Archive for Joba Chamberlain
A role, defined or not, for Joba
Posted by: | CommentsWhen Brian Cashman announced last week that Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes would not have significant innings limits next season, he hedged his bets on the two youngsters’ true roles. “I look at them as starters that can relieve,” Cashman said. “But I look at them as starters.”
In one sense, that characterization gives the Yanks some flexibility. They know for a fact that Phil Hughes can be a lockdown reliever, and they believe he can be a dominant starter. They know for a fact that Joba Chamberlain can be a lockdown reliever, and they know that he can be a dominant starter. If knowing, as they say, is half the battle, well, then the Yankees are halfway there.
This flexibility gives them the opportunity to take a wait-and-see approach to this winter’s pitching market. They have CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett inked in to the top two slots and will likely enjoy the services of Andy Pettitte as well. Behind those three await some combination of Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, Chad Gaudin and Ian Kennedy with Al Aceves, Sergio Mitre and Chien-Ming Wang as potential options as well. John Lackey is out there; Roy Halladay is out there; Ben Sheets is out there. Any addition would be icing on the depth chake.
With this plethora of pitching comes some uncertainty though. Talking to reporters last night as his Wrap to Rap charity event, Joba noted that his role for 2010 remains undefined. Here’s how MLB.com’s Anthony DiComo put it:
As for Chamberlain, the Yankees have not yet told him whether he should prepare as a starting pitcher or a reliever. With Spring Training still three months away, Chamberlain has not even begun working out again, much less throwing…
By the time the postseason rolled around, the Yankees had decided to proceed with a three-man rotation, thereby relegating Chamberlain back to the bullpen. And his future remains unclear. The only hints he has received have come from general manager Brian Cashman, who said last week that he envisioned both Chamberlain and Phil Hughes as starters — but starters who are capable of relieving. “So he didn’t really answer the question,” Chamberlain cracked.
In a way, this is a spurious extrapolation by DiComo. The Yankees remained committed to Joba the starter throughout the 2009 season, and despite a late-season slide — possibly brought about by inconsistent rules — Joba met expectations. He stayed healthy throughout the season and made his starts to greater or lesser degrees of success.
The postseason, though, has a funny way of clouding perception. Although Joba’s overall October numbers were in line with his season totals, the eyes can tell a slightly different story. During the AL playoff rounds and World Series, Joba was indeed throwing a tick harder. During the playoffs, he averaged around 94/95 and dialed it up to 97/98, up a few miles per hour over his season numbers. That difference can turn Joba from an above-average pitcher to an elite one, and although he doesn’t have to sustain that velocity over the course of 34 starts, that it disappeared this year after it was there for 2008 led to a few questions this season.
In the end, as I mentioned in the comments to Joe’s post on Ben Sheets, Joba’s role may very well depend upon how the Yanks’ off-season unfolds. If the pitcher depth is there for the Yanks, they have the luxury of knowing that Joba (and Phil) can succeed in the bullpen, but on the depth charts, Joba probably has an edge for a rotation spot over Phil simply because he has the innings, experience and success under his belt.
In the meantime, Joba doesn’t mind the uncertainty. “It’s a great problem to have for Phil and myself,” he said. “We’ve been in situations and there’s a lot of things we can be. I think it’s an advantage for our team that there are so many different options to make us better for 2010.”
I believe Joba is a starter and should spend the off-season preparing as such. He doesn’t really need Brian Cashman to come out and say it, but we know it. When all is said and done, 2010 will seen Joba in the rotation, and the Yanks are better off for it.
What Went Wrong: The Joba Rules
Posted by: | CommentsOver the next week or so, we’ll again break down what went wrong and what went right for the 2009 Yankees. The series this year will be much more enjoyable than the last.
The Yankees added two new and exciting members to their rotation in the offseason, but many fans (myself certainly included) were most excited to see what the young Joba Chamberlain could do in his first full year as a starter. Things started out well, as the young Nebraskan posted a pretty 3.71 ERA with a tolerable 4.51 FIP in his first ten starts, striking out 51 batters in 53.1 IP. For a 23-year-old starter in the unforgiving AL East, Joba’s performance was more than acceptable up to that point. Unfortunately, things soon went downhill after that.
