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HatGuy recently wrote this. It's really bad. Like, really, really bad.

Joba off to pen; Yanks should leave him there

Because minimizing the innings pitched of a pitcher with a shot of being pretty damned good is smart, right?

The plan announced by Yankees general manager Brian Cashman is to start the 2008 season with Joba Chamberlain in the bullpen. That should be good news to the team’s fans.

Because they don't want to put a lot of strain on Chamberlain's arm at a young age. That makes perfect sense.

The long-range plan for the season is to move the sensational young pitcher into the starting rotation. That news might not be nearly as good.

Ah. Because of some interesting statistical/scouting evidence that Chamberlain would be less effective as a starter, right? Right? (I'll bet millions that HatGuy gives reasons that have nothing to do with this, if he even gives reasons.)

It’s a tough call the Yankees have, one that I wouldn’t like to make. Chamberlain, Philip Hughes and Ian Kennedy are the kids whom the Yankees have groomed to form the core of the team’s rotation for the next decade or longer. And there’s no question New York needs the lift that strong, young arms can give a starting rotation.

I'm sorry, were you giving an argument AGAINST Chamberlain becoming a starter?

The plan all along had been to use the 22-year-old Chamberlain as a starter, the role in which he excelled as a minor leaguer. But last year he proved to be an exceptional reliever, and in this era of ball, there’s no one more important to a team than a great closer.

Why Michael, you are just, just so totally wrong!

He's more important than a 3B that can hit 54 homers in a season?
He's more important than having a great ace starter, who throws way more innings than a closer?

Ask the Angels if they'll do A-Rod for K-Rod straight up. I bet they'll say no!

The Yankees know that as well as anyone, having had the luxury since 1997 of the services of Mariano Rivera, arguably the greatest closer ever. We spend inordinate amounts of time every year talking about the mighty Yankee offense, but the reason they’ve been in the playoffs every year since 1995 is their closer, first John Wetteland and then Rivera.

No, it's their offense. Trust me. And in the late 1990's, it was good starters supplementing that offense. If like, Rafael Soriano closed every closable game for those Yankees, you think that they don't still make the playoffs every single fucking time? Am I reading this right? Do I need glasses? With all due respect to Mariano Riviera, the inequality "Rivera > Yankees' offense" completely results in the collapse of mathematics as we know it.

I guess other than that, this paragraph wasn't completely and totally horrible.

Rivera got his start as Wetteland’s set-up man, and after the Yanks won the 1996 World Series, they let Wetteland go to Texas and handed the job over to Rivera. He’s done pretty well with it ever since.

And that, friends, is why Joba Chamberlain should be in the bullpen, and not a starter.

Get to the point, please.

But Rivera is 38 years old, and even though the Pinstripes gave him a three-year contract in the off-season, it’s foolish to think he’ll still be the Sandman at age 41. I’ve been wrong on Rivera a lot, and I don’t think there’s been a season in the last three or four when I haven’t said his end is near. So I’m not going to make any dire predictions other than to point out the obvious: he’s getting old and won’t last forever.

What’s notable about Rivera is that the Yankees brought him up through their farm system. They’ve gone everywhere for starting pitching and position players, but Rivera has been there year in and year out.

Still looking for Chamberlain-related information.......

Lord knows where the team would have been if they didn’t have them and had pursued their usual course of hiring over-the-hill free agents with bloated salaries to do the job. But I’d say you can get an idea by checking out what Billy Wagner has done for the Mets — or is that to the Mets.

Billy Wagner, in 2 seasons as a Met: 2.43 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, 74 saves. Time to start earning that bloated salary, Billy. Stop doing things to the Mets and start doing things for the Mets.

(::sigh::, this is truly pathetic, and almost getting boring actually. He's wrong like every paragraph. HatGuy takes all the thrill out of searching the internet 30 hours a week for a dumb sportswriter comment.....there's no suprise element here.)

Last year, as Rivera’s set-up man, Chamberlain pitched 24 innings in 19 games. He gave up just 12 hits and one earned run while striking out 34; his ERA was 0.38. I submit those are better numbers than he would have had as a starter.

You mean that if Chamberlain threw 200 or some other amount of innings that wasn't a ridiculously small sample, he WOULDN'T have lower than a 0.38 ERA? Bravo, Cappy Hattington, you're a king among writers!

