Hey! Where are all of the "Joba is going to be the ace of the Yankee staff as a starter" people now?
I am looking at YOU Chris DeLuca.
There is cause to fire Brian Cashman, the Yankees scouting and coaching department including Joe Girardi.
Why?
Because they were handed a pitcher with tremendous talent and a larger than life personality and was the clear heir apparent for Mariano Rivera. They turned him into a carefully handed middle reliever... then a mediocre starter... then an ineffective mop up man... and now is broken down and maybe be done.
I wonder if he could have been used as bait for Cliff Lee when Lee was traded three times between 2009 and 2010.
Try getting a Cliff BAR for him now.
This isn't hindsight being 20-20.
I've been saying this has been insane since the beginning of the 2008 season.
If George were still alive and he found out that the organization torpedoed the most talented pitcher the organization has developed in a generation, there would be many bodies to dump out.
And Cashman has the nerve to say he doesn't regret the Joba Rules.
He says the rules are common in the organization.
Even MORE reason to start firing people!
Think about it this way...
In 2007 the Yankees had Chein Ming Wang, who in his third year had developed into a 27 year old front line starter, winning 19 games in back to back seasons.
They had the talented Phil Hughes, a 21 year old with great stuff and of course 21 year old Joba Chamberlain who electrified the fan base and gave the bullpen unstoppable depth.
It's now 2011. All three are broken down.
The Red Sox have had young pitchers like Jon Lester and Jonathan Papelbon and Clay Buchholz who have had lots of injuries. (Lester had freaking CANCER!)
And somehow they were all able to not break down. And none of them are as big and strong as Joba.
Mission Accomplished, Yankees.
The Joba controversy has been solved.
Starter? Reliever?
How about neither.
Good post, it's a shame to see the Yanks run down another talented arm.
ReplyDeleteThe Yankees had lots of young talent and a future that looked like another dynasty, Now they are very old and it looks like the Yankees are in the post 1964 era, I think we will be seeing by next July crowds of 10,000 at the Stadium as a regular event.
ReplyDeleteI agree that New York has handled Joba's development poorly. Not because of innings limits, per se, but the embarrassing three inning starts and giving up on him completely as a starter after his first full season in the rotation, in which he obviously wasn't great, but was far from terrible.
ReplyDeleteHowever, this post is going a little overboard. I won't call it reactionary, because I know you've been saying similar things for years. But it's just ridiculous to say that the Yankees have ruined not only Joba, but Wang and Hughes.
For one thing, pitchers get hurt. It just happens. Is it the Cardinals' fault that Adam Wainwright went down after being one of baseball's best pitchers two years straight? Wang's injury was a freak thing that happened running the bases. He was an American League pitcher, so obviously the coaching and training staffs aren't going to focus too much on his base-running. With Hughes, he had arm fatigue after pitching more innings than he's ever pitched and is now well on his way to coming back and hitting 91-93 on the gun with his fastball.
You mention Cliff Lee, also. Well, when HE was 25 years old (as Joba is now), do you think anyone was thinking he'd turn into the dominant starter he has been the last few years? His age 25 season, 2004, he did manage to go 14-8, but that was mostly because the Indians' offense saved him. He had a 5.43 ERA and a 1.503 WHIP, throwing ten games in which he gave up 5 or more earned runs. That's almost a third of his starts.
And you may recall Lee being so bad in 2007 that he was left off the playoff roster. It wasn't until he was 29 in 2008 that he really figured it out and became the Cliff Lee we know today. Just because a guy isn't lighting it up in his first couple of years in the big leagues doesn't mean he's toast.
So, even though Joba has been up and down and is now out for a year, it's really stretching it to say he's done. And it's even more outrageous to say Phil Hughes is "broken down." Wang, yes. But his injury is the most flukey of the three.
Also, you fail to mention how good Joba had been prior to his injury this season. He had a 2.83 ERA, 1.047 WHIP and 3.43 K/BB. Not exactly an "ineffective mop up man."