As the new look Yankees prepare for the 2008 baseball season, one player worth keeping an eye on is Joba Chamberlain.
The Yanks will keep Chamberlain on a short leash, to start the season, by having him in the bullpen to setup Mariano Rivera. They want to work him in slowly and then somehow, when the time is right, get him into the rotation.
Sound familiar? Well the Boston Red Sox have been threatening for years to get Jonathan Papelbon into the starting rotation for two seasons, but he somehow he gets shuffled back into the bullpen as the closer.
Knowing the Papelbon story, that doesn’t make me very optimistic that Chamberlain will find his way into the starting five. In fact his pitching may be so good it will be hard to move him out of the setup role, a key position on any team.
However, Joba is young and all he has is time at this point.
We move from the young to the old and Randy Johnson made his spring debut Monday, and maybe he should’ve taken a few more days to work out the rust. The big lefty pitched 1 1/3 innings giving up four hits and three runs.
Known for his over powering fast ball for years, Johnson only stuck out one batter on the day…but this is spring training, time for players to work on their game before the season starts.
-John
Photos reprinted from;
http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/apmegasports/200708282202793785142-pf.widec.jpg
2 comments Last one added about 1 year ago — Leave a Comment
Richard Shuemaker about 1 year ago
Joba is young so the Yankees want to limit his innings but with stuff (over-powering fastball, nasty slider, off-speed changeup, and improving curve) it would be a waste in the bullpen as a setup man. He is a potential 20 game winner as a starter down the line. They just need to break him in slowly.
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joe reiddy about 1 year ago
The difference between Papelbon and Chmaberlin is that Paplebon has two major leauge plus pitches. Making it very hard for him to work later in games as hitterss adapt to his in game pitching. While Chamberlin has 4 major leauge plus pitches. And the reason they are starting him in the pen is because last year he pitched only 110 innings. Statistics show that pitching more than 30 innnings than the year before dramtically increases injury. This wasnt the case with Paplebon, he was moved back to closer not because of innings limitations but becasue thay had no closer and their only other option was the gas can Joel Pineiro.
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