I'm Not Sick of Joba Chamberlain Anymore!!!
I just decided this now thanks to Ian O'Connor. Because I care about any topic that has idiotic columns written about it.
Joba Chamberlain accepts the challenge of carrying a Dick Butkus mentality over eight innings instead of one. He could whip himself into a three-out frenzy as a setup man, and now he wants to maintain that rage as a starter.
So that's it. Rage. Anger. Ian O'Connor is under the impression that grown men perform outside of their natural ability when they're pissed. Coming off the bench at the start of the game, we have Joba Chamberlain. Running out of the bullpen, it's The Incredible Hutt (yes, more Star Wars references). And he's.....ANGRY!!!!
Best of luck convincing Chamberlain to temper his act. Goose Gossage tried telling the kid to tame his fist-pumping fury on the mound, and Joba politely told the Goose to stuff it.
Badass.
So sure, every time Chamberlain takes the mound it will have the feel of fight night at Yankee Stadium. As a starter, Joba is good for business.
They're....going to improve on their MLB-leading 51,724 average paid attendance per game? Oh I get it. Jack up ticket prices on Joba night! People who already own tickets for those games will be charged extra at the door! Good for business! Money!
His appearances are now guaranteed in advance, meaning more people can build their days and evenings around the weather-permitting certainty of watching him pitch.
For anyone who is new to the whole "We hate the way the media treats Joba Chamberlain" thing.....just read that over and over again. Josh Hamilton is a monster that has an outside shot at the triple crown who was once a cocaine addict. Guess you should have played in New York, Josh.
But just because this move into the rotation is good for business doesn't mean it's good for the team.
You have yet to even prove that this move is somehow "good for business". Business is dollars and cents. Business has nothing to do with fans sitting at home watching games, or getting even more interest for games that are already sold the fuck out.
Chamberlain's pitch count Tuesday night matched his jersey number, 62, and included five fastballs that hit triple figures on Yankee Stadium's radar gun.
Raise your hand if you think it's interesting that Chamberlain's pitch count matched his jersey number!
::All 166 people who left comments on this article raise their hand::
Fuck my life......
In all, Chamberlain's heater averaged 95 mph. He gave the fans everything they came to see — everything except a win.
Everything they came to see? He was awful! Except for "fast pitching" he gave them NOTHING that they came to see! Do Yankees fans leave the stadium saying, "Man, seeing Joba pitch like that sure was satisfying in like every respect! But....I do really wish he had gotten a win."
In the first inning, Chamberlain walked three Blue Jays, committed a balk, surrendered a run, and fired 38 pitches.
This is the FIRST inning, mind you. Not the 5th or 8th or something when Joba is supposedly running out of the rage that fuels his good pitching. You're saying it's absolutely impossible for this type of inning to happen when he comes in as a setup man? Oh right, I forgot. He's budgeting his fist-pumping. Naturally born with only enough for an inning or two, yet being asked to throw eight on a good night, Joba Chamberlain is using only 1/4 of that in the first two innings, which explains pitching that was only 1/4 as good as usual. I am the best analyst in the world. The end.
He threw to a dozen Toronto batters across 2-1/3 innings, left with a 2-1 lead, and shook his head and muttered to himself on exit before flinging his mitt into the dugout with more than a trace of disgust.
I'm going to come right out and admit that I didn't see the game. I didn't. But the guy had only thrown 62 pitches. He wasn't pitching that well, but based on pitching quality alone, the move to take him out of the game was completely and totally unjustified. Maybe Girardi saw something mental/emotional that I didn't. But there was little-to-no performance-related excuse for pulling him so soon, and hell, shot in the dark here, that might be why he was so pissed.
Chamberlain then watched as a Joba-free bullpen gave Roy "Doc" Halladay's Blue Jays a 9-3 victory and left the Yankees a 28-30, last-place mess.
I love this argument. Thanks to Joba Chamberlain's bad pitching, the Yankees were doomed to play the rest of the game without Joba Chamberlain.
"It wasn't very good," Joba said of his performance.
Nor was the decision to make Chamberlain a starter.
See what he did there?
Out of the prairieland, Joba has become the ultimate urban legend. He's as big in the Bronx as the old courthouse building beyond the outfield wall.
I've been practicing typing subliminal messages. Check it out!
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With Mariano Rivera watching his back, Joba was 50 percent of the most devastating bullpen punch in baseball. Chamberlain-Rivera represented a more lethal combination than the Rivera-John Wetteland pairing of 1996, which gave birth to Joe Torre's dynasty.
Really? THAT gave birth to Joe Torre's dynasty? That's like saying, "The Yankees won 4-3 today, and the leadoff single by Jorge Posada in the 2nd inning was what won them the game, as he came around to score." Too much effect, not enough cause.
Teams played the Yankees knowing they were playing a seven-inning game.
On April 24th, I went to a White Sox / Yankees game at U.S. Cellular Field. Joba Chamberlain gave up a double and a single in the 9th inning to lose the the game. Every White Sox fan stood and sang "Thunderstruck" as several replaced the word "Thunder" with "Joba". It was the best night in the history of sports. Ever.
They knew they needed to take the lead before that bullpen door swung wide and Chamberlain emerged blowing smoke out of his ears.
Honestly, have you seen Carlos Marmol pitch this year? Doug Brocail? Scott Linebrink? Heath Bell? Taylor Buchholz? All of them have pitched as well, if not better, than Joba Chamberlain.
That stark reality put a tremendous burden on Yankee opponents.
