Who is the future closer of the Yankees? While many think it will be Joba, and there will be support for Dave Robertson, I still believe Mark Melancon is the heir to Mo.

Let’s start by getting one thing out of the way. Nobody is, nor is capable, or “replacing” Mariano Rivera. He simply is unmatched in baseball history at his position. When someone asks who the greatest centerfielder in baseball history is, you’ll hear Mays, Mantle, and DiMaggio. When they ask who the greatest catcher in history is, you’ll hear Berra, Bench, maybe a Piazza. When they ask who the greatest left fielder in history is, you’ll hear Ted Williams, Barry Bonds and the feared one, Jim Rice (wait, what’s that, Jim Rice shouldn’t even be in the Hall?). When anyone asks who the greatest closer in history is Mariano Rivera is the only legitimate answer. If you’re expecting the next Yankees closer to be the next Mo, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

Without getting too much into it, I do not want Joba to be the next closer of the Yankees, with my reasoning stated, and echoed, many times. Plus, if Joba’s velocity stays in the 92-95 range, is his stuff much better than Robertson’s or Melancon’s anyway? With regards to Robertson, I love his stuff (13.0 K/9 in 2009), and certainly think he can be a closer at the major league level. He needs to cut back on his walks (4.5 BB/9 career), or else he’ll be a heart attack closer, no doubt. Even in the minors, Robertson walked too many batters, walking 3.6/9 overall, including 4.2/9 in AAA. I’m sure he could get the job done, but unless he cuts the walk rate, he cannot be an elite closer.

Melancon, drafted in the same draft as Robertson, and a few weeks older, fell behind Robertson due to injury. After pitching just 7.2 innings in Staten Island in 2006, Melancon missed all of 2007 after Tommy John surgery. He didn’t get the memo that pitchers usually struggle coming back from TJS, and was absolutely lights out in three levels in 2008. Not only that, but likely due to rounding into form after the TJS, Melancon’s WHIP, H/9, and HR/9 all decreased as he got promoted. His K/9 and K/BB got better at every level. While certainly small sample sizes, Melancon proved he had no problem getting outs at the upper levels. In 2009, Melancon got his first taste of the majors, and while he showed some promise, his pinpoint control deserted him, with 10 walks (and 4 HBP) in just 16.1 innings. He still managed a solid 3.86 ERA, but didn’t pitch well. As much as the results weren’t there, I was impressed by Melancon. He threw harder than I had expected and didn’t give up any HR’s. His fastball velocity averaged 93.0 MPH, and he threw his curveball 17.5% of the time, and his changeup 7.4% of the time. By comparison, AJ Burnett threw his 3rd pitch just 2.7% of the time last year (and was just a tick higher at 94.0 MPH on his fastball). While he may not throw 97 MPH (though he did top out around 95), he’s truly a three pitch closer, and certainly has the stuff to get the job done at the major league level. Unlike Robertson, Melancon does not have a history of walking too many guys at the minor league level, walking just 2.0/9 in his career, and just 1.8/9 at AAA. While he doesn’t strikeout as many guys as Robertson, he does have a solid 8.8 K/9 in the minors, including 9.5/9 in AAA.

I can certainly see Robertson and Melancon being the end of the Yankees bullpen when (if) Mo ever retires. As of now, I think Melancon will be the pick to close, as the Robertson’s walk rate is just too high. Also, in a very small SSS, Robertson has shown a propensity to get out of jams (sometimes self inflicted). For the most part, non-Mo closers come in with the bases empty expected to pitch one inning. If a guy is needed in the 7th or 8th with runners on, Robertson is likely better equipped for that role, and Melancon is better equipped for the 1 clean inning role.

At the end of the day, while the Yankees will never replace Mo, they certainly have guys capable of closing at the major league level. Along with Melancon and Robertson, (and I guess Joba), they have a ton of solid young starters that could be moved to the pen down the road, and potentially close.

Are people asking the right questions?

First off, let me set the record straight on something – I have faith in Brian Cashman. I trust that he analyzes situations thoroughly enough that his decisions will almost always be correct at the time they are made, whether or not fate rewards them with confirmation. I can’t say that I have full faith in every member of the Yankees’ decision-making corps, but I do feel that they have earned some benefit at the doubt, especially with Cashman at the helm.