In Joba’s next seven starts, opponents tagged him for a .311-.385-.477 batting line (basically what Victor Martinez hit this year) that resulted in a 5.05 ERA and 62 baserunners in just 35.2 IP. Even worse were the high pitch counts Joba was running up, forcing him from games early and taxing the bullpen. Joba went into the All Star break with a solid 4.25 ERA, though he was averaging barely five innings per start.
After an eight day breather, Joba returned from the break like a man possessed. He completely shut down the Tigers, A’s, and Rays in his first three starts back, allowing just two runs and 16 baserunners in 21.2 IP. He won all three starts and held opponents to a .422 OPS against. Alas, the success did not last long, as Joba started to head into uncharted territory in terms of innings pitched.
Already at 110.2 IP on the season (his previous career high was the 118.2 IP he threw as a sophomore in college), Joba surrendered 19 runs in his next 20 IP (four starts). At this point, the Yanks applied the breaks, as Joba was limited to short, 3-4 inning starts for the next month or so to control those innings. He had a 6.75 ERA with a 5.45 FIP the rest of the way, finishing the season with 157.1 IP, the most he’d ever thrown in his life.
In one sense, The Joba Rules were wildly successful in that they kept the righthander healthy all year. However, at the end of the season Joba looked as if he didn’t know if he was coming or going, basically like a deer in the headlights. His performance suffered, resulting in many high stress situations that won’t show up in an innings total. Joba’s 2,730 pitches thrown were the 29th most in the AL, more than fellow youngster Rick Porcello even though he had thrown 12.2 fewer innings than the Tigers’ rookie.
The fact of the matter is that the Yankees made their bed when it comes to Joba and his innings limitations, and now they have to sleep in it. He was rushed to the big leagues in 2007 because he was admittedly fantastic in the minors, but mostly because the team needed help in the bullpen. Joba never had a chance to properly stretch out in games that don’t matter, and instead he was forced to learn on the job more than pitchers should have to. Give the Yankees credit for trying to be creative, but it’s painfully obvious at this point that the idea of cutting starts short and whatnot are not the best way to control innings.
The good news that Joba won’t have a significant innings limit in 2010, and hopefully the braintrust has learned from this experience and will develop a better plan to bring it’s young pitchers along, especially with Phil Hughes ready to join the rotation next year. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just keep it simple. Bite the bullet and have the kid sit and rest for two or three weeks mid-season. The less change to a pitcher’s routine, the better.
Photo Credit: Jed Jacobsohn, Getty Images
Guess who doesn’t have an innings limit anymore
Posted by: | CommentsAmidst the news from the GM Meetings can word from Brian Cashman, via Chad Jennings, that both Joba Chamberlain’s and Phil Hughes‘ innings cap in 2010 will “not be significant.” After years of discussion about innings limits, the Yanks are ready to let their youngster loose, and it makes sense. Joba threw over 160 innings this year, and a 30-inning bump would put him at 190 innings. That’s a threshold reached by just 21 other AL pitchers in 2009.
The decision to let Hughes’ innings limit slide is of another nature. As Mike just noted, Hughes as a major part of the 2009 bullpen but threw only 106 innings because of it. At The Yankee Universe, Moshe Mandel speculates that a lack of an innings cap for Hughes is motivated by the 146 innings he threw in 2006. The Yanks may be willing to allow Hughes throw approximately 175 innings in 2010 because of that past.
Rotation depth and Joba’s 2010 role
Posted by: | CommentsFor Joba Chamberlain’s future development, his 2009 postseason work out of the bullpen — after staying healthy making 31 starts during the regular season — may just have been one of his biggest steps yet. Despite this October success though and despite his season-long presence in the rotation this year, nothing is guaranteed for Joba in 2010.
Joba Chamberlain had two distinct segments to his 2009 campaign. For the first three months — and not coincidentally, through his first 110.2 innings — he was masterful. After 20 starts, Joba was 7-2 with a 3.58 ERA. Although he was walking around 4.1 per 9 innings, his strike out rate was hovering around 7.88 per 9 IP.
