Okay, all this talk about the Joba Rules is getting silly. Michael Kay and Al Leiter had a spat on-air with Leiter saying, hey, they're guidelines and anything can happen depending on where the team is at and Kay acting as if Leiter suggested the Yankees were going to start a dogfighting ring -- no, absolutely not, these are the RULES and no one is ever going to break them.
Torre is now adding to the silliness, telling the NY Daily News in response to the questions about one inning = one day off that "I'm not syaing it won't change; I don't know that. That's for somebody else to tell me. I'm not going to make that suggestion, because I don't know as much about the physical aspect of pitching as [Yankees pitching coordinator Nardi] Contreras does. If they choose to make an adjustment, so be it."
Did you catch that? Torre is acting as if his hands are tied by the pitching coordinator -- a position so lowly, most people couldn't name the guy doing it. Section 39 bleacher fans say that is absurd. He's the manager and any suggestions by anyone else are just that -- suggestions. He may choose to stick to those suggestions, but he makes the final call. And I'm sorry, but if it's the last game of the season and a win takes us to the post-season and Joba pitched the day before, Torre will bring him in if necessary. If he doesn't, he's not doing his job. We're not talking about blowing out a guy's arm and ending his career, we're talking about turning guidelines into commandments and pretending that the manager isn't in charge.
NOTE: Steve B, a Yankee fan with a Sunday package, just asked, if the rule is that he rests a day for evey inning he pitches, does that mean Joba only pitches once every 6 or 7 days?
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4 comments:
With the transition, albeit short term, to reliever the Yanks are resting Joba 1 day for each inning of relief work. If he were still in his routine of starting he would go every fifth day. They are just overly concerned about the effects on Joba's arm due to changing his routine and the realistic hopes of his future production in our rotation. If the Yanks were this cautious with him at Scranton no one would care, but since they're doing it at the big league level everyone is getting worked up. With a player like Joba, development is much more important than winning a game so the problem is that we need to win games and we want to develop Joba at the same time.
Who cares? Kyle Farnsworth rules!!!
Yep, isn't it time to rethink getting rid of Farnsworth? And I'm DELIGHTED the Yankees are treating Joba with kid gloves. But for Torre to act as if it's out of his hands is stupid. And if it DOES come down to the final game of the season (or a sudden-death play-off) and you could use Joba but he's "supposed" to have that day off (but, say, be available the next) then the "rules" will go out the window without damaging his long-term development. They are smart, reasonable precautions. They are not commandments handed down by God. And Torre has no business acting as if it's out of his control because its not. I;m not objecting to the procedure; I;m objecting to how they're portraying it.
Joba's birth name was Justin, but his sister couldn't pronounce it and it came out as Joba. I think that will be the new nickname I use for my Justin as well!
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