Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
February 12, 2008
Joba Rules the Pen

This story has been kicking around for a while, but Joel Sherman confirmed that Joba Chamberlain will start the season in the bullpen for the Yankees:

The Yanks see the Chamberlain/Rivera tandem helping them be a dominant late-inning team over the first two months of the season. At some point in June, the Yanks would send Chamberlain to the minors for 3-4 weeks to stretch him out to 5-6 innings in preparation to be a full-time starter in the second half.

This seems to be meeting with cautious approval by a couple of Yankees bloggers.

  • My Baseball Bias: "I'm personally sleeping better than I did last season at this time."
  • River Ave. Blues: This does seem like the ideal plan. Let's hope it shakes out that way.

WasWatching, however, thinks Joba stays in the pen all year.

I'm not crazy about the part where Chamberlain goes to the minors. The Yankees are holding Joba to 140 innings in 2008, and they're going to waste some of them on minor league hitters? Secondly, what happens when it becomes apparent in May that Mike Mussina can't pitch any more? I'd actually rather see the Yankees settle the setup role in spring training, make Joba the fifth starter and put him on the DL three times during the season. That way, he can make 23 six inning starts. As the fifth starter, the Yankees could even skip his turn when an off day makes that possible. I just hate to see the team waste good innings in the minor leagues.

Update: Peter Abraham can't get Cashman to confirm this.


Posted by David Pinto at 03:03 PM | Pitchers | TrackBack (0)
Comments

This whole thing is a work in progress. The latest plan depends on the emergence of strong relief to take his place, no given. There's an expression in poker--the correct strategy is "it depends." Girardi will be faced with some interesting decisions managing this pitching staff in flux.

Posted by: Mark at February 12, 2008 04:33 PM

Doesn't the injury nexus theory state that minor league innings 'don't count' for all intents and purposes towards predicting arm damage?

Posted by: Sal Paradise at February 12, 2008 07:20 PM

Generally you try to build up arm strength and extend thru the early part of the season - this plan sort of sounds ass backwards

Posted by: bandit at February 13, 2008 07:06 PM
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