Chamberlain chosen for Futures Game
Posted by: Peter Abraham - Posted in Misc on Jun 21, 2007 
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Pete,
Given how dominant and apparently polished Chamberlain has been this year any chance the Yankees call him up during the year, especially if Igawa tanks again? They can’t afford to give more games away (granted their offense seems to be as big a problem as the pitching)
With Hughes last year being only a couple of years out of high school their caution was understandable. Chamberlain coming out of college and getting over his injuries last year seems like a different story. Hughes may take a while to come back and maybe they could use Chamberalin out of the pen afterwards, like Detroit might be doing with Andrew Miller?
It’s tough to lose games with one of the two or three best arms in the organization in the minors. Chamberlain seems like he has a sense of how to pitch and not just throw.
No way they call him up this year, he has had only 2 starts in AA this year and is one of there better pitching prospects so no way they rush him, but if he continues to pitch like he has in AA hopefully he is pormoted to AAA next season and maybe he can come up to the majors mid-season of next year.
I agree Matt.
Wang
Hughes
Chamberlain
Betances
Kennedy
Marquez
Horne
Clippard
Brackman
Sanchez
Goodness, the Yanks have a lot of legit young, quality pitchers.
“Wang
Hughes
Chamberlain
Betances
Kennedy
Marquez
Horne
Clippard
Brackman
Sanchez”
Yea it’s great except in the real world they dont all pan out no matter how much actual potential they have.
College pitchers are supposed to move through the system quickly and thats what Joba is doing. If the Yanks make the playoffs(not looking like it at the moment) they better have Joba pitching because it isn’t cool to go down without firing one of your best bulletts. Imagine if they had let Hughes pitch game 4 last year instead of Wright. Hopefully if the situation comes up again they don’t make the same mistake.
CB-
Promoting pitchers is a tricky art.
Tim Lincecum graduated college and mowed down minor league batters left and right, topping out at 100 mph.
now he’s struggling and his confidence has been affected.
Dr. Acula is right. There have actually been a lot of cases of pitchers being rushed up and never being the same after.
The Red Sox actually had two cases of that happening.
You don’t rush em up. You don’t lose years and years of good pitching just to win one year.
Also look at some of the others who were rushed up and ended up on the DL for seasons like Liriano on the Twins.
You let them get the training they need in the minors and bring them up when they are ready and not before. It pays to have a rational long term plan rather than a win it now and forget about tomorrow plan. Steinbrenner used that plan and it never won him much. Stick took over and raised up a winning team. Steinbrenner took over again and another World series drought.
Can anyone give an order of how these guys are looked upon and the year they are projected to make it to the majors?? I know this is just a guesstimate, but there have been so many new additions down there and it’s not easy to keep track of who are the top dawgs, and who we may see sooner than later…..
Marius,
Please do not compare the 80′s drought to the 01-06 drought, totally different.
Scott, there is a great site where EJ Fagan offers an indebt analysis into what he thinks are our top 30.
http://mvn.com/milb-yankees/20.....pect-list/
Jeff –
Wang
Hughes
Chamberlain
Betances
Kennedy
Marquez
Horne
Clippard
Brackman
Sanchez
And let’s not forget Rasner & Karstens
Good point on counting one’s eggs (and cliches, sorry) before they hatch. I think we all know better. But if three of the twelve on this list pan out I’m sure the front office can find a 3-4 pitcher or two by trade or FA signing as Moose & the Rocket (again) retire. I’ll go waaay out on a limb and boldly say Hughes & Wang seem like they have a shot, which would give us two out of the twelve already. So if just one (or two) of the other eight become an adequate 4-5 starter by the time Pettitte calls it quits, then the future looks pretty hopeful.
Marius,
I agree that you can’t rush young pitchers. But what is the poing of having your best arms being wasted in the minors? Joba could come in and be the second best starter on the Yanks right now. In terms of pure stuff he has best out of any Yankee pitcher currently on the roster. Let’s at least see what he can do in a September callup.
Mark,
And you could say Lincecum has one of the best arms in the majors but he is still getting his ass handed to him. There is no need to rush him just because you as a fan want him in the majors already.
Linecum has fairly good peripherals(54 k’s in 52 innings, only 45 hits allowed). He also has .339 babip against him at home which would suggest he’s been getting unlucky at ATT ballpark. He’ll be ok.