Thus, I do believe (and I detailed some reasons why in my last post) that they had many legitimate reasons for making Joba a reliever this year. Some we can see, some we just have to hope are there. But I believe Cashman has demonstrated over the past couple years that he has the acuity not to make decisions without thorough analysis. So this is not a reprehension of the Joba decision of 2010. This is for the fans who can’t understand why anybody would want to put somebody who has shown an ability to be an elite reliever in the rotation.

As all of us know, Joba’s 2007 debut was the stuff of legend. 0.38 ERA. Consistently between 98 and 100mph with the fastball. One of the nastier sliders any of us had ever seen. Some were content to just sit back and watch, but others, like myself, wanted to know more about the fellow (and others still already did). A quick read-up on the interwebs could have told any of us that this was just the beginning. Beyond the legendary FB/SL combo, Joba had a solid (and improving) curveball, and was working on a changeup that was still below average, but also improving. What’s more, the guy, in one year, had dominated two levels of the minors – Class A advanced and Class AA – as a starter before transitioning to the bullpen at AAA.

Suffice it to say, we were excited. Many of us had been following Phil Hughes for the last couple of years, and while he generated a lot of excitement, he was not quite on this level. Save for a nice-looking curve, his stuff looked relatively average, he’d had some injury troubles, and hadn’t really excelled at the Major League level at that point. Joba, on the other hand, had utterly dominated the Majors at age 21, and his stuff provided us with tangible evidence of future dominance. Sure, most of us recognized that he wasn’t going to be sitting at 99 mph as a starter, and that he’d surely take some lumps along the way, but it was still cool to revel in the thought of a starter who seemed to have no ceiling whatsoever.

In 2008, in a further attempt to control his innings (one which backfired and ended up further delaying his development), the Yankees started the season Joba out of the bullpen, with the plan at the outset for him to make the transition into the rotation some time in June. Naturally, many MSM analysts and “experts” disagreed with the decision, scoffed at (or ignored entirely) the notion of “innings limits”, and generally disregarded anything that wasn’t what they were used to seeing (which, in the case of the Yankees, was pretty much nothing other than free agents). But most of the more obsessed, basement-dwelling fans among us were too excited to finally (hint: sarcasm) see the 2006 draftee pitch as a starter at the major league level to worry much about the Yankees methods of deploying him as such, provided that he got a reasonable number of starts that year.

Finally, after two “warmup” starts of 2.1 and 4.1 innings, respectively, Joba the Major League Starter was unleashed on the baseball world, pitching 6 innings of one-run, two strikeout ball in Houston on June 13. For the next month and a half, Joba rewarded those of us who felt all along that his value was in the rotation and not the bullpen, pumping out 98 mph fastballs and biting sliders, freezing hitters with a better-than-average curveball, and striking out more than a batter per inning while posting a 2.62 ERA as a starter. It was bliss.

Alas, our bliss was short-lived. On August 4th, disaster struck in the form of a too-low throw down to second from recently acquired Pudge Rodriguez. Joba, all 230+ pounds of him, dove out of the way, landing and rolling over his throwing shoulder. Two pitches later, he was out of the game, and onto the DL. He threw several times out of the bullpen in September, but his stuff was noticeably diminished. Rather than the 98+mph fastball that he had had out of the bullpen earlier in his career, or the 95+ he had had as a starter even, he was 91-93, and his slider had less bite. Still, most of us didn’t worry much, as the off season was approaching and by all accounts he was fine physically. Surely, the velocity would come back, and so would the Joba dominance.

It didn’t. Joba’s 2009 has been well-documented (or, at least, very documented – the extent to which that documentation was good is certainly debatable). He was inconsistent all year, never topped 95mph on the fastball, and was rarely above 91-92, and it showed in his performance. Used to being able to strike hitters out seemingly at will, Joba now had to try to “figure out how to get hitters out”, as the guys at ESPN will tell you is a key to success as a pitcher (ed. note: uhh…yeah…). Naturally, like most young starters, Joba struggled with this all year, although the results, for the most part, didn’t show it much – his 3.78 ERA after 110 innings (his previous high) was second best on the team amongst starters.

