The Case for Keeping Joba in the Pen

I caught some of Mike and the Mad Dog on the WFAN website last week, and they were ripping Sweeny Murti a new one in regards to the Joba Chamberlain situation. It seems everyone has a point, and it seems everyone’s point has at least some measure of validity when answering the what if’s.

What if Mike Mussina stinks (and I think he will) and either Phil Hughes or Ian Kennedy prove unready to handle starting every fifth day? Then Joba belongs in the rotation. Easy call.

What if the starters are fine but the bullpen tanks and Mo Rivera has to enter too many eighth innings? Then Joba sits in the pen and handles the late-inning set-up role. Again, an easy call.

But what if both above situations occur, and both the rotation and the bullpen look weak out of the gate? Where is Chamberlain’s highest value, getting seven to eight innings every fifth day as a starter, or getting an inning, or slightly more than that, three or four times per week? What happens then?

Let's start by looking at Joba in the set-up role, and journey back to 1996, when Mo Rivera did exactly what Joba did late last season. That year, the Yankee starters were nothing to get excited about. After Andy Pettitte's 21-8 mark, there was a steep drop-off to the next three primary starters. Combined, Jimmy Key, Kenny Rogers, and Dwight Gooden were 35-26 with a 4.79 ERA. Do those numbers sound like a reasonable expectation for this season, from the combination of Chien-Ming Wang, Andy Pettitte, and Mike Mussina? They should. Last year, those three pitchers combined to go 45-26 with a 4.23 ERA. Those are certainly better stats than the big three of Key, Rogers, and Gooden had back in 1996, but with Mussina and Pettitte both closing in on 40 years old, and with Pettitte's potential mental distractions from the steroid issues, it's very reasonable to expect neither of them to perform at the level they did just one year ago. And who knows how Wang will handle his playoff meltdown versus the Indians last October. Expecting him to put a third straight 19-win season together might be asking a lot.

And even if Wang does manage to match his previous two years, or even go one better and climb to the 20-win mark, then take him out of the mix, make him the Pettitte of 1996, and then add to the Mussina-Pettitte 2008 version.... whom?

The other potential starters -- Hughes and Kennedy -- don't have enough of a representative sample of stats from last season to make a reasonable prediction as to what numbers they might put up this year. It is reasonable, however, to expect that neither will challenge for a Cy Young, and that a 12-win, 9-loss, 4.25 ERA season from both or either of them would be considered a successful first season in the majors. Those are numbers that approximate what the Yankee starters did in 1996. That brings us back to Joba Chamberlain and Mo Rivera.

With questionable starting pitching that year, Rivera's value in the bullpen could not be overstated. While Yankee starters were not stellar as a group, they weren't horrendous, either, and the Rivera-John Wetteland combination was what ultimately allowed the Yankees to get into the postseason and eventually win the World Series. So now, imagine the Chamberlain-Rivera combination, helping a shaky but not dreadful Yankee staff pull out close games -- which most games will be because the Yankees are still going to score tons of runs -- getting the team to 93-98 wins, and Joba remaining in the bullpen seems like the obvious choice.

And while we're reminiscing about 1996, let's step even further down memory lane and revisit the Yankees' World Series opponent that season, the Atlanta Braves, who were so dominant for years, with a monster, Hall of Fame-worthy starting staff..... yet won only a single World Series because time after time their bullpen went south faster than John Rocker's reputation. For all their talk about not bemoaning their single World Series title, you know Bobby Cox and John Schuerholz will always wonder what they might have accomplished with a Mo Rivera in the bullpen.

My vote is for Joba in the bullpen. Make him a starter, and even if he's phenomenal and goes 20-8 with a 3.10 ERA, and strikes out 240 batters in 220 innings, what good will it do if the rest of the staff gets just 65 wins? The Red Sox are still the Red Sox. Toronto's better, but we'll see if they're ready to contend. The Rays might, just might, have the talent to put together a few runs where they win 10-out-of-13. This division is too loaded to mess around with a formula that obviously worked. If it breaks, then fix it. But until then, why are the Yankees even considering this move?