Late-night reading: a roundtable talk on the Yanks
ByIf this were the regular season, we’d be going a little baseball stir crazy after two consecutive rainouts, and with the entire Grapefruit League slate canceled today, we can’t even do much scoreboard watching right now. For a great baseball fix, though, check out this roundtable fellow YES blogger Steven Goldman conducted with Jay “The Mustache” Jaffe and Cliff Corcoran. The three discuss the Yanks’ fifth starter battle, making too much out of Spring Training starts and the Joba-Phil debate. We’ve been talking about many of those issues at RAB, and it’s interesting to hear these three vets of the online Yankee space talking it up. No one much likes the idea of sending Joba back to the pen after getting him ready to throw an uncapped season as a starter this year, and the Yanks’ future plans for their young pitchers could very well be determined over the next three weeks.
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No one much likes the idea of sending Joba back to the pen after getting him ready to throw an uncapped season as a starter this year
Pleasantly surprised to hear this from non RAB people.
Yeah no kidding. However, I would not be suprised if both pitchers get at least 10 starts due to injuries.
On a good day, “at least ten starts” would be between 60-65 innings. Joba especially should be getting 32 this year. That alone ought to make him the lead candidate for the fifth starter spot.
In a perfect world Joba would have pitched tremondously and the thought of him in the rotation would not be the problem. The problem would be getting Hughes enough innings. Both of theses guys still have the prime or their careers and will have ample oppurtunity to start. As much as I want Joba to be a starter this year, the best starter between Joba and Hughes should get the fifth job and try to get both of them in 2011 granted that the winner does a good job in 2010. In addition, I hope that the loser is used in a relief ace role rather than a set up guy. I don’t need to see Hughes or Joba when the Yankees are up by three runs for one inning, I’d rather see him in a game for 2-3 innings in a tie game or a one run game and build up a few more innings. The Yankees have other capable relievers that pitch the eighth like Robertson, Aceves, and Marte versus lefty who are all capable of pitching on the eight inning pitcher.
Finally, this post that I make pretty much assures that I have no life tonight, but thankfully it is only spring break so I will live.
I agree, he should, but Hughes should be getting about 20 starts and some bullpen time (or 25ish starts and no bullpen time). Someone’s going to get set back.
I know it’s the Yankees and we have to win every year (and don’t get me wrong, I want to), but why do the Yankees try to have it both ways? They get extremely stingy about innings limits and keeping guys exactly to it (which I’m fine with), but then call guys up before they’re ready from the perspective of innings. Hughes was set back with injuries so I don’t blame the Yankees there, but seriously, develop the guys or don’t. This “developing in the majors” is fine in some ways, but it totally kills getting them the work they need to advance in their innings limits. It’s short term thinking because now whenever the Yankees decide to make Hughes a starter (at this rate, I’ll guess 2015), instead of being at 200+ innings, he’ll be stuck at 150 at best, and maybe less if he really does stay in the bullpen. And it’s not so easy to just assume he’ll spot start…if he’s the setup man and not the long man, you have to remove him from that role for a few days before and after, and then have a guy who has been pitching no more than 1 inning at a time start. That’s not really good for him either.
Let me preface this with “I want Joba, long term, to be a starter” and also add that it’s too early in Spring to really make a judgement.
One of the things I have an issue with in that article is they seem to be implying Joba was successful as a starter til August. That’s not exactly an accurate depiction. Joba in 2008 was extremely good as a starter. Joba in 2009 wasn’t, and it wasn’t just the last two months. Was his ERA solid until August? Yes it was. Strikeout rate good? Well, yeah, but except for an exceptional May, it was down from 2008. His major problem was he walked WAY too many guys. In April he gave up less than a hit per inning. His WHIP? 1.522, because he walked 13 guys in 23 innings. May was even worse, his WHIP was 1.612 (and his ERA wasn’t good that month either). He did improve his WHIP in June and July, and was much better those two months, but the implication in this article seemed to be that he was great as a starter until the Yankees started jerking him around. No, that’s not fair. He was pretty bad in May and while the ERA was good, by every other measure he wasn’t good in April either. Even June and July were solid, not “2008 Joba”.
Please don’t take that as me wanting him in the bullpen long term. I don’t and I am hopeful he can figure out what the hell happened in Texas in 2008 that has kept his velocity down, his control shaky, and his slider from not quite breaking like it used to. But putting your hands over your eyes and saying “Oh it was just two months last year!” is not right. He had problems before that. June and July it seemed like he was slowly improving, then August and September were huge setbacks, but he was not that good in April and May and even June and July were improvements, not “problem solved!”.
As for this year, I’m torn. On the one hand, I don’t want to set Joba back AGAIN by throwing him in the bullpen just after he got the chance to go to 200+ innings. But I also hate the idea of shoving Hughes into the bullpen for another year and seeing his innings limit stay at 150 yet again next year. And what exactly happens next year? If Joba dominates then I guess you can make Hughes the 5th starter, but what if Joba only pitches okay? How about a 4.40 ERA from Joba this season and 200 IP, a slight improvement that would make him an obvious 4th or 5th starter in 2011, but not a guy you can really count on to give two rotation spots to him and a “not sure what we’ll get from him as a starter” Hughes? Will we shove Hughes into the bullpen again and say “Oh, but surely NEXT year we can have him start!”? First Hughes got injured, and we heard “Next year he can start all year, getting skipped a couple times”, and he got shoved into the bullpen and didn’t get his innings high enough. But the whole year it was “Okay, he’s in the bullpen this year, but next year he’ll be starting!”. Now there’s a real chance he’s in the bullpen AGAIN. And when, during the 2010 season, everyone says “Oh, but 2011 he’ll start!”, why in the world would I even believe that? 2011 will come and everyone will panic about not having an 8th inning guy, and nobody will want to start both Joba and Hughes for fear both will struggle, and Hughes the starter may never make a real appearance. That’s sad to me. So I don’t even know who I’d rather see win the 5th starter battle, because I think one guy is getting set back. Ideally I’d have Hughes as the 5th starter and send Joba to the minors to start and figure out where the hell his velocity/control/command went in an environment outside of the major leagues, with him being ready for a callup in case of injury or in case he figures it out…but ya know, 8TH INNING!!!!!!, so I guess they’ll never do that.