Where Joba Chamberlain begins the 2008 season will have a lot to do with his new manager.
Yankees senior vice president Hank Steinbrenner has spent most of the off-season insisting that the 22-year-old right-hander, who finished the last two months of last season as a reliever, begin the season in the starting rotation. But Steinbrenner said yesterday that new Yankees skipper Joe Girardi will have the final say.
"It's ultimately up to Joe Girardi," Steinbrenner said in a phone interview. "Joe knows how to handle pitchers better than any of us."
General manager Brian Cashman, however, said he would be involved in the decision as well.
"Joe and I will work it out," Cashman said. "We'll see how it all shakes out."
Long term, Steinbrenner said, "we're not going to use (Chamberlain) as a setup guy. That would not be the ideal situation. He needs to be a starting pitcher or a closer, and we have a closer."
"If Joe decides to have him start the year as a setup man," Steinbrenner said, "certainly that won't hurt us in the bullpen."
3 Comments:
I wonder what Cashman and Giradi will decide?
Start him in the rotation, let him build up his arm. With the off days at the beginning of the year, the big 3 can take turns in the pen for 2/3 innings to help cut down on their innings. As of now, we don't need him as a set-up man for Mo. Let's look down the line, if he only pitches 80/90 innings out of the pen, you start all over again next year.
My suggestion is you start him in the rotation, and then move him to the pen down the stretch to keep his innings dowm. Then you have Joba-Mo for the stretch and playoffs.
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