YOU hate the restraints on Joba Chamberlain. You flip on the Yankees game and are aggravated that Alfredo Aceves is out there in the middle innings, which means Joba again is being treated like a delicate vase.
You don’t care that Chamberlain does not even turn 24 until next week; he’s two years younger than Brett Gardner, for example. You don’t care that he has never — never — pitched a whole six-month season as a professional starter.
Those are facts, and in 2009 you don’t want facts. You want to abide by your gut and talk radio habit. Better to scream than think. We want to make instant statements (Is Mark Sanchez in Canton yet?).
If you took a deep breath, you might consider it reckless to let Chamberlain expand to 200 innings when neither his body nor his mind are truly ready for that. But deep breaths are for the fainthearted, and so are rules restricting a pitcher’s workload.
Sure you might notice that teams all over the major league landscape are either curtailing or completely shutting down young pitchers because their innings have swelled too high. But, again, those are facts. And those are other teams. These are the Yankees and they are ruining Chamberlain. Right?
They’re ruining him because he should be a reliever pitching less or a starter pitching more. Can’t the Yankees see this? They are pitching him too much, except for when they are pitching him too little. Why can’t the Yankees figure out how to use him just like you want him to be used, throwing seven innings as a starter on Monday and setting up Mariano Rivera on Tuesday?
You might notice Chamberlain actually is going to make 32 starts this year, the most for any Yankee 24 or under since Andy Pettitte in 1996. But you know Pettitte was a real man that season, pitching 221 innings. He also had apprenticed with three minor league seasons of 160 or more innings. Chamberlain worked 88 1/3 minor league innings — in total. Hardly enough time to learn his craft. But those are just more pesky facts.
And pesky facts make you realize Chamberlain is not a finished product. That and a conversation with, say, Dave Eiland. The Yankees pitching coach will fill your head with stuff you won’t want to know, like that Chamberlain is only now fully appreciating the value of a usable pickoff move and learning how to make adjustments to faulty mechanics during a game. Eiland says most of Joba’s erratic location and diminished fastball comes from him having a hitch that causes his arm to lag behind in his delivery.
The two made a minor correction during Chamberlain’s last start after he had permitted two first-inning runs to the Rays. Chamberlain then went six-up, six-down before being pulled. He allowed one run in four innings last night to the Angels, a team he could conceivably start against if both clubs make the ALCS.
Chamberlain’s fastball again was mostly in the low-90s, and all six of his swings and misses came against off-speed pitches; none on the heat. The run he allowed came via a sloppy curve he hung to Vlad Guerrero that went for a moonshot. But he walked none. He mainly kept his fastball down in the zone. There were some shake-off moments with Jorge Posada, but Joba had an improved pace.
And there was this straight from Chamberlain after the game: “My delivery is better because I got rid of the hitch.”
This is all part of the continuing education of a young starter. But education, like facts, get in the way of you yelling about Chamberlain not throwing 120 pitches last night.
It doesn’t matter that the people who know Chamberlain best, the Yankees, believe his repertoire screams top-of-the-rotation starter. It doesn’t matter that the Yankees have invested time to research the history of pushing young arms too quickly, and reacted by putting policy in place to limit dramatic increases in innings.
You haven’t done the legwork, but you have an opinion, which is good enough. You know the Yankees are pitching Chamberlain in the wrong role or the wrong amount, or both, or neither. And that has to stop.