But, I add to that- there’s 2 different dimensions of “the problem” at this time:
(a) proper development of a young pitcher (which is pretty much consistent with what’s right for the Yankees in the long run).. and some would argue that the Yankees have screwed up so far.
(b) what’s right for the Yankees in the short run- this season.

Clearly, (a) needs a lot of work right now. I sure hope the Yankees are doing a lot of thinking about this right now, and over the winter. AND, I think they need to call in a lot of resources- the best baseball minds (beyond current Yankees staff) PLUS some outside resources (psychologists? others?).

Also, I think that (b) calls for maybe not using Joba in the post season at all. If he does extremely well in his next 2 starts prior to post-season, I might change that point of view, but because of his inconsistency, I might not.

I am totally amazed at what he says in the interview. He basically says, “I pitched well, but the batters just happened to beat me on a couple of pitches.”… OMG, how can he say that??!!??

Baseball is interesting and exciting because the balance between offense and defense is so close. The difference between a winning team and a losing team is often very little. The difference between a pitcher winning an at bat vs. the batter can often be just one pitch (refer to Mo’s blown save Friday night, where 2 batters beat him on one pitch each).

The best pitchers are the ones who win those battles with the batters more than 75% of the time, and ideally better than 80% of the time (which would be a ‘BAA-Batting Average Against’ of .200). I say to Joba, “go check your BAA for the last 6 weeks, then come back and tell me you have been doing great. While you’re at it, compare your BAA to CC’s, to Andy’s, to Mo’s, to Hughes’… then try to tell us you have been doing great.”

I have not had the time to organize the data and then calculate for all of those pitchers, but for Joba’s latest game– .462/.500/.846/1.35 (BAA/OBP-A/SLG-A/OPS-A)
… This certainly doesn’t sound like a pitcher who was getting the job done!! Maybe he actually had good “stuff”, but he certainly didn’t beat many batters.

((Note- these OBP-A and OPS-A figures are approximate because the regular Baseball-Reference data does not have all the info required to do a complete calculation- SF and SH data are not shown for pitchers.))

((A question for the readers of the blog– Does anyone know if any Sabermetrician follows OPS-A = OPS-Against? Seems that would be a very good stat to follow.. better than BAA for sure.))

Yankees need to part with JOBA,GET THEY YOU CAN.

This season is really important to all of Yankee Universe.

If he can’t help when the team needs him most,while keep him around?