Do Joba’s Woes Fall on Yankees Management or Joba Himself?

Joe Girardi, Brian Cashman and the Yankees’ management and staff have done an excellent job this season. Girardi has made the right calls, Cashman has made the right moves and the Yankees have the best record in baseball. It’s hard to find a blemish on a team that has already won 90 games with 22 games still remaining in the regular season but there is one blinding blunder: the handling of Joba Chamberlain.

The Yankees’ plans were to keep Joba under 150 innings pitched this season. Not an easy task if a pitcher is in the starting rotation from the beginning of the season. Joba had his struggles in the first half of the season but everyone on the Yankees’ staff did. It’s what the Yankees chose to do when they realized Joba was going to exceed his inning limit that is in question. 

Joba came out of the all-star break on a tear. He was 3-0 with a 0.83 ERA in his first three starts after the break. Not too long after that is when the Yankees started tweaking Joba’s outings in order to keep him under 150 innings. They first thought to pitch Joba on extended rest. He’d pitch him every sixth or seventh game. Joba ran into problems with not knowing when he was going to start and it affected him. It affected the rest of the Yankees starting rotation too. Rest periods seemed to be out of whack for a few of their pitchers although the Yankees did their best to keep their other starters on consistent rest.  

Within the last couple of weeks the Yankees decided Joba would pitch every fifth game, on schedule, but will pitch three innings in the first few starts, then four innings in the next few, and so on. He’d be up to six or seven innings a start by season’s end and would be ready for the postseason.  

It seems neither idea has worked. Joba has struggled. Am I reading too far into this? Would he be struggling if he stayed on course and pitched on a regular basis and exceeding 150 innings in the season?  Maybe. The fact is that we don’t know and Joba Chamberlain needs to forget everything and just pitch. He’s pitched all of his life. So what if it’s just for three innings?Pitch a perfect three. The Yankees may be over-thinking this but Joba needs to worry about pitching when he is told to.  

Back years ago pitchers pitched a ton of innings. There were no inning limits. Pitchers today are being “babied” in some ways. In other ways, teams are taking care of their major investments. That’s another debate in itself.  

The “Joba Rules” are much debated and will continue to be until Joba is fully integrated into the starting rotation and allowed to pitch over 200 innings.  Next we’ll be talking about “Hughes Rules”.