The Yankees front office said it was going to happen, but you had to hope it wouldn’t. Joba is officially back in the bullpen as anyone with eyes saw last night. Is it permanent? No. It even makes sense given that the Minor League seasons are pretty much over so he wouldn’t be able to stretch his arm out down there, but it does have a few repercussions:
- Joba is not going to hit his innings limit for the year, unless he gets sent to the Arizona Fall League, which means his limit for next year doesn’t go up.
- Joba’s inning limit next year not going up means he’ll probably start out of the bullpen again and the whole stupid “Joba should be the next Mariano!!” discussion will happen again.
- Coming out of the bullpen, Joba is likely going to be fastball/slider only which means he won’t be working on his curveball and changeup. And they need work.
With Dan Giese activated, I think a better way to approach this would have been exactly what they did before and stretch him out in MLB. If you boot Ponson or Rasner out of the rotation, and insert a Joba/Giese (or Alfredo Aceves or Phil Coke or someone) tandem in you’re probably getting a better start out of that then either of them. And if this team is trying to stay in the mix then Ponson really needs to be tossed into the river because he is simply awful. Rasner is a 5th starter and you can’t expect too much out of him (and you should also yank him out of games at the first sign of trouble after the 5th but that’s a diatribe for another time). He also tends to give the team better performances than Ponson as insane as that might sound. I just don’t understand how anyone can justify Ponson staying in the rotation when a combination of me and my cats could put together a start on the same level.
Windy with a chance of dingers.