After reaching his career innings high, though, Chamberlain’s effectiveness fell off the table. As the Yankees tried to manage Joba’s innings, they tried skipping his start just once and then put him through a limited form of Spring Training during which they attempted to build up his innings per start in preparation for the postseason. By the time Joba was back at 100 pitches, though, the Yankees had decided to stick with a three-man October rotation.
The numbers are ugly. Through August and September, Joba went 2-4 with a 7.52 ERA in 46.2 innings. He walked 26 and struck out 36 while opponents hit .316/.397/.515 against him. In July, before Joba struggled, we wondered if the Yanks should have allowed him more time in the minors, and later on, we learned that the Yankee braintrust wanted to send him down. They didn’t feel as though they had the pitching depth to do so.
Heading into 2010, though, as Joel Sherman writes today, the Yankees are preparing for more Major League-level pitching depth. The team will have CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett fronting the rotation and expects to sign Andy Pettitte for at least one more season. Sherman adds more:
The Yankees? current intentions are to have Chamberlain and Hughes show up in spring training ready to start. They also may ask [Alfredo] Aceves to come prepared to be stretched out. [Ian] Kennedy also is expected to be ready in full, and the Yankees think farmhands Ivan Nova and Zach McAllister are close to major league ready.
In addition, I have been told the Yankees almost certainly will pick up the $1.25 million option on Sergio Mitre and tender a contract to Gaudin, who is not a free agent until after the 2011 season.
None of this news is too ground-breaking, but it gives the Yankees options. More starting pitchers will give the Yanks the flexibility to work with Joba as he matures and grows into a starting pitcher who will throw in the upper 90s as he did out of the pen in the playoffs while attacking the zone. More starters will allow the team to develop Phil Hughes into a confident hurler who can use that great curveball and mid-to-upper 90s fastball to keep hitters guessing.
Right now, Mitre and Gaudin are hardly going to calm the nerves of Yankee fans. The two of them are back-end starters at best, and even though the Yanks, as Sherman reports, believe they have helped Gaudin improve his delivery to generate more downward motion, the team knows what to expect. Perhaps the Yanks will look at John Lackey; perhaps they’ll kick the tires on a Randy Wolf type.
For now, though, the team is content with what they have. After all, this rotation just delivered a World Series championship, and Joba and Phil will only get better. If they don’t, we know the two can excel in the bullpen. But until they fail, they’ll get every opportunity to succeed, and pitching depth simply gives the Yanks a chance to develop them properly without being held hostage at the Major League level. If Joba needs to get sent down next year, if the Yanks’ coaches need to have another sit-down with him next season to refocus him, that depth will allow them to do so. As Cliff Lee and Roy Halladay show, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to the young starter.
World Series hangover: Joba, Pedro and feelin’ good
Posted by: | CommentsThe Hot Stove League will soon heat up, but as a bright November weekend dawns in the City of New York, Yankee fans are still recovering from their collective World Series hangover. To that end, we have a few stories for your Saturday reading pleasure.
A World Series moment with the Chamberlains
It’s sometimes easy to forget that Major League Baseball players are young kids who are struggling to adjust to a world very unfamiliar to them. Subject to more debates over the last 2.5 seasons than any 24-year-old should, Joba Chamberlain has been growing up in the New York spotlight. Starter, reliever, overhyped or not, Joba has heard it all. When the Yankees won the World Series on Wednesday, Joba and his dad shared a moment captured by photographers and Yahoo! Sports’ Big League Stew author Kevin Kaduk.
The story is a great reminder about how baseball is about families. It’s about how baseball is about the people and how the players we analyze, the players we admire and the players some people criticize are, at heart, just people similar to you and me. At ‘Duk writes, baseball is always about a father having a catch with his son, and Joba and Harlan had the joy of sharing a baseball moment this week that doesn’t come around too often.
While Joba and Harlan had their hug, Pedro Martinez was feeling less than happy about the game. After his Game 6 defeat at the hands of the Yankees, Pedro tried to duck out on reporters. The media throng cornered him in the hallway, but he would speak only in Spanish to them. One fan taunted him with a chant of “Who’s your daddy?” but Pedro was clearly upset about losing the game. Beating Pedro made this World Series victory even sweeter.
