Live Blogging: Joba-Mania!

Listen, there was a lot of talk on the airwaves today about this start tonight, and a lot of people echoed a similar sentiment: Strikeout pitchers don't get a ton of ground outs - especially young ones - and a lot of missed bats also means a lot of pitches thrown. Joba complicated matters for himself tonight by missing bats and missing the strike zone as well, and as a result he couldn't make it out of the second inning. Is it a disaster? A failure? Of course not. However tonight's results lend a lot of credence to the argument that the Yanks panicked a bit by moving Joba to the rotation too quickly. The Yanks were already dealing with a dicey proposition when they decided to stretch out their stud righthander mid-season, so the decision to rush the process is a bit of a head scratcher to me. Yes, Ian Kennedy's injury created a hole, but did Joba Chamberlain have to fill it? Wouldn't the Yanks have been better served by allowing Joba to stretch out his arm comfortably in a bullpen role until the team felt confident he was ready to go 5 innings and throw 90-100 pitches? What purpose was actually served today by watching Joba struggle through a 37-pitch first inning and bringing in Dan Giese one-third into the second? I guess that's why they don't let me make the big decisions… Something tells us Joba Chamberlain is about to discover a lot of the peaks and valleys of life in the majors that guys like Mike Pelfrey, Ian Kennedy, and Phil Hughes know all too well.