From here, the Yankees decided that, due to a lack of depth in the rotation, they needed Joba to remain a starter for the postseason, so they decided to try to ration his innings, keeping him stretched out but not overworking him. While it worked in two senses – Joba stayed healthy and the Yanks still managed to win the World Series, it didn’t work as far as Joba’s individual results were concerned. His ERA over the last two months was over 7.00, and many questioned his ability to hold up as a starter. Of course, looking now at the context of that situation – two horrid months of pitching in a confusing environment while simultaneously entrenched in the biggest workload increase of his career – it seems silly to come to such extreme conclusions based on such a small and obviously exceptional data set. But this is New York. People will make conclusions about a pitcher based on a single at-bat. Two months might as well be a career.

So now that we’re clear on Joba’s story thus far, we can get into the actual meat of the issue. (Hurray for 1125 word introductions!). In 2009, Joba put up a 1.5 WAR. This would not quite be elite for a reliever, but for comparison’s sake, David Robertson was worth 0.7 WAR in 2009. Mariano Rivera was worth 2.0. Phil Hughes, with 7 starts in ’09 to boost up his innings totals, still only managed 2.2 WAR. Suffice it to say, Joba’s not likely to be significantly more valuable as a reliever than he was last year. At best, he could probably ring up 2.5 WAR, which was the high for relievers last year (Jonathan Broxton). That would make him worth roughly as much as Brad Penny and Kevin Millwood. So, naturally, the question, as it pertains to whether or not Joba should be in the bullpen, ought to be whether or not we or the Yankees (really just the Yankees) think he can consistently be as good as or better than Brad Penny or Kevin Millwood as a starter. If he can do that, then there’s really no reason to hold him back from the rotation (admittedly, this year there are a few reasons, since the Yanks do have 5 other starters each of whom they feel can outperform Joba this year, but this year is an exceptional circumstance).

The problem is, this doesn’t seem to be the question anybody is asking. People wonder if he can be Josh Beckett or Roger Clemens. Which is fair – when he came up he flashed the potential to reach those heights as a starter, but not relevant to the starter-reliever discussion. Many people, Brian Cashman included (per his interview with Michael Kay a few days ago), don’t think we’re likely to see Joba pitch at those same levels again, bullpen or rotation. A year and a half has gone by since his injury, and his stuff hasn’t really even come close to what it was before it. It’s not unreasonable to think that Joba’s ceiling as a starter has gone down considerably since that fateful day in Texas. It IS unreasonable, though, to think that this necessarily has any bearing on whether or not Joba should be a starter or not.

Joba’s career ERA as a starter is 4.18. This as a 23 and 24 year old pitching in one of the best offensive divisions in the history of baseball, coming off a grand total of 88 minor league innings. In other words, two thirds of his “development” innings (Cashman says that he has now fully completed his development program) have come at the major league level, and his ERA during that span is right on par with Andy Pettitte’s. But even this level, which is probably below the expectation many Yankees fans had of Joba, is well above what Joba would need to do as a starter to be more valuable than he could be as a reliever. Basically, Joba needs to be better than he was last year, but not much. 170 or more innings of an ERA of 4.50 or better should be more than enough to solidify his position as a starter, because it would take a totally unsustainable performance out of the bullpen to be worth that much.

THAT is the point. Maybe Joba won’t reach his once-upon-a-time ceiling of unstoppable ace that we all want him to. Maybe he won’t ever even be more than a slightly-above-average starter. And to be a long-term part of the Yankees rotation he may need to be more than that. But to necessitate being a reliever, he’d need to be quite a bit less.

Hughes and Joba took today's news in stride

Our love of guest posts continues.  Pete, known over at RAB for his ridiculously long (but always informative) posts brings his take on the Yankees #5 starter announcement.  And since it’s Pete, it’s perfectly titled as “A Long-Winded Attempt To Console Myself”

Earlier today, we learned what many of us had hoped the beat writers had been wrong about for the last few weeks: Phil Hughes will be the Yankees 5th starter to start the season. If you’re like me, you probably reacted by engaging in the 500+ comment diatribe-fest over at RAB, broke a few things, and searched desperately for some way in which this wasn’t a bafflingly poor decision by the Yanks.