For Tyler Kepner, 2009 marked his eighth season covering the Yanks and their first World Series under his watch. From World Series losses to 0-3 ALCS comebacks, it has been a tumultuous few years in Yankeeland, but as Kepner wrote on Wednesday night, this World Series restored a “peaceful, easy feeling” to the Bronx. No team has won more games in the 21st Century than the Yankees have and now they have their title to go with it. It has indeed been a peaceful time for Yankee fans.
Rethinking Girardi’s ALCS bullpen approach
Posted by: | CommentsFor 162 games this year, Joe Girardi had a fairly consistent bullpen approach. While the generally theory is to get the ball to Phil Hughes in the 8th and Mariano Rivera in the 9th, Joe had, through a series of mid-season auditions, figured out the best approach to the three or four outs in between the time when he removed his starting pitcher and when he brought in Hughes, and by the time early August rolled around, David Robertson had assumed the role.
Now, Robertson wasn’t given the role. He had to earn it. Early on in the season, Brian Bruney had that spot after losing the 8th to Phil Hughes, but Bruney couldn’t hold it down. After Bruney, the role was Alfredo Aceves’ to lose, and after a shaky July brought about by some shoulder pain, Aceves lost it. It was then that David Robertson earned that position of trust, and he quickly emerged as the Yanks’ third best reliever.
On the season, Robertson had some pretty impressive numbers. He struck out 63 of the 191 batters he faced, good for a K/9 IP of 13.0. Although he walked 4.7 per 9 innings, by year’s end, he had reduced that walk rate. In the 7th, he was just as good. He faced 30 batters in the 7th inning — a small sample size for sure — but struck out 12 of them and allowed just two 7th inning runs. By most accounts, he was the Yanks’ third best reliever in 2009.
And then we have Joba Chamberlain. As we know, on the year, Joba was less than consistent and not as effective as we hoped. Sporting a lower velocity that many believe came about after his August 2008 shoulder injury and less control than we had seen in the past, Joba threw 157.1 to mixed results. He had a 4.75 ERA and a K/9 IP of just 7.6. His walk rate was up, and opponents hit .274/.363/.439 against him. By season’s end, no one really trusted him.
No one, that is, except Joe Girardi. When the playoffs rolled around, the Yanks announced that Joba would be in the bullpen, and we waited to see how Girardi would deploy Chamberlain. After watching the last few games, now we know: Joba Chamberlain will pitch before Phil Hughes in a spot customarily reserved for the team’s third best reliever.
Needless to say, Joba has disappointed. He has faced 12 batters this postseason and five of them have hits. His fastball still is topping out at around 95 and his control, as we saw yesterday, is non-existent. Robertson, meanwhile, has faced 14 batters this season and just two of them have hits. He has allowed two others to reach, but those were on intentional walks. He pitched out of a bases-loaded, no-out situation against the Twins in the ALDS and was invaluable against the Angels during the Game 2 marathon on Saturday night.
As Girardi has gotten too cute with his pitching changes, as, in the words of Mike, he makes the game of baseball look harder than it actually is, it’s time to go back to what worked. The Bridge to Mariano should remain David Robertson in the 7th — Phil Coke is a lefty pops up — and then Phil Hughes. That approach worked during the regular season and probably would have given the Yanks a 3-0 lead yesterday. Joba hasn’t earned anyone’s trust, and should not be pitching in key situations in a close ALCS.
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As a postscript to Girardi’s approach last night: I know a lot of fans have bought the excuse that David Robertson did not match up well with Howie Kendrick. (For instance, see this defense of Girardi.) He still managed to overmanage though. If Robertson doesn’t match up well with Kendrick, then have D-Rob walk Kendrick to face Jeff Mathis, a batter who cannot handle a fastball for his life. Instead, in a tie game on the road, Girardi burned his best available reliever after all of 11 pitches. If Mathis still hits that game-winning blast, then fine. At least the Yanks go down with their best on the mound and not their 7th pitcher in 4.1 innings.
