DEBATE: Should Joba Chamberlain become a starter now?
ANTHONY: Yes, right now!
Jim, you were wrong in spring training when you said the Yankees were better with Joba Chamberlain in the bullpen. And you’re even more wrong now.
So Joba and Mariano make a great 1-2 punch late in the game? Wonderful. What good is the 1-2 punch when you’re already flat on your own back because your starting pitcher got KO’d in the third inning?
It’s time for the Yankees to make Joba a starter. Now. Even Hank Steinbrenner knows that. Let him air it out for as many innings as he can until he builds up the arm strength to go seven or eight innings. Or, God forbid, nine. He’s a big kid with a great arm. He can be the No. 1 starter the Yankees need.
Question: Did Boston win the World Series last season because of its eighth-inning guy? No, the Red Sox won because they had the best starting pitching, beginning with Josh Beckett. Joba (and to a lesser extent, Phil Hughes) are the Yankees’ only chances at having a Beckett. The Yankees need to stop babying Joba and let him fill the more important spot on the team. There’s a reason No. 1 starters make $20 million per year.
Ian Kennedy is afraid to throw the ball over the plate. Fine. Send him back to Triple-A so he can get some needed seasoning. He’ll be back later in the season. When he’s ready, he can replace Mike Mussina, who can become a $12-million long man.
The Yankees already made a terrible mistake when they didn’t trade for Johan Santana, who is only one of the top two pitchers in baseball. Now they are making another crucial mistake with someone who could become as good as they guy they passed up.
JIM: Don't panic!
The Yankees are 10-10 right now and it seems as if you think they'd be somewhere around 15-5 if Joba Chamberlain was a starter. Of course that's not the case.
Don't make your Chamberlain decision based on how others are doing. The Joba decision should be based solely on what's best for Joba. And right now he's exactly where he belongs - because this is the role where he's most dominant ... and because of his innings limit.
Joba is slated to pitch no more than about 140 innings this year. So why would the Yankees consider moving him into the rotation now, in which case he would reach his limit in August and not be available for the postseason. If the Yankees go this route, you know it's all because of Hank Steinbrenner, and then the Yankees have bigger issues.
But let's go back to the central focus of this debate, and that's the role best suited for Joba. Have we already forgotten what Joba showed us in spring training? Even his teammates admitted he looked like a different pitcher once they moved him to the bullpen. He's got a different mentality coming out of the pen, going gangbusters of hitters with an all-out fastball. Maybe it's not conscious, maybe in the back of his mind he holds back as a starter, but he didn't look the same (albeit for a few spring starts).
Does that mean he won't succeed as a starter someday? Noooooo way. But right now, 20 games into the 2008 season, we know for a fact he's already the best eighth-inning pitcher. Let him dominate the eighth (and seventh, sometimes) and hand it off to Mo.
Stay the course. Don't worry about the wins. They'll come.
Do you agree with Anthony (and Hank Steinbrenner) that Joba should be in the rotation now? Or do you agree with Jim that the Yankees should keep Joba in the pen for now.
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Comments (11)
Joba belongs in the rotation. Kennedy belongs in the minors, at least for now. Hughes also could use a trip down to the farm, but that isn't possible. Mussina can't cut it as a starter any longer. The Yankees never should have entered the season with this rotation. How do we know that Kennedy or Hughes are ever going to be winners? I am starting to really wonder about Brian Cashman
it is a tougher call than what i could have imagine. my only issue is that we lose Joba for 5 days rather than have him avail . yes our SP's stink right now and that blame should go to GM and you people on here who said ride with the Kids,
AS OF RIGHT NOW Phil hughes and Ian Kennedy is a bust.
another issue with removing Joba is if the Pen fails and Joe is forced to use Mariano in the 8th and 9th then problems loom
yes Joba can pitch a strong game and give up 4 runs and watch the Offense score three and the Pen give up another 3
The bullpen is fine, and actually doing much better than expected. Joba isn't needed there like he was last year. And he *was* needed there last year.
It's time. Joba should be the Number 3 man now, behind Wang and Pettite.
Jim wins again.