Until the opponents realized, "Hey wait! We can just light up Ian Kennedy, Phil Hughes, and Andy Pettite BEFORE Joba even gets into the game!" Their pitching is last in the AL East. Even an idiot writer could see that something needed to be changed. Good middle relievers are so easy to find for a year. Almost every team in baseball has at least one reliable set-up guy, and in many cases, that guy might have been a below-average reliever over the course of his career. It's good starters that are tougher to come by.
That burden was lifted when Joe Girardi and Brian Cashman announced that Chamberlain would be their Josh Beckett of the present, and not their Jonathan Papelbon of the future.
We have to compare him to Red Sox pitchers.....why?
The Yankees reasoned that they drafted Chamberlain as a starter. "We're only honoring our scouting profile on him," Cashman said.
See, Ian, this is the best way to look at it. Chamberlain profiles as a starter. He has 2 awesome pitches, the fastball and the slider. Most great relievers have two great pitches working for them. Unlike guys better suited for the pen, Chamberlain also has a good curve and a good changeup to complement his best offerings, meaning he's equipped enough to see the same hitters several times in a game.
But outside of Alex Rodriguez's bat, Chamberlain-Rivera was the Yankees' only other weapon of mass destruction. Why trade the known for the unknown here?
There's this awesome new ice cream parlor in my town called "We Ain't Open Too Long" that is only open 3 days a week from 8 PM to 9 PM. It gets awesome business because everyone is addicted to their homemade ice cream. Because the ice cream is so good, customers want the store to be open for more hours. But the mean nasty owner is Ian O'Connor, and he's an ice cream Nazi, so he won't let the store develop to its full potential.
I'm going to have to put the "terrible similes and metaphors" label on this post, directed at myself.
The Yankees know Chamberlain is a remarkable reliever, and maybe the only man, woman or child who projects as a worthy successor to Rivera.
There are so many good fucking closers in baseball. No, it's unlikely that Rivera's successor will be as good as him. But is that enough of a big deal to justify such a great misuse of a team's asset?
No matter what their scouting reports say, the Yankees don't know that Chamberlain will be among the best starters in the game. They believe he will be, and they're sure praying he will be, but they can't tell you for sure he will be.
And for this reason, Edinson Volquez, Yovani Gallardo, and Tim Lincecum are in the pen for life, because their respective teams weren't sure if they'd be good starters. Never test a new starter, because you're not sure how they will work out. When all current starting pitchers retire, there will be no one left to pitch at the beginning of a 9-inning game, so the first 5 innings will be forever removed from baseball games.
They can only tell you that this was the plan all along. Hank Steinbrenner's plan, anyway.
The biggest problem I have with this is that Ian O'Connor thinks that this is legitimately the only reason the Yankees have for making this move.
Maybe Steinbrenner would've backed off had Cashman granted his wish and traded for Johan Santana. Maybe Hank would've given his minions a little breathing room on Joba had Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy honored their own scouting reports.
But once Hughes and Kennedy blew up, and once Santana started winning games for the Mets, Hank wasn't about to be denied his ultimate baseball fantasy — Joba in the role of staff ace.
You're writing this like Hank Steinbrenner is trying to sabotage the team or something. "Ultimate baseball fantasy?" Really?
He was a college starter at Nebraska and a minor-league starter in the Yankee system. So no, Joba wasn't walking into this as a novice.
THEN WHY THE FUCK DOESN'T HE MERIT A SHOT?? DO YOU HAVE A CLUE HOW MUCH MORE VALUABLE STARTERS ARE THAN MIDDLE RELIEVERS?????
But Chamberlain's replacements in the pen, Kyle Farnsworth and LaTroy Hawkins, are just like Joba in the same way that Dan Quayle was just like JFK. The Yankees complained that they might never get to Joba by leaving him in the pen.
Completely and totally illegitimate complaints, seeing as how the Yankees starting staff is pitching so well.
The Yanks might someday complain that they can't get to Rivera by leaving Chamberlain in the rotation.
At a time like this, you have to think about which concern is more serious. You're not giving me any goddamn proof of anything.
No matter how much he insists he can maintain his manic edge as a starter, Joba was born to close.
I can't WAIT until you're proven wrong. Literally, 4 years from now I'm going to be laughing my ass off at you. Because you got fired for this column. I know you did.
The Yankees keep saying that Joba can lord over a higher percentage of innings as a starter than he can as a reliever. Of course, the counterargument states that Joba can impact more games as a reliever than he can as a starter.
Ah. Two conflicting arguments. Both seem to have made a valid point. Let's think about how to rectify these. Think about the impact of having a good pitcher on the mound for more innings. Think about how being able to use Joba whenever needed in tight games gives the Yankees the advantage, and how many expected wins that advantage is worth using something like WXRL. Think about how having Joba as a starter will help minimize the innings pitched by middle relievers in games he starts, as well as how it will knock a failing young pitcher out of the rotation for some minor-league work. Think about what will be more valuable in the short-term as well as the long-term. Also think about high-leverage situations and whether the Yankees have the resources and talent to replace Chamberlain somehow in these innings. You're a writer, Ian. I don't need to teach you these things, so I trust you'll make a good argu-
The counterargument makes more sense. The more games Chamberlain appears in, the better.
I'm sold.
Tuesday night, the Yankees lost their first Joba start to another AL East team that looks a lot stronger than they do, at least for the moment. But hey, nobody could deny that Chamberlain was good for business.
I denied it! He's absolutely neutral for business!
Good for the team? The answer to that question was found on the scoreboard, not the radar gun.
Because the Yankees failed to score a lot of runs off of the ace of the best pitching staff in the American League and Jose Veras and Edwar Ramirez pitched awful in the 7th inning (which, by the way, is not the inning Joba is famous for pitching as a reliver), I can absolutely say for certain that after one run in 2 1/3 innings and 62 pitches, Joba Chamberlain should never start a baseball game again. Period.
