Joba Chamberlain Gets His Swagger Back

Joba Chamberlain has struggled a bit this preseason.

In his first start he pitched just one inning here are the results: ground out, single, double, double, ground out, ground out.

His second start against Team Canada was a little uglier: walk, single, walk, walk, walk. No outs.

Even though it’s just spring training and very early in spring at that, people started getting bent out of shape over his underwhelming starts. Peter Abraham was even ready to hand his spot in the rotation over to Phil Hughes after just two very brief outings.

“Joba is 23 and is unproven as a starter,” Abraham wrote on his blog. “The Yankees got burned last season when they handed Hughes and Ian Kennedy jobs out of spring training. They need to remember that lesson and make Chamberlain earn his way.”

That seems a bit extreme.

Joba projects as someone who could end up as a front line starter and now after maybe 40 pitches people are talking about removing him from the rotation already.

Well tonight will hopefully remind people that it’s spring and it’s early. Joba pitched three dominant innings against the Reds and did not even reach the 45-pitch count that they wanted to keep him at. He threw all his pitches and his velocity was up in the mid-90’s hitting 97 MPH at times.

Joba gave up three hits. The first one was erased on a caught stealing and the second one should have been stranded on base, but a gaff by Brett Gardner led to the third hit and a run scored.

He also struck out three and had that patented Joba cockiness while doing it. Anyone who got a chance to see him walk off the mound after striking Edwin Encarnacion looking on a backdoor slider knew that Joba has no issues this spring.