Jon Heyman wants Joba in the pen
Posted by: | CommentsSo who’s the first reporter seduced by 1.2 innings of ALDS work? Why, it’s Jon Heyman of course. In his latest Daily Scoop post, Heyman drops the following tidbit:
There is growing sentiment around baseball that Joba Chamberlain will be a reliever next year, especially after he looked great in that role in the Division Series.
Now, the skeptic in me says that this “growing sentiment around baseball” is none other than Heyman himself. He has long been an outspoken B-Jobber, firm in his belief that young Mr. Chamberlain is better suited for the bullpen than the starting rotation. The truth of the matter is that Jon Heyman’s opinion just doesn’t matter.
Let’s, though, assume that Heyman is telling the truth. Let’s assume that some anonymous people around baseball think that Joba will be a reliever next year. The truth remains that, well, their opinions just don’t count. Unless that sentiment comes from Brian Cashman and Joe Girardi, it doesn’t matter. The Yankees are committed to Joba the Starter, and no amount of media blustering can change that fact.
We can’t ignore the fact that Joba as a reliever is a tempting proposition. At the very least, he’s comfortable coming out of the pen and, despite early-season reports concerning his shoulder, he had no problems warming up to come on as a reliever during the ALDS match-up against the Twins. The real question though surrounds his stuff. How did he play as a reliever?
In terms of results, Joba mostly got the job done. He threw 1.2 innings over three games and allowed two hits and no runs. After struggling with the base on balls during the regular season, he walked none but struck out only one. His one hiccup came during Game 3. With out in the sixth and the Yanks clinging to a 2-1 lead, he came in and gave up a double to Delmon Young. At the time, I was surprised Girardi would go with Joba instead of Aceves or Coke, his usual 7th inning guys, but Joba got the next two outs to escape the inning unscathed.
On the stuff side of his apperances, Joba’s fastball and command were better than the regular season. In Game 1, he hovered around 94, but in Games 2 and 3, he nearly hit 97 with his fastball. He slider was around 89, and his one postseason curveball was at 82. So yes, Joba flashed the velocity and the breaking pitches.
But the truth remains that good starters make good relievers. Joba Chamberlain, despite his second half struggles, was not a terrible Major League Baseball starter. He threw 157.1 innings and didn’t get hurt. The only start he missed, in fact, was when the Yanks made him skip an outing. He’ll be in the rotation again, and for now, Jon Heyman’s desires aside, he will be a starting pitcher.
Starter? Reliever? How about pitcher?
Posted by: | CommentsWhen it comes to young pitchers, uncertainty abounds. Teams draft pitchers with an idea of their talent level and potential, but neither brings any guarantees once the pitcher begins his professional career. Sometimes the talent doesn’t correlate to the results. When it does, the pitcher then has to face increasing levels of competition until he reaches the majors, the most difficult challenge of anyone’s career. Along the way anything can go wrong, leaving a once promising career in a shambles. Even as teams employ better measures of a player’s true ability level, they cannot erase the uncertainty that comes with pitching prospects — or, as TINSTAPP would say, inexperienced pitchers.
In recent years we’ve seen another level of uncertainty, that of a pitcher’s role. No one embodies this uncertainty like Joba Chamberlain. A 2006 draftee, Chamberlain dominated the minors as a starter in 2007, moving through both A+ and AA levels. He possessed such electric stuff that the Yankees thought they could use Chamberlain at the major league level in 2007. The only hitch was that he’d pitch out of the bullpen. The reasons were twofold. First, the Yankees desperately needed another reliable option to set up Mariano Rivera. Second, finishing the season in the bullpen would keep Chamberlain’s innings in check, a concern for all young pitchers but especially for Chamberlain, who had not only limited professional experience, but only about 210 innings in college.
Chamberlain continued his dominance in the major league bullpen, allowing just one earned run, a solo homer, over 24 innings. It begat one of the winter’s two debates: should Joba be a starter or reliever? The two sides took firm stances. The reliever crowd had seen enough. Joba’s performance over those 24 innings fully convinced them that his proper role was in the bullpen. The starter crowed wanted to see if he could fulfill his top-end starter potential. In that role he’d be more valuable than a relief pitcher, even a top closer. The debate raged in 2008, as Chamberlain started lights out in the pen (though not as lights out as his small 2007 sample) and then pitched well in the rotation.