Until today, I largely ignored the generally baseless “Hughes Will Be Yanks’ #5” articles and tweets that have been proliferating the MSM for the past few days, since most of them seemed to be coming from celebrated B-Jobbers, and none of them seemed to include any actual quotes from Girardi or Cashman that indicated with authority which of the two (or, to be more democratic, five) it would be. Following suit, I ignored, with even more vigor, the strangely flippant assertions of “Joba will be in the bullpen” that accompanied, almost as an afterthought, these articles.

Until today.

When I first heard the news today, I thought maybe the Yanks would send Joba down to Scranton to start the year, which made more and more sense the more I thought about it. Hughes’s initial callup was April 24th, 2007, which means that at any time after April 24th, 2010, Hughes’s options cannot be exercised without him passing through waivers. As a MLB-minimum-making, high-upside, MLB-ready starter, I’d put the odds of Hughes passing through waivers unclaimed at any time this year at around -238847923%, give or take. Really not ideal odds for that kind of maneuver. Joba, on the other hand, wasn’t called up until August of the same year, which means that his “waiver clock”, as it shall henceforth be known, doesn’t start until August of this year.

The effect this could have on 2010 roster construction is actually pretty consistent with Hughes being the #5 starter. It appears that the Yankees consider them at roughly equal points (or that Hughes is ahead) in terms of expected performance this year as starters, so it would make sense to send to the minors the guy who could come up for a month to take an injured starter’s place and still be able to go back down to the minors afterwards. In other words, if Hughes was the #6 and got called up to take, for example, Andy’s spot in May, and Andy comes back in June, then the Yanks would be handcuffed, and forced to keep Hughes on the MLB Roster. Joba, on the other hand, could just go back down to the minors after filling in, at least theoretically.

Of course, this was only wishful thinking in the extreme. Not only have all of the beat reporters been reporting that Joba is going to the ‘pen (and their irrelevance might have taken a hit with the Hughes news), but now it appears that he is slotted for a one inning appearance on Saturday. There isn’t a whole lot left that suggests that the Yankees don’t want him in the bullpen to start the year.

So back to the drawing board I went. Why, after cautiously developing the guy as a starter for two years, would the Yankees just give up on him and send him to the bullpen?

The answer is actually pretty simple: Phil Hughes. Hughes pitched out of the ‘pen for the majority of last year, and hasn’t thrown a full season as a starter since 2006. Even in that season, he only accumulated 146 innings. Yet the Yankees FO feels that he is capable of handling a full season (or, at the very least, most of a season) of starting this year. If they feel that that is possible with Hughes, who is to say they don’t think  Chamberlain could do the same next year?

While there is some debate as to whether or not the Yankees felt that Joba’s 110 official innings from 2007 represented his career high, or whether it was the 160ish number from college+winterball the year before, but no matter how you spin it, Joba jumped from 100 innings in an injury-shortened season in ’08 to 157 innings last year. Undoubtedly, there is some injury concern there. I suspect that the Yankees could have felt that they could capitalize on a surplus of good starting pitching this year by avoiding pushing Joba’s innings up for a second year in a row.

I realize that the consensus, based on some things Eiland said in February, is that Joba has no innings caps anymore. But it’s still plausible that the Yankees feel that there is a better chance of Joba being a quality starter in 2011 if he isn’t forced to push himself past his previous thresholds again this year.

Hughes, on the other hand, is at a point where it’s probably unwise for the Yankees to pass up any opportunity to get him another year’s worth of starts. Much like Joba last year, however, it makes more sense for Hughes to get those starts at the Major League level, since he has shown that he can dominate the minors but has never gotten the chance to labor through a full season at the MLB level. I think the Yankees feel that they have the lineup, bullpen, and rotation strength and depth to carry an inconsistent fifth starter again this year, and I think it’s important to them that Hughes gets MLB development time as well, just like Joba did last year.

Basically, I don’t think that the Yankees consider Joba pitching out of the bullpen this year to be permanent. The fans and the media have a tendency to overreact and to assume correlation equals causation a lot of the time, so many consider the Joba Rules of 2008, where Joba began the year in the ‘pen and then transitioned into the rotation later on, to be part of the reason why Joba got injured that year. I, for one, don’t buy that, and I don’t think the FO does either. In fact, I expect Joba to slide back into the rotation some time in August, right around the time when Hughes should probably slide out due to approaching innings caps.