And you know what? If Chamberlain stays in the bullpen, I'm sure his ERA will never rise higher than that, because 24 innings is a totally reliable and perfect sample size to determine the true quality of a pitcher's performance in his role.

(I almost wonder if he tries to be stupid this much, because he never gives an interesting viewpoint, and I only read his columns beacuse of said stupidity. Maybe that's how he achieves a following. Kinda like a less angry Mariotti.)

I understand the Yankees thinking. They’re tired of old and overpriced starters like Kevin Brown and Randy Johnson who are no longer reliable and spend too much time on the disabled list.

Equivalent to saying, "Listen Yankees, I understand your thinking. You have tons of past precedent to warn you against using awful, old guys in your starting rotation, but..."

Going into this season, they have two old-timers — Mike Mussina, whose effectiveness has been declining,

That's generous even for Mussina.

and Andy Pettitte, still a premier left-hander.

Above-average. Not premier. Ask me how long he's going to keep a 4.05 ERA with a 1.43 WHIP. Not gross luck, but still lucky.

The rest of the starting rotation will be Chien-Ming Wang, Hughes and Kennedy. Chamberlain is supposed to be there to step in when someone gets injured or proves ineffective.

Read: After Mike Mussina turns in like 5 horrid starts.

The bullpen needs him from the get-go. Rivera is the one reliable arm out there, with the mercurial Kyle Farnsworth as his set-up man. After him is LaTroy Hawkins, signed from the Rockies in the off-season, who returned the favor by signing the Yankees’ reliever Lius Vizcaino.

Except starting pitching is way more important. You forgot that, Mikey. Unless there's something with Chamberlain's style or mechanics that makes him personally a better pitcher as a reliever, he should start if he's good enough to. Except you aren't arguing those things. So I am not required by law to listen to you.

And that’s about it for the Yankee pen. Oh, there’ll be plenty of bodies out there and there’ll be plenty of people who’ll get to try out in camp, but the pen was thin last year and it’s not really better this year. It’s not nearly enough, especially if anything happens to Rivera

The rotation was noticably thin last year too. It's perfectly reasonable to think that randomly, one of the Yankees' 5 relievers besides Rivera will turn in an adequate set-up-man-ish season. It's much harder for a starter to "luck" into having a good season.

As long as Chamberlain is starting the year in the bullpen, why not keep him there? He can set up and he can save Rivera from having to pitch in back-to-back games or in three games in four days. And he can learn at the foot of the master himself.

Alternatively, he can save Mike Mussina or whoever else might be ineffective from causing every 5th game to be a highly probable loss.

If Rivera goes down, Chamberlain’s there. If Rivera keeps rolling, Chamberlain can help keep is that way by taking some of the load off of him. Keep Mo’s innings and appearances down, and the chances that he’ll last to the end of his contract improve.

So that's the motive. Sacrifice innings pitched for a good young pitcher so that a closer on his last leg has slightly greater odds of pitching out his contract. Because Joba might spell him 5 separate instances throughout the season.

I know it’s a huge sacrifice in the short term to put a potentially great starter in the pen at the age of 22 to be a back-up and an insurance policy. But I’m not sure how smart it is to have three kids in the starting rotation of a team that wants to win – now.

It's smarter to have Mike Mussina, who seems to have lost all his talent in the rotation, than to put in a pitcher who would probably do much better than him. The reason? Because of Joba Chamberlain's age. Having 3 young kids in the rotation destroys your team, regardless of pitching ability. Make a note, GMs.

And before you start asking about how smart it is to sacrifice a potentially great starter to the bullpen, ask yourself where Boston would be without closer Jonathan Papelbon, a highly promising young starter who was forced to the closer role by injury and then chose to stay there.

They're still a team with very good offense and very good starting pitching. Then they have Okajima close, and Manny Declarmen/Brendan Donnelly sets up. Where does that put Boston? If it's not the same place, it's damned close.

It’s the most important job in baseball.

Completely and totally false.

The Yankees got a kid who’s showed he can fill it. Leave him there.

I can't wait to see what you write when Chamberlain puts up a 4.00 ERA over his next 24 innings.