While the debate over Phil Hughes hasn’t been as heated and didn’t divide the fan base as much, there are still questions as to Hughes’s proper role. For the most part, Hughes has been a mediocre starter in the majors and a lights out setup man. With that visual evidence in place, some think that he’s better suited for the bullpen. Others think that the move to the bullpen was the confidence booster Hughes needed to fulfill his potential as a starter. After all, it was in the bullpen that Hughes started to resemble his scouting report. If he can take that back to the rotation, the Yankees could have the ace they envisioned when they drafted him in 2004.
But why are fans so intent on knowing each pitcher’s role — definitively and right now? Both sides of the debate are guilty of this. The starter side wants to see both Hughes and Joba in the bullpen until they prove they can’t handle it. The reliever side wants to see them put in their proper place as soon as possible, so they can maximize their values. If the Yankees are smart, they’ll ignore the calls to take a side and continue developing both Joba and Hughes as pitchers, rather than as starters or relievers.
There was a time in baseball when pitchers bounced back and forth between the bullpen and rotation. This was based on team need and performance. Earl Weaver is often cited for employing this philosophy. He thought that pitchers should break into majors as relievers, and only move to the rotation when they proved they could handle the bigs and the team needed them in that spot. This meant some bouncing around between the rotation and the bullpen, but that shouldn’t be much of an issue. After all, these guys are pitchers. One of my favorite bits of advice for writers is that writers write. In the same way, pitchers pitch. Forget roles; just pitch.
The idea is older than me, but it seems that teams have put more of an emphasis on roles in recent years. There are a few reasons for this, but neither seems provable or particularly valid to me. First is that bouncing a guy between the rotation and the bullpen can cause injury. That notion was reinforced for the Yankees last August when Joba Chamberlain injured his shoulder after transitioning from the bullpen to the rotation. That, however, represents just one instance of correlation to the theory. There is certainly no causation present, and to my knowledge there isn’t even a study which posits a greater correlation. The idea that pitchers are put at risk to injury when moving between the bullpen and rotation is anecdotal at best, and downright wrong at worst.
The second concern relates to roles themselves. From comments Phil Coke made earlier in the season, the guys in the bullpen prefer having a defined role. That’s fine, but since when do baseball teams make decisions based on the players’ wishes? Again, pitchers pitch. If a guy can’t mentally prepare for any role, then he’s not as versatile as a pitcher who can take the ball whenever called, whether to start the game, as a mop-up man in a blowout, or in the seventh, eighth, or ninth inning. But, because teams — or, at least, the Yankees — are so obsessed with roles, we sometimes don’t get to see a pitcher’s true potential.
Because the nature of pitching is so volatile, it’s tough to define a pitcher’s role early in his career. Obviously, starters provide more value than relievers, but what if a pitcher is better suited to late-inning relief work? That raises the further question of whether the pitcher should be put in his best possible role, or in the role that provides the team with the most overall value. In the case of unnecessarily pigeonholing relievers, we might not get to see where a pitcher thrives, because he’s kept from that role. So instead of setting a player’s role, perhaps teams should be more flexible — and train their pitchers to be more flexible as well.
Pitchers pitch, and not all pitchers are the same. Those are two key ideas in the starter vs. reliever debate. Good starters provide more value than top relievers, but some pitchers are better suited to relief work. The results should bear that out. The best way, then, to determine a pitcher’s fate is to try him out in all types of roles while keeping his ultimate rule undetermined. Over time, a pitcher’s performance should indicate the answer. If more teams employed this philosophy, maybe we wouldn’t get totally moronic, whiney columns from national baseball writers who have nothing better to write about. But more importantly, we’d see pitchers defining their own roles, rather than having the team define the role for them.
Sherman: Yankees concerned Joba was too comfortable
Posted by: | CommentsIn today’s column, Joel Sherman writes that many of the Yanks’ bigwigs felt Joba Chamberlain was a little comfortable about his place in the organziation, and considered demoting him to Triple-A Scranton back in August. In an ironic twist of fate, I suggested they do that exact same thing, but back in July. The team didn’t follow through with the move because, frankly, they were scared of having both Sergio Mitre and Chad Gaudin in their rotation at the same time.
