CLEVELAND – A barking hamstring, suffered Thursday night on a wet Chicago mound, has idled Joba Chamberlain the past two games, and the Yankees don’t know when the best setup man in baseball will return.
“He wasn’t going to pitch today,” manager Joe Girardi said after yesterday’s 6-4 loss to the Indians.
Instead, Chamberlain spent the second straight day receiving treatment on his left leg and didn’t want to discuss the problem.
After absorbing his first major-league loss Thursday night, Chamberlain, even if healthy, may have been held out of Friday night’s 6-4 loss in which a situation to use Chamberlain didn’t surface.
Yesterday was different, however. With the score tied in the eighth, Girardi went with Kyle Farnsworth, and he danced around a leadoff walk and posted a scoreless frame.
Ross Ohlendorf got the call in the ninth and gave up three singles on fastballs, the last of which was by Victor Martinez and won the game.
Before Brian Bruney’s season ended Friday, the Yankees had three dependable relievers in Mariano Rivera, Bruney and Chamberlain.
La Troy Hawkins, who threw two scoreless but shaky innings yesterday, and Farnsworth have been ineffective in the first month of the season, and the Yankees sent their only lefty Billy Traber to SWB (Triple-A) yesterday.
So, the bullpen that had been a plus for the first 24 games suddenly joins the rotation as a question mark.