Hank Wants Joba To Start

[Josh]

If Brian Cashman is the GM of the Phillies or Nationals or some other team next season, remember this day.

Hank Steinbrenner told the New York Times that Joba Chamberlain needs to be in the rotation now. As in right now.

That’s fine. Then by Aug. 15 when he has reached his innings limit, Kei Igawa can take over. Or maybe on July 15 when he has Tommy John surgery. The Yankees have a plan to transition Joba into the rotation and it doesn’t call for a rash move on April 21.

Then this from Hank: “The mistake was already made last year switching him to the bullpen out of panic or whatever. I had no say in it last year and I wouldn’t have allowed it. That was done last year, so now we have to catch up.”

That’s fine, as well. The alternative would have been trading prospects for Eric Gagne then not making the playoffs. That sounds like a good plan. Or continuing to use Kyle Farnsworth in the eighth inning. How did that work?

It’s a simple math equation. Joba pitched 89 innings for Nebraska in 2006 because he was injured. Therefore, his innings in 2007 had to be carefully monitored to minimize the risk of further injury. Because he was so successful as a minor-league starter, Joba would haave reached his innings cap in August.

So to fill a need in the majors and give the kid more experience, he was temporarily made into a reliever. Joba finished the season with a total of 116 innings.

Now he can probably pitch about 150 innings this season. Any more and you greatly increase the odds of injury based on a number of studies of pitchers in their early 20s. Perhaps you have heard of Francisco Liriano, Mark Prior, etc.

So the Yankees will start Joba in the pen, use him for one or two innings at a time and then put him in the rotation in July. It’s really not that complicated.

Why Hank would cause such problems for Cashman and Joe Girardi this early in the season isn’t clear. But the Steinbrenner family owns the team and they can do whatever they want.

Cashman has already said today that Joba would remain in the bullpen and they will follow the plan in place. I would imagine Hal Steinbrenner has been called in to try and add a little reason to the mix.

But if this sort of exchange is going to define how the Yankees are run, why would Cashman stick around? One thing for certain: the 29 other teams love it.

yankees.lhblogs.com/2008/04/21/the-bronx-zoo-open-for-business/

[#1 Jays Fan]

keep joba in the pen

[Fish Troll]

Here a better article:

Everyone understood there would be growing pains with all the Yankees neophytes this year.

What folks failed to realize is that those growing pains wouldn't only involve two young Yankees starting pitchers but also one big neophyte in the owner's chair down in Tampa.

Not three weeks after warning fans to be patient with their two young starters Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes, new Yankees boss Hank Steinbrenner revealed dissatisfaction with the team's rotation in an interview with the New York Times, while insisting that Joba Chamberlain, the one young pitching jewel who's thriving, needed to be moved out of the bullpen and into the rotation immediately.

For good measure, Steinbrenner also opined that anyone who'd keep the 100-mph-throwing Chamberlain as a set-up man was an "idiot.'' By later in the day, though, that characterization would hit a lot closer to home for the Yankees' new Boss.

For those scoring at home, Steinbrenner the Junior waited only 20 games to throw out his first tirade. The Yankees are 10-10, which is something short of mathematical elimination considering 142 games remain. In expressing his new views, Steinbrenner's biggest boy revealed impatience that hasn't been seen since his father was a much younger man, back in the 1980s, the only decade without Yankees championships since the 1910s.

Young Steinbrenner, whose outburst was even uglier and earlier than one would have predicted, was backtracking on the Internet yesterday. And Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said by phone, "I think we're all on the same page. I talked to (Steinbrenner) and he definitely agrees Chamberlain should be in the bullpen now. But all of us see (Chamberlain) as a starter eventually.''

After Steinbrenner's outburst became big news in New York, Cashman made it clear that despite Steinbrenner's words the Yankees weren't immediately abandoning a winter's worth of plans. Cashman insisted Steinbrenner understood this, and the GM suggested he didn't mind spending the day putting out the fire started by his new boss. "It was an off day, anyway,'' Cashman noted.

By the end of the day, Steinbrenner apparently joined the "idiot'' group agreeing Chamberlain's best spot was the bullpen now.

In other words, Steinbrenner junior's comments carried no significance beyond being the earliest April bluster in two decades. The plan sticks to keep Chamberlain in the pen until June or July (the Yankees won't reveal which month it is).

It's a plan that makes sense because it 1) limits his innings to a reasonable number, around 140, and 2) saves the Yankees from having a bullpen with no certainties between the starters and the great Mariano Rivera and gives them the most formidable back end of a bullpen in baseball. As one other team official noted, the club lacks "gunslingers'' in the pen -- beyond Chamberlain and Rivera, that is.

The worst part of Steinbrenner's tirade wasn't that it made him look self-absorbed, or that it wasted Cashman's day. It was that it showed a lack of faith in Kennedy and Hughes, advertised all winter and spring as untouchable farm jewels.

That Kennedy (0-2, 9.64) and Hughes (0-3, 8.82) are struggling is no revelation, and others within the organization are wondering whether they are ready, as well. Cashman euphemistically calls the rotation "a work in progress.''

What has consistently irked Cashman, according to baseball executives with other teams, is Steinbrenner's general penchant for publicly revealing the team's plans. Steinbrenner's interest in being in the papers is such that it could wind up chasing away Cashman, whose contract is up after the year.

Meanwhile, the new Boss is showing he's adept at rewriting history.

Steinbrenner suggested in his Times interview that if it were up to him the struggling youngsters would have been shipped out of here this winter for Johan Santana. "The starting rotation is not what I would have chosen at the beginning of the year, but that is not a big news flash to anyone,'' Steinbrenner said.

Well, I've got a news flash for him. Santana's a Met. And Steinbrenner is the one who let it happen.

Steinbrenner spent most of the winter reminding us he was in charge. Now he tells us he wasn't? Who knew?

I wonder if it is possible to trade owners?

[#1 Jays Fan]

sorry fish troll. i dont think you can lol

[Fish Troll]

He may be cancer to the clubhouse, but his skillful payroll budget will make up for it and attract teams to take the bait.