The more important issue here is next season. CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett are locks atop the rotation. Andy Pettitte may or may not return, but beyond that you have a collection of unproven commodities. Many felt that Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes were a little to comfortable last year coming out of Spring Training, and the Yanks are probably worried about that happening again, rightly so. As it stands now, Joba, Hughes, Gaudin, Kennedy, Mitre, and even Al Aceves could come to camp competing for as many three rotation spots. While competition is ideal, having that many question marks is not.
Joba will be just fine in the bullpen
Posted by: | CommentsWhen word leaked that Joba Chamberlain would stay in the bullpen for the remainder of the season, we deemed it big enough news to get an instant post. Ben briefly discussed the decision yesterday evening, but left it as mostly a report. There’s a lot more to say about this move, and while regular RAB readers might think we’re against it, I’ll take a stand and say it’s the right move.
This isn’t the regular season. The Yankees cannot afford to hand Chamberlain the ball and hope for the best, as they did in September. During the regular season teams have a margin for error. The Yanks were able to use Joba every fifth day because there were four other starters to help cover up his bad starts. If the Yanks were facing another team’s fourth or fifth starter (or, really, any of their non-ace guys), they might have even been able to put up more runs than Joba allowed. This is not the case in the playoffs.
There is no covering up for mistakes in the playoffs. If Joba has a bad game, as he did for almost the entire months of August and September, it puts the Yankees one loss closer to elimination. That’s something no team can afford, even for one game in the playoffs. Given how Chamberlain pitched in August and September — 39 earned runs in 46.2 innings with a 36:26 K/BB ratio and a .913 OPS against — the Yanks are wise to seek alternatives in the ALCS.
The only place to turn is to Chad Gaudin, the team’s fifth starter down the stretch. In five September starts he pitched 26.2 innings, allowing 11 runs on 27 hits, walking 10 to 18 strikeouts. Those aren’t sterling numbers, but they’re far better than Joba’s. Gaudin shouldn’t be starting for a playoff team, but the Yankees find themselves in dire circumstances. Their fourth starter has proven ineffective, so the fifth starter must take over if he’s pitching better.
There is, of course, a chance Gaudin pitches poorly and puts the Yankees out of a game early. Given how he pitched compared to Joba, though, it would appear that the Yanks’ chances are better with Gaudin. There is also an issue of stamina — Gaudin pitched six or more innings only twice, and once was against the Royals. I would guess that when the Yankees say Gaudin will start in the ALCS, they mean that Gaudin will start and Aceves will act as his caddy, as he did for Joba in August and September. It’s not an ideal solution, but the Gaudin-Aceves combo, while wasting a roster spot, puts the Yankees in a better position.
On top of all that is the issue of Joba’s innings. Between college and the Hawaiian Winter League in 2006, Joba threw just under 130 innings. He is now three years removed from that total, and he pitched just under 160 innings this year. In addition, he has pitched just 370 innings as a professional. The Yankees worked Joba plenty in the regular season, and while he’d get only two starts, those are two starts in which he’d be well past his high water mark, and way, way beyond his 100 inning total from 2008.
The decision is not perfect. The Yankees surely don’t want to have Chad Gaudin pitch in the ALCS and World Series. (Though, again, if they pitch CC once on three days’ rest in the ALCS, they won’t need a fourth starter.) Given the alternatives, it is the only decision. Forget about how Joba can play a big role in multiple games out of the pen. The decision is based on performance, and Gaudin clearly outperformed Joba down the stretch.
As to Joba’s future, I wouldn’t read anything into this decision. Maybe Joba shines in the playoffs and the Yankees deem him a future closer — though I doubt they’d base a major decision on a small stretch of games. They have a long-term plan, and I assume they’ll stick to it. But when it comes to the playoffs, long-term thinking goes out the window. The Yanks want to win this now, and given how they’ve pitched, going with Gaudin (or, really, Gaudin and Aceves) is the right call.