So why, after 3 years of starter development, have the Yankees given up on Joba the Starter? They haven’t. They just feel that it is of utmost importance that Hughes the Starter be just as ready for 2011 as Joba the Starter is. Remember, these two could be #3 and #4 for us next year. It’s not unreasonable to think that the uptick Hughes’s performance will undergo next year, after getting a full season in the Majors under his belt, will be greater than the uptick Joba’s performance would have done in the same time frame, after getting his second full season in the majors under his belt.

But don’t think that just because Joba is in the pen now means that the book has closed on Joba in the rotation. It’s possible, but it would represent a massive change in both direction and intellectual capacity from both Girardi and Cashman, and I think it’s way too early to make that kind of assumption.

So have no fears, folks, the Opening Day starting rotation for 2011 will include both Hughes and Chamberlain. In the meantime, we’ll have to settle for a rotation of CC/AJ/Javy/Hughes, and a bullpen of Mo/Joba/D-Rob/Marte/Ace/Park/Mitre (or Melancon). Poor us.

Though he's a starter, Joba is looking to close the deal here

In a response to a New York Post article on Joba Chamberlain and his Spring Training struggles, I simply want to point out the following…………..young pitchers struggle!!!

I have made the point a million times that about 1% (not scientific) of even the most phenom-ic of phenoms dominate the majors from Day 1.  Consider then for a moment that Joba is pitching in the (by far) best division in baseball.  What can we truly expect from Joba through the tender age of 23 with minimal minor league experience?  While there are a ton of young pitchers who struggled early before developing into starts, Jon Lester is the guy I think of most when it comes to Joba.  They were both big time prospects cutting their teeth in the AL East as 22-23 year olds, pitching for the two biggest teams in baseball.  People may forget it now, but Lester struggled before breaking out as a 24 year old in 2008.  What age will Joba be on Opening Day this year?  24.

Not only that, but both were on restricted innings and pitch counts until, again, age 24.  When the training wheels were taken off Lester he flourished, and I think Joba has it in him to do the same.  Before any Yankee fans jump off a bridge with regards to Joba’s performance this Spring (or worse, become B-Jobbers), take a look at the following numbers:

Joba Chamberlin 2009 as a 23 year old in 32 games (31 starts)

4.75 ERA, 157.1 innings, 167 hits, 76 walks, 133 strikeouts

Jon Lester’s first 27 games (26 starts) before turning 24

4.68 ERA, 144 innings, 152 hits, 74 walks, 110 strikeouts

Jon Lester’s Spring Training stats as a 24 year old (as Joba is this year)

6.00 ERA, 12 innings

Jon Lester as a 24 year old (as Joba is this year)

3.21 ERA, 210.1 innings, 202 hits, 66 walks, 152 strikeouts

Am I thrilled with Joba’s early (very early) struggles in Spring Training?  Well no, of course not. Am I concerned?  No, not really.  Take a look again; Lester’s stats pre-24 were almost identical to Joba’s, and then he went to Spring Training that year and continued to struggle.  After that it was breakout city for Lester.  Joba has the talent, the smarts and the stuff to become a right-handed Jon Lester (with more hair).  Will it happen, I truly don’t know, but I do know that it is way too early to display any concern with Joba’s Spring stats as well as Joba’s career stats.  Roy Halladay, at the same age as Joba was in 2009 was pitching to the tune of a 10.64 ERA, and he already had pitched over 150 innings at the big league level prior to that season.  As a Yankee fan, I can only wish that the Blue Jays had been dumb enough to ship him out or ship him to the ‘pen for good.

I am not concerned at all with Joba’s stats, nor am I concerned with diminished velocity from when he was in the bullpen. That is to be expected; much like Phil Hughes’ increased fastball velocity while in the pen was expected. If on April 15th Joba’s throwing 90-91 in regular season starts, I’ll be concerned. Until then, my thoughts on Joba have not changed in the slightest. Patience is a virtue, and patience must be exercised when considering the future of Joba Chamberlain.