Although my inclination is to believe manager Joe Girardi when he says that players’ roles will be defined at the end of spring training and not the beginning, it does seem fairly certain that the Yanks will be employing some form of the “Joba Rules” in 2008.
The current story is that Joba will be the primary setup man for Mariano Rivera from April-June and that at some point thereafter, he’ll be sent down to the minors to make a few starts in order to prepare his arm for the more taxing role of joining the rotation. Once he is recalled (probably sometime after the All-Star Break), he will be inserted into the rotation for the remainder of the season.
Here are my comments:
- Before addressing this version of the plan, I must ask: who will Chamberlain be replacing after he comes back from the minors in July? If everything goes according to plan – and we all know that over 162 games, it never does – the Yanks will have a rotation of Chien-Ming Wang, Andy Pettitte, Mike Mussina, Philip Hughes, and Ian Kennedy. If they’re all doing their jobs, where does Chamberlain fit in?
- Assuming something goes awry (safe assumption), the Yanks will be relying on Jeff Karstens, Darrell Rasner, and (don’t laugh) Kei Igawa. Of the three, Karstens is the most capable of filling in as a spot-starter. Check out his stats at this year’s World Cup…not too shabby! I’m still not seeing a spot for Chamberlain since I don’t predict the Yanks will go to a six-man rotation.
- Ok, onto the meat and potatoes of my problems with this version of the plan being floated by the media…
- Although Girardi has a reputation for being less than old-school, I generally believe that all managers are conservative by nature, especially in New York where the second-guess rate is so high. If Chamberlain excels as an 8th inning pitcher and the next guy (Farnsworth? Veras? Britton?) flops, the temptation to pigeon-hole Joba back into that role will be too great.
- If the inclination is to make Joba a starter, why not use him in the Johan Santana 2002/2003 role? Santana would get 3-5 innings every week or so, plus he could be used against selected batters or in high-leverage situations. Breaking him in at the big league level with that kind of workload worked for Santana so I don’t see why people are talking about putting him into two different worlds (short relief, then starting).
- I don’t like the expectation that a pitcher can use two pitches (fastball/slider) for the first two months of the season, then go down to the minors for a while, and then come back with a good feel for his secondary pitches (curveball/changeup). Pitchers work on all of their stuff in spring training and then develop their feel as the weather improves in April and into May. Pitchers usually hit their stride six weeks into the season. This plan would ask Joba to work on all four pitches in spring training, shelve them for a long period of time, go back and work on them again (against minor league hitting), and then expect them to be sharp against big league hitters.
- Finally, what is the opportunity cost in the form of replacement players? By this I mean, why would the Yanks want to take such a good pitcher and put him back in the minors for a three to five week period? By giving Chamberlain his apprenticeship in a Santana-like role, the team wouldn’t have to bring up an otherwise ill-prepared and no doubt inferior player onto their 25 man roster.
I guess that wasn’t so brief. I hope, at least, that it was coherent. Like I said before, this is just the media’s theory on Joba Rules 2.0. We’ll know more in six weeks.
