July 5th vs. The Blue Jays
Coming into this start, the last 101 batters to face Joba Chamberlain have produced an OPS of .807 against him. And, today, he faced 21 batters allowing 11 of them to reach base – albeit that one of the 11 reached on an error. If this keeps up, at some point soon, the debate in Yankeeland is going to shift from “Should Joba start or pitch in the pen?” to “Should Joba be in the majors or Triple-A?”
Speaking of pitchers, congrats to good guy Dirk Hayhurst for getting a chance to pitch in the new Yankee Stadium today. Not too bad for an eighth-round pick out of Kent State in 2003. Then again, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for baseball players from Kent State.
Huge, awesome, big flies in this game for Hideki Matsui and Derek Jeter. Those clutch blasts, along with the masterful pitching of Alfredo Aceves, were the keys for New York in this exciting – and looooong – win. Three hours and forty-four minutes for nine innings? Yikes.
Lastly, when was the last time a Yankees pitcher, like Aceves today, got a four inning save? It was June 28, 2002 when El Duque pulled it off. And, the time before that was September 10, 2000 when Doc Gooden did it. So, file this one under: You don’t see that everyday!
And so we reach to midway point 48-33.
Any projections for the second half?
Less than 48-33 and greater than 41-40.
I remember reading this when it first came out. Shed a tear back then.
aceves really has been this team’s unsung hero. difficult to quantify how important he has been to this club.
i have little to prove any causation, but have to give the yankees at least a little bit of the blame for what is going on with joba. maybe the shoulder injury was going to happen no matter what and that’s why we are where we are. but maybe all the yanking him around had something to do with it. it certainly can’t be completely helpful. and now they are in the same situation with hughes. i just don’t understand.
tough to argue with 48-33 playing in this division though. really tough. the fact that they’ve gone on two majorly extended winning streaks (one of which isn’t yet past tense) is really a testament to the capability of this pitching staff. i just hope they next week’s perfectly timed (for us) days off to really figure out what they are going to do with the 5th spot the rest of the season. it should not be a stop-gap line of thinking either, as who knows when wang is coming back, if at all. with the way joba is going, you have to think about protection for him as well. i guess a more succinct way of putting it is that in my opinion they need to make a decision with the thinking in mind that they are going to need a starter for the rest of the season, not just one month. if that doesn’t end up being the case, it’s a bonus.
I don’t want to nitpick what was a nice win in that they slugged their way to victory, but there is no reason that Pena should have been sent down fro Ransom. I have nothing against Ransom personally, but Pena is the best backup infielder we have had in years.
As far as Joba, he is still developing and hopefully he can learn from this experience. Even with losing a few MPH, which does concern me, he still has good stuff and needs to focus on getting ahead and stop nibbling.
I’ve seen 4 of Joba’s 9 home starts and his line is 10.1 IP, 9 H, 7 BB, 6 ER, 16 K (6.09 ERA / 1.55 WHIP). In short, I want my money back. I’m utterly sick of watching him pitch.
He gets one more full season of this crap in the rotation and then he’s gotta go back in the bullpen. Right now, his stuff is irrelevant. He’s simply got no command and doesn’t absolutely, positively belong in the rotation.
@ MJ:
i feel ya, but im not even 100% sure puttin him in the pen fixes his problems..
Corey wrote:
I’m not ready to banish him to the bullpen yet. But I agree that maybe that wouldn’t even fix him.
To Kevin Long (Robbie Cano) and Dave Eiland (Joba Chamberlain) I say this: earn your effin’ money, you worthless twits. These guys are sucking hardcore and they’re not even talking about changing their approach or trying something different. What are we waiting for, exactly? Aren’t coaches paid to coach? Is it that hard to tell Robbie not to swing at the first shitty pitch he sees? Is it that hard to tell Joba to throw his goddamn fastball and to attack hitters?
I was at that game on Sept 10, 2000, with a group of statisticians from Harvard and BU. It was Randy Keisler’s first start. I don’t remember much about the game, except that it was unusually hot for September in Boston (we were sitting in the OF with no shade). I have no memory of Doc Gooden coming in for the 4-inning save, but I do remember thinking that Keisler looked like he had pretty ordinary stuff, and I was mystified that he was able to keep the Sox at 1 run through 5 IP.
Keisler did look OK that day. But, that look didn’t last too long…
All I remember about Keisler is that he was bitten by a rattlesnake once
@ MJ:
I’ve had it with Joba as a starting pitcher as well. He refuses to attack the zone and the perfect example of that is the 3-2 slider way out of the zone that he threw to Scutaro that resulted in a walk to open up the 1st. What really infuriated me was his post game interview where he claimed that his mechanics were the best they have been all year and that the Jays just have a good line up and there is nothing that can be done about that. What a load of crap.