Today in The Journal News
-
- September
- 16
The Yankees won again as Robinson Cano sat. Cano entered the game in the eighth inning. That could be a sign that he has emerged from casa de bow wow.
Jorge Posada thinks Joba Chamberlain should be in the bullpen. Joba respectfully disagrees. This notebook also has news on Bob Sheppard, Francisco Cervelli, Humberto Sanchez, Austin Jackson, Hideki Matsui, Edwar Ramirez and Tony La Russa.
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Meanwhile, thanks to research done by the Yankee Hottie, it appears that Alfredo Aceves once met Tatiana, a popular entertainer in Mexico. So take that, Derek Jeter.
If you’re looking for a fun read, check out the Hottie. And by that I mean her blog.
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The White Sox have not named their starters for the last two games of the series. But Lance Broadway will likely get one of the games and Javy Vazquez the other.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 3:35 am by Peter Abraham.
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Peter Abraham
Posada thinks Joba should NOT start. You forgot that one important word!
i still haven’t seen a definitive list of all rule V eligibles. is there a limit on losing players, i.e a maximum of 5 between major and minor phases of the draft? also, do the FAs come off the roster 15 days after the world series ends even if they don’t declare it? and finally, when are the 60 day injured players added to the 40 man roster?
I posted this on the Joba debate earlier on River Ave. Blues:
What pisses me off the most about this whole “debate†is that had the bullpen not sucked last season, we wouldn’t even have this discussion!!! The reason he was put in there wasn’t because the Yanks thought he’s better there or because they wanted him there!
He has always been a starter. That’s what he is. It’s in the guys blood. A dominant young pitcher with four plus-pitces = ACE. Let’s say he does get injured once a year, and he puts up identical stats as both a starter and reliever. Would you rather get 70-80 innings out of him a year, or 150-170???
And I love how the media keeps writing “the Yanks want to ‘convert’ him into a starter.†WHAT? Convert him? He was a starter before all the idiot writers/player-doctors heard of him!!! That’s “putting him back in his original role†which is starter! Not “converting†him! These people never heard of him before he came up last season and never followed him in the minors and after seeing him pitch 20+ innings last year they already know which way to use him???
The Yanks drafted him, paid him a signing bonus, and developed him as a starter. When they drafted him, they weren’t unsure of his role. They didn’t have any discussion as to whether he should be a reliever or a starter. He IS a starter. Because they needed some bullpen help last season doesn’t mean he should stay there.
The reason he got injured isn’t because his arm can’t take the load of a starter. He wasn’t injured all of last season. It’s not like every time he’s started a few games in a row he’s gotten injured. We don’t and can’t know the exact reason. Pitchers get injured all the time. (Yeah, I guess Carlos Zambrano should go to the pen for the rest of his career because he got shoulder tendinitis last week, the same injury Joba had. Oh, I forgot. He pitched a no-hitter last night…. But god forbid Joba gets injured and all the “wri-tards†and team doctors – i’m lookin at you Jorge – are goin all gaga, “JOBA NEEDS TO STAY IN THE PEN!â€) Maybe the reason he got injured was because of the constant back n’ forth this season. His arm was used to throwing much less pitches at a time and then he was throwing 100 at a time. We don’t know. As Tom Verducci wrote last week: “He was trained as a starting pitcher and was being returned to starting pitching, but in between he was a reliever whom they treated like a closer, mostly limiting him to short appearances. The abrupt change made no sense. Chamberlain hurt his shoulder.†Although I don’t agree with Verducci’s assertion that Joba should be a multiple-inning bullpen guy ala Dennis Eckersley.
After hearing Cashman say a couple of weeks ago “We still envision him as a starter but we still need to discuss it over the winter,†I get the feeling the Yanks are actually contemplating the idea of leaving him in the pen.
What is there to “discuss?†You dafted him as a starter and rightfully put him back in his original role even in the face of pressure from the media and some of your own players. You have the best young arm in the major leagues behind Tim Lincecum. Why not get the most out of him?
