Peter Abraham notes that the Yankees renewed Joba Chamberlain’s contract at the $390,000 Major League miminum and wonders if the team couldn’t have found a few more grand to kick back to the kid. At the same time, Abraham notes that baseball is a business, and the Yanks were well within their rights to renew Joba’s contract. That’s where I land on this issue. Chamberlain landed an above-slot signing bonus of $1.1 million from the Yanks, and he threw just 24 Big League innings last year. He’ll get his money when the time comes. There’s no doubt about that.
Joba the Great
In a subscriber-only piece in Baseball America, the BA prospect experts engage in a little Joba-Buchholz debate. The piece ends with John Manual’s take: “Chamberlain’s superior fastball makes him the better bet to be a long-term ace. In fact, it makes him the best pitching prospect to come around since I’ve been at BA, surpassing Josh Beckett and Mark Prior.” That is some high praise.
They’re bringin’ sexy back
Via Pinstripes PA, Getty Images has the “photo day” pics available. You should definitely check ’em out, but here are the highlights:
- Joba must have that Thinner disease. Dude’s downright skinny.
- Jason Giambi definitely avoided the In-N-Out burgers this winter. Wait, didn’t he say that a few years back?
- Here are your top two position prospects.
- Jesus!
- Andrew Brackman is one big dude.
- Brian Bruney lost a ton of weight. Hopefully he practiced throwing strikes with the empty cans of Slim Fast.
- The Fat Relievers™ aren’t so fat anymore; I’d say … husky.
- Check out Ross Ohlendorf. Tell me that kid doesn’t look like he was born to wear pinstripes.
Make sure you take a look at all the photos. Good stuff. Some of ’em remind me of yearbook picture day.
How many starts will they make?
I was thinking aloud on this one this morning, so I thought I’d bring it to you guys for a public review. Keep in mind that this is a best case scenario. It’s assuming that no one completely bombs or gets injured for more than two weeks or so. So let’s break this down:
Andy & CMW: 33 or 34 — so we’ll say Andy with 33 and CMW with 34.
Mussina: 28 — could be more if he’s effective, but he does have a tendency to wear down.
IPK: 28 — at 7 innings a start, that brings him to 196, right around his projected goal number.
Hughes: 22 — at 7 innings a pop, he’d be at 154, or right around his goal.
Joba: 8 — could be 10, could be none.
Add ’em all up, and we’re looking at 153 starts, so that’s nine that have to be filled by the likes of Igawa, Karstens, Rasner, Wright, White, Marquez, and Horne. Not too shabby.
Of course, there are a couple of further caveats to the above list, foremost being Joba. Going back to the 2003 Johan Santana parallel, he could make as many as 18 starts, but I think the Yanks will use him a bit more liberally out of the pen early on than the Twins did, and will transition him to starting later on. As I’ve said, even if he opens in the pen, the team would be wise to give him a spot start in each of the season’s first three months, so he’s not completely unused to starting.
Hughes is a tough call. He threw 146 innings in 2006, so he could probably go decently over the 150 cap we’re hearing about. I probably wouldn’t go more than 160 with him in any event, though 165, 170 shouldn’t be out of the question.
And, of course, Mussina’s 28 starts depend wholly on his effectiveness. Hell, if he could hit 30 starts, that would be amazing. Even at a 4.40 or 4.50 ERA, he could carry value.
Playoffs are another concern. This is why I see the Yanks keeping Hughes to around 145 innings during the regular season. It’s also why I don’t see Joba making more than eight starts, 10 tops. They want these guys to be able to pitch in the playoffs. This is why Mussina is that much more important. If he can eat 30 starts, he takes the pressure off the younger guys, allowing the Yanks to free up innings for playoff time.
Then again, in this year’s AL, the playoffs aren’t any kind of guarantee. The Yanks will be fighting with Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Anaheim, and Seattle for four spots. And even then you don’t know if a dark horse like the Rangers will emerge as competitive.
The overall message, though, is to not listen to the mainstream media. The Yanks look fine in terms of starters as of this moment. If something changes along the way, I’m sure we’ll discuss it. But it need not be met with panic.
Sherman: Joba will start in the pen
I’m going to do an impersonation for you. Let’s see if you can guess who it is.
Yesterday, I wrote that Joba Chamberlain could start the season in the bullpen. Today, Joel Sherman confirms, via a team official, that that will be the case. He’ll prepare in Spring Training as a starter, but will move into the setup corps once the season commences.
1. Chien-Ming Wang, Andy Pettitte, Mike Mussina, Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy would stay healthy to form the rotation. All five would be needed from the outset because the Yanks have just two scheduled off-days from March 31 through May 4.
2. Chamberlain stabilizes the area the Yankees profess offers their greatest uncertainty in 2008: Their setup crew in front of Mariano Rivera. The Yanks envision Chamberlain dominating in the eighth based on his 0.38 ERA and .145 batting average against in 19 regular-season games as a reliever last year.
3. 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.
4. The Yanks hope is that over the first two months other relievers show enough fortitude/reliability to be moved into the eighth inning. Only Kyle Farnsworth and LaTroy Hawkins are guaranteed jobs. The Yanks think Girardi, who was a Cub teammate of Farnsworth for three years, might help the talented righty find greater consistency and grab the eighth inning.
Sherman also notes that Humberto Sanchez and Mark Melancon could be ready to go by the time Chamberlain is transitioning to a starting position.
This does seem like the ideal plan. Let’s hope it shakes out that way.
Joba keeping his number
PeteAbe says Joba will keep his number. My 62 t-shirt is still relevant after all.
Expect Joba to start in the bullpen
This is something that many of us simply do not want to hear. Yet, it’s going to be a topic explored throughout Spring Training. Yes, those of us who stand adamantly in favor of Joba Chamberlain in the starting rotation are going to have to deal with him coming out of the bullpen, at least temporarily. Brian Cashman even says so:
“We’ll prepare him as a starter, get through spring training and then determine where he starts,” Cashman said. “He has an innings limit and won’t go start to finish as a starter. That won’t be allowed.
“It wouldn’t be safe, that’s our belief. You have to put the brakes on and make sure he stays healthy.”
As long as everyone stays healthy — far from a certainty, of course — the Yanks will enter the season with six starters: Wang, Pettitte, Mussina, Hughes, Kennedy, Joba. While there have been whispers of starting Kennedy in the minors, that makes little sense. He is poised to pitch more innings than either Joba or Hughes, so he’d fit best into the long-term rotation plan. He could go wire-to-wire as a starter.
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