Joba the Starter

by jscape2000 on Jun 14, 2008 10:23 AM EDT in New York Yankees Analysis

Chamberlain could summon such heat when he needed it, but his greater reliance on a sinker helped induce contact and conserve pitches.

Chamberlain, who left for a pinch-hitter in the seventh, said he worked on the sinker with Chien-Ming Wang last spring, when both were coming back from injuries.

Chamberlain guessed that he threw 10 sinkers on Friday.

“It’s actually something I felt really comfortable with, obviously, from how many times I threw it tonight,” he said. “It gives me a different speed variation.”

I remember him toying with it in Spring Training, but this articles says that he'd been playing with it longer than that. I didn't honestly think he'd break it out this season. For those of you keeping score at home, that's 5 pitches. 5 quality pitches.

It seems that Joba was giving Pf/x a lot of trouble.

He threw a pitch 90-93 with 6" of break, and Pf/x alternates between calling it a fastball and a change up. I'm betting that's the sinker.
He regularly throws his curve in the mid-70s with 14" of break, but Pf/x mislabeled a few changeups (mid-80s, 10" break) as curves (2 in the third, 1 in the 5th). Could these have been ridiculously slow and mobile sinkers? It brings the count closer to the ten he mentions in the Times.
His straight fastball came in 94-98 with 4" break.
His longest AB of the night was a 9 pitcher affair with Kaz Matsui in which Joba threw 6 breaking balls.
Joba recorded an out on 3 pitches or less for 11 of his 18 outs. That is efficiency.

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Comments

unbelievable

Moving Joba to the rotation just looks better and better each week. It will look like sheer mad genius when Melancon comes up and owns the eighth inning. Any news on the Melancon front?

by nitlion007 on Jun 14, 2008 12:20 PM EDT reply actions

Nope

But he’s not long for Trenton. He’ll likely pitch two innings tonight.

by anaconda on Jun 14, 2008 12:30 PM EDT up reply actions

Re: Joba's sinker

I think Joba’s sinker is going to help him in other big ways besides pitching to contact and ground balls.

A two-seamer that hovers around the 90-92 MPH is going to make his slider that much more effective because he often throws it in the upper 80s. Hitters won’t be able to recognize one pitch from the other and will likely get even more strikeouts with that hard slider down in the dirt.

It really adds another weapon to his arsenal and he’ll be so much more effective because of it.

But hey, really, he should have remained in the bullpen.

by anaconda on Jun 14, 2008 12:38 PM EDT reply actions

Re: strikeouts

It depends on how he uses it.

If he throws it early in counts to induce contact, and switches to his other pitches only deeper in counts or when the sinker isn’t working, then I think that it will cut down on the Ks. If he mixes it in evenly with his other pitches, then yes, it might produce more Ks.

If he threw it 10 times last night, then it probably ranked 3rd or 4th among his pitches. With Pf/x having trouble IDing his pitches, I didn’t keep a tally of how many of each he threw.

"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."

by jscape2000 on Jun 14, 2008 12:52 PM EDT up reply actions