If it’s about how to handle his innings limits- and the obvious injury concerns that come with it as mentioned above- that your worried about, then either have him start the season late, in May or June and let him pitch once every five days till the end of the season, or have him pitch every five days since spring training and shut him down when he reaches his innigs limits, even if some idiots in the media will go “Will you just let the kid pitch?!â€
Don’t mess with this kid’s arm. He’s too valuable a commodity to fool around with.
Not that they owe me – a Yankee fan since birth – anything, and not to sound too dramatic, because i’m just one lonely fan, but if the Yanks leave Joba in the pen, I will never, ever forgive them. That has got to be the single most assinine [if i'm spelling that word correctly] decision in the history of professional sports. Hands down. Right up there with Grady Little leaving Pedro in to pitch in Game 7 of the ‘03 ALCS, and Mangini runnin it up the gut three staight times on 1st-&-goal against the Spygaters front seven on Sunday.
I’m out.
Some of the statements on this blog really shock me. “If A-Rod had someone respectable hitting behind him…..” huh?! Giambi is a great hitter. He might not hit for average but he’s hit 30HR this year. I will take that production any day. Oh, and if the Yankees were in the playoffs then A-Rod is definitely this years MVP. He’s having a great season and this team looked like dog crap without him. All you haters are spoiled.
That is not Charo, she’s Tatiana, a Mexican entertainer for kids.
Giambi isn’t a great hitter. Sorry, but when you are batting .260 and even less with RISP, then “great hitter” doesn’t define you. If Giambi stopped pulling everything that he sees and hit the other way things would be different.
A-Rod probably wouldn’t be this year’s MVP, but his production wasn’t bad this year. His biggest problem was pressing to get something done, and almost every time the umpire called a questionable strike, you could almost bank on it that A-Rod would strike out swinging at a ball out of the zone.
Wait a minute, wait a minute — there’s really a baseball player named Lance Broadway??
Harry G—- you gotta lighten up buddy.
You undermine much of your own argument when you wrote “The reason he got injured isn’t because his arm couldn’t handle the load of a starter.” and then one sentence later you wrote, “We don’t know and can’t know the real reason.”
Well, which is it Dr. Harry?
I think 99 % of observers feel Joba should be a starter IF his shoulder can hold up, but there are legitimate concerns about that “IF” your bellicose blatherings notwithstanding.
That sucks that Shephard can’t be at the game.
Not sure how bad his condition is but it would be great if they had a camera crew at his house just to make sure he’s given the props he deserves for all his years.
Pete —
You gotta remove the / from the link to the Yankee Hottie.
And it seems like there should be a good rivalry between the Yankee Chick and the Yankee Hottie, no?
Charo left Fernando Valenzuela for Alfredo Aceves back in the early 80s. She wanted to date someone closer to her own age.
Just for that statement by Posada alone, I’d say you’re not catching my pitching staff anymore. Joba’s got all the tools to be an ace, and Posada is concerned about tendinitis? Sure, it could indicate that Joba’s body isn’t fit to be a starter, if it recurs, but tendinitis is not always necessarily a red flag. For all we know, the difference in workload between being a starter and reliever, integrated this season by the “transition” phase, could have been what caused the tendinitis to begin with! Organizations go by precedent. They saw what happened to Mark Prior, so they decided on a system of limiting innings and getting creative on ways to get the pitcher to continue contributing while not exceeding that limit. But not everyone is Mark Prior. Every case is different. And while a reliever doesn’t have the same workload, it has less recovery time than a starter, which can be even worse on a shoulder. Now Posada might be right, but with Joba’s kind of stuff and what we’ve seen out of his starts, I’d be willing to risk him starting again. But I wouldn’t do the transition again. I’m not wholly on board with that idea.
And very upsetting about Mr. Sheppard. I wish him well.