CLEARWATER, Fla. — The problem with Joba Chamberlain, in so many ways, isn’t the version of him we see in March of 2010. It is the version of him that we remember from August of 2007. It is the memory of how dominant, how precocious, how bulletproof he was in his first hours as a major leaguer.
Nobody could sustain that. Nobody ever has sustained that. Dwight “Doc” Gooden might have been the ace of the Mets staff for eight more years after his stardust-frosted 1985 season, but he was never quite as untouchable. Bob Feller had most of the best years he ever would have before he was 30 years old. He remained a winning pitcher, just not a phenom.
Phenoms, by definition, aren’t supposed to last.
Maybe it’s simply best that everyone pack those old images of Chamberlain from the summer and autumn of 2007 — right up until the midges got him in Cleveland — and simply store them in a file cabinet somewhere, pulled every once in a while for fond recollection.
Maybe it’s best for everyone to do what the Yankees have clearly done: turned the page on Joba the Rock Star, Joba the Human Standing O, and focus instead on Joba the Kid Pitcher. The pitcher who still is just 24 years old, the one who should still have a long and successful career ahead of him. If that means he won’t be Sanday Koufax, should that be held against him?
“Sometimes, I just have to remember to be myself,” Chamberlain said yesterday afternoon, inside the visitor’s clubhouse at Bright House Field, after the Phillies beat the Yankees 6-2. “I have to attack the zone. Be aggressive. And let it fly.”
He was standing in the corner of the room, a dark blue sleeve covering his elbow to keep it warm after his first feel-good outing of the spring. Chamberlain pitched three innings and allowed one soft run, he threw 48 pitches and 33 strikes, and had just about every one of his pitches working — fastball, slider, curve, change.
Now, by the time manager Joe Girardi summoned Chamberlain in the sixth inning, the Phillies’ regulars already had showered and left, so he didn’t face Jimmy Rollins or Chase Utley, Ryan Howard or Jayson Werth or Shane Victorino. But at this point, the pedigree of the opponent isn’t really the issue.
“It’s the mental part of the game,” Chamberlain said. “And that’s the hardest part.”
It wasn’t just Chamberlain’s brain that had caused him to assemble an unsightly 27.00 spring ERA heading into yesterday’s test. His mechanics were messy, and his stuff was sloppy, and it had all conspired to place his spot as the fifth starter in serious jeopardy. Before the game, Girardi had cautioned that he never had thought of the job as Joba’s to lose heading into spring, but that hardly seems likely.
For parts of three seasons, two different Yankees managers were enslaved by the Joba Rules, which were enacted to meticulously ensure the organization would build him up to being a 200-inning horse of the rotation. If Chamberlain becomes a relief pitcher permanently, that legislation will seem like so much wasted time.
“We won a World Series last year,” the manager said. “We achieved our goal as an organization, and Joba was a part of it.”
True. But from the moment Chamberlain became a prominent part of the plan, he inherited the mantle, fairly or unfairly, as the face of the future, an important balancing point for a franchise always looking to bulk up for today. And even Girardi seemed to understand that, because he all but put Chamberlain on notice that it was time to quit “working on” stuff, and time to start getting people out.
He started that yesterday at Bright House Field. Did the light bulb go on? Did the pieces finally fall into place? We will learn that five days from now, and then five days after that as the former phenom keeps up the fight to prove he belongs in the bigs. It’s suddenly a story worth rooting for.