Jeff,
again, I agree you can’t rush your pitchers. However, if the season is lost and it very well maybe lost soon if the Yanks don’t pick it up, we gotta see what some of these guys can do. Al Horne should definetley be in line for a promotion to the majors if Kei Igawa sucks it up. Kennedy was considered a very polished pitcher, so I think he also would be ready fairly soon. Joba needs a little time as his pitch counts have caused him to not last that long at Trenton(happens when you strike everyone out).
Another interesting stat, batters are hitting .404 on balls in play against Lincecum in June. That would suggest again that he has been getting unlucky.
Jeff, I am talking about the ’00 drought. When Cashman took over, Steinbrenner was calling the shots till Cashman got fed up and demanded control.
Mark, the best arms in the minors don’t mean they are MLB ready. They are there for a reason. You rush them up and you have a good chance of losing them. Look what happened when they rushed Hughes up. He wasn’t ready and we see what happened and where he is now. His 1st MLB start should have been in September at the earlist.
You don’t bring in young kids to a struggling ball team and put pressure on them. The other side of that is, we don’t need starters right now. We have a decent 1 – 4 and if Kei does what he did in AAA lately, that a decent 1 – 5 that keeps us in games. Relievers we need. A 1st baseman we need.
Marius, Agree with everything you said about the prospect being ready but Hughes is not here because of a freak injury not because he was not ready.
Jeff- Thanks for that link! Spent a bunch of time there and it was very informative. Got me pretty excited about the farm!!
if he continues to dominate AA then he needs to be at AAA at the end of the year. right now hes like hughes only with more experience. the only problem has been with pitch counts … hes a strike out pitcher so he has trouble getting past the 6th inning … i’d love to see this guy coming out of the pen in september or the playoffs if they make it, that is if he keeps these numbers up …. i know people are worried about promoting pitchers too fast, but he pitched in college, hes dominating A+ and AA right now. if he keeps it up, he deserves it.
his career K/BB ratio: 114-17 (props to RAB) as a pro … thats absurd.
Marius, Dr. Acula,
I hear what you’re saying and you guys raise a number of good points. Young pitching isn’t easy to handle and talented arms present a unique set of competing pressures. Ruining them is the worst thing you can possibly do (do you hear that Dusty Baker) Ultimately, I trust the yankee development people to make the right call as Oppenheimer, Contreras and Cash have done a great job over the past three years with young pitching.
That said, last year the cardinals don’t win the series without relying on those relatively unknown kid pitchers. Granted, they had to do it because of injuries, but without them they don’t win the series. Last year watching Wright “pitch” against the tigers in game 4 was about as painful as it gets and that happened with Hughes sitting on the couch at home (I think stick michael recommended that they put hughes on the roster/ playoff roster down the stretch).
With Hughes I definitely see the caution as he is so young and right out of high school. I think Chamberlain is an entirely different case and both Hughes and Lincecum aren’t good comparisons.
Lincecum had a 0.29 era in AAA and an era of well under 1 for his entire time in the minors. What was he possibly going to learn at AAA? He’d only pick up a marginal amount. He was only going to get better by being challenged by major league hitters. His stuff is so dominant that he needed to face better competition. For a last place team like the Giants there’s no point in letting him be the Nolan Ryan of triple A even if he’s struggling in the majors. Lincecum is a thrower at this point and wasn’t going to develop into a pitcher until he faced better hitters. Without that he’d still be twirling around, throwing heat and making minor leaguers look foolish with that hook.
I think Chamberlain may be a similar case but even more so because he may be more of a pitcher at this point than even lincecum (that’s not to say Chamberlain’s stuff is better – just that he may be less of a thrower). He’s not going to learn a lot more in Trenton by striking out the side yet again. His numbers and peripherals aren’t just great, they are borderline unreal. And perhaps his biggest plus is that he doesn’t walk anyone. For his age he seems to have a decent sense of pitching.
One of the main things the Yanks worried about with Hughes was his total number of innings during the season and how bringing him up would impact his workload (if only that were a problem now). That’s not an issue for Joba because he already missed the first two months of the season with his hamstring injury. He’ll need the work.
People keep making the point of his pitch count. I don’t think that’s a problem in the sense it usually is. Joba doesn’t walk anyone. He doesn’t have high pitch counts for the same reasons Clippard did. He doesn’t even give up many fly ball outs.
