquez. His prospect pedigree is full of contradictions, too. He sported a 5.13 ERA and 1.63 WHIP in Triple-A this season. He finished last year with one of the most dominant starts in recent minor-league history, with eight no-hit innings (one walk, eight strikeouts) to clinch the Double-A Eastern League title.

Vásquez's absurdly high-spin curve was cited Thursday night as a "bad matchup" for the White Sox, a lineup full of righties that struggles to handle spin. But ... isn't that the whole point of spin? Doesn't everyone struggle to grapple with it? Nothing was cemented by Vásquez's two starts' worth of dominance, but he absolutely earned a third chance to prove that maybe the whole MLB is just a "good matchup" for him when he's on.