I was supposed to get some help for this site, at least that’s what my fearless leader told me. Now he tells me it’s probably not coming. Had I known that, I would have put a little more work into the present day stuff because I’ve been knee deep in Yankees History.
So the biggest news is, it looks like rookie phenom Joba Chamberlain is headed back to the pen where he dominated in 2007. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, a full season of Chamberlain/Rivera will go a long way toward shortening games and helping out the rotation. I can see this resulting in a lot of preserved wins.
On the other hand, throwing relief is a lot different then throwing out of the rotation. There’s no pacing and look at the shelf life of your top closers. Trevor Hoffman’s and Mariano Rivera’s are the exception and you can draw a lot of comparisons between Chamberlain and Joel Zumaya. Yeah, Zumaya’s injuries have been freaky but the 2007 one was partly due to throwing too hard in too short of a period of time (hence he was gripping the ball too tightly). I’m just worried Chamberlain going all out every time he comes out might affect his shelf life negatively.
In a way though, for 2008, you really can’t go wrong either way. He’ll probably have a better season out of the pen but he would have picked up his share of wins as a starter too.