He throws 4 pitches with good to very good command and his fastball can sit at 95-97 even at the end of his outings. He has high pitch counts because he’s striking everyone out. All the more reason to continue challenging him – again his total innings aren’t going to be an issue this season.
I don’t think he should go from AA to the bigs. I’m wondering if you move him to Scranton sooner rather than later and keep open the possibility of him coming up to New York.
Remember, with Rogers and Zumaya going down, detroit turned to Andrew Miller and he’s pitched well for them. He may wind up in Zumaya’s role. Last year Joba would have been close to Miller in terms of prospect status had Joba not had the triceps tendinitis which has since resolved. If Miller is holding his own and helping Detroit I don’t see why you close off the possibility with Joba. If Igawa flops (he was better in Scranton but still giving up a ton of fly ball outs) then who do you turn to? Runelvys Hernandez the retread in AAA? De Salvo? I’d be all for giving Horne a shot, but at this point Chamberlain is probably more accomplished than even Horne is.
Chamberlain will hopefully be considered for the rotation next year, perhaps in spring. The difference at this point is only a few months.
Joba is not ready to pitch in the majors yet. I have watched him pitch 5 times this year. He is still learning his craft. He isn’t even pitching deep into games yet.
His future, as Hughes was a year ago, is unlimited.
But, right now, the only pitch he throws consistently for strikes is his fastball. You can’t pitch as a starter in the majors until you can throw three pitches consistently (as in where you want them location-wise, count-wise) for strikes.
He is also working on some other things. Such as, pitching from the stretch and his pickoffs. He’s still in the learning phase.
He’s also working on his changeup, which is improving, and his slider, which is good, but not good enough yet.
Joba has also had some injury issues and needs to get through a full season healthy. Same for Ian Kennedy in that regard.
As others have said, you bring up guys too early, you can ruin them.
The best thing the Yankees can do with guys like Chamberlain and Kennedy is exactly what they are doing with them. Keep them in AA all year, build up their pitchcounts and innings, and see where each guy stands at the end of the year.
SJ44,
Good points as usual. My understanding was that he was throwing his slider for strikes, and the change up was close and curve was coming.
What are your thoughts on how the Tigers are handling Andrew Miller? Besides his fastball, his secondary pitches aren’t great.
SJ44,
I thought Joba’s slider was his best secondary offering? I have even heard it described as a plus pitch. Any thoughts?
I agree with keeping the kids in the minors until they are ready. The Red Sox literally shot themselves in the foot by hampering the development of a few of their young arms. I think at one point last season they had Hansen, Delcarmen, Hansack and Papelbon, 4 of their top rookie arms in the pen and it did not put that team over the top. It just allowed some young pitchers to get beat up by major league pitching, with the exception of Papelbon who became injured late in the season from too much use.
Patience. In 2-3 years, if half these guys pan out, we’ll be building another dynasty based on pitching.
Let me get this straight, if a guy pitched well in the minors and he doesn’t automatically pitch to the same level in the majors, the team made some sort of mistake in calling him up? I think the mistake is expecting the guy to instantly pitch at the same level in the majors as he did in the minors. It seems like if a guy is called up to the majors, struggles and then loses his confidence because of that, then he probably didn’t have the testicular fortitude to make it the big leagues to begin with.
he’s got even less innings in the minors than hughes does… some of you are nuts if you think he’s going to be brought up. We get a little talent in the minors and it’s instantly “bring him up bring him up!”
Sorry, but we have more than a “little talent in the minors”….I believe we were ranked in the top 5 by Baseball America before the season began and I have also read (Baseball Propsectus maybe) that we have the 2nd best farm system in terms of pitching….maybe some pan out, maybe some don’t, but that can be said for all orgs….right now, we are in an enviable position for the first time in a long time….
Brett Smith at Trenton.Either a steal for some team in a trade,or a solid bet for the Yank rotation.Wait and see.
Pat, Chamerlain pitched in college so while he might not have a lot of professional baseball under his belt he did have a couple years at Nebraska. If Andrew Miller and Tim Lincecum are already up why can’t Joba be here as well? I’m not advocating that the Yanks do that but your point that Hughes had more minor league innings isn’t really relevant in Joba’s case.
If Igawa sucks, I’d be all for Alan Horne getting some time in the majors. He deserves it.