I remain unsure that the Yankees have a setup man in the bullpen who could have navigated those one-run victories early in the year as Chamberlain did. We think in terms of the performance of certain starting pitchers (and, yes, there's cause for concern there), but we might be trading possible wins for a starter for losses where we never get to Rivera unless we have him come in early.
Hank needs to understand that he's being foolish in setting up these confrontations in the press. Perhaps he's playing The Bronx is Burning on a continuous loop.
Brooks' Bronx is Burning line is right on target. LOL.
I get the feeling that Hank, like his father, thinks that stirring up controversy--any controversy--in the papers will somehow make the guys play harder. It's a laughable football/military belief that by applying pressure in one place another place will give simply because of stress. In practice it's closer to voodoo. Baseball clubhouses aren't defensive lines, and the beat press aren't a bunch of Jumbo Elliots--most of them, anyway.
Does Hank have some inside info that Hughes and/or Kennedy aren't trying or concentrating hard enough? Does he have some further evidence that applying media pressure to a young athlete is an effective way to improve his job performance?
Absolutely mind boggling.
Anthony wins.
What's easier to get, a guy who can throw 25 pitches a game or a guy who can throw 90-100 over six innings?
So when you have a Nebraska farm boy who can bring the heat, go sign another reliever. You develop talent, you don't plop it out in the pasture. Joba has to be considered in this, and you can bet he wants to start even though he plays the good soldier. So either start him, or watch him start for the Red Sox as a bitter ex-Yankee in a few years.
Ian is barely AAA, the sooner he goes down the better. If Joba is not in the rotation by the break Cashman will rightfully be gone. This has been handled poorly by management.
Given the Yankees' problems with middle relief, it appears that geting someone to throw 20-25 pitches and secure a hold is their great difficulty. You don't hold them, there's no need for Mo.
I'm sure that if Cashman could find a middle reliever that would do the job, and he could bring him here at the right price, he would.
In any case, it would be interesting if Chamberlain became a starter, only to find out he could not maintain his velocity for 6-7 innings. Batters tend to do better the second time around in the order.
Panic has set in early yet again in Yankee land.
Anthony wins in a landslide.
Anybody who knows baseball knows that a quality starting pitcher is infinitely more valuable than a quality setup man.
Why?
The answer is pretty simple: A whole host of factors have to align for a setup man to influence the outcome of a given game. The game has to be close. The team has to hit and pitch well enough to give the setup man the lead. The setup man has to hold the lead. And the closer has to successfully do his job and shut the door. If any of those ingredients is missing, the setup man is rendered irrelevant.
Whereas a setup man's value is entirely dependent upon a confluence of factors outside of his own control, a starting pitcher gets to dictate his own importance. Since he enters the game at 0-0, a starting pitcher necessarily has the power each and every start to, at the very least, depart the game having given his team the chance to win or take the lead in their next at-bat. A setup man's importance is confined to far too specialized a set of circumstances, and is of such a limited nature, that it cannot even remotely compare to the importance of a starting pitcher.
The fact of the matter is, it's possible to win the World Series with good starting pitching and a mediocre setup man, but not with a good setup man and mediocre starting pitching. Getting your team to the seventh or eighth inning with the lead in hand is more important to a team's success than merely helping to preserve a win that, chances are, you were going to win anyway (teams with a lead in the 8th inning have a 75% chance of winning if they lead by 1-run, an 86% if they lead by 2, and a 92% chance if they win by 3).
In showbiz parlance, the starting pitcher is the star and the setup man is nothing more than a character actor. Using Joba in the eighth inning is a colossal waste of his talent.
Dwight Gooden pitched over 270 innings as a 20 year old and his career was pretty great before drugs, whoever inivented the "Joba Rules" should be banished from baseball. When did baseball players stop becoming men?
I dont think Joba should be a starter. If they want to win alot of
games they should get another guy like peavy or lowe. both peavy
and lowe are excellent. This is what i believe the rosters should be:
LF Damon
CF Nick Swisher
RF Nady
SS Jeter
3B Rodriguez
2B Cano
1B Teixeira
C Posada
DH Matsui
Then the starting line-up
1. CC Sabathia
2. AJ Burnett
3. Jake Peavy
4. Derek Lowe
5. Chien-Ming Wang
This would 100% take the yankees to the world series