James Carr’s Next: Joba Chamberlain

A new age is rapidly approaching in today’s game of baseball: rookies are taking over. For several teams – the Braves and the Marlins being the main examples – the farm system has always been an intricate part of success. However, you know it’s becoming a new era when the Yankees and Red Sox start hopping on board and invest heavily in scouting and developing young talent. In honor of this new era in major league baseball,
I will attempt to inform you of several rookies who should make an impact on your team in the near future over the course of this season.

To kick off this phenomenal idea, I must, of course, start with my personal favorite: Joba Chamberlain.

Joba (pronounced like the Star Wars character) is a pitcher for the New York Yankees. He was drafted 41^st overall in 2006 in the supplementary round* – not to be confused with the first round – and made it all the way to the Majors in his first season as a professional, making his debut on August 7^th out of the bullpen.

Joba had been a starter throughout his career until last season when the Yankees greatly needed bullpen help. Joba’s fastball and electric slider made him a solid candidate to switch to the bullpen where he found immediate success. As a starter, Joba’s fastball clocked in around 95-96 miles per hour. Coming out of the bullpen, Joba has been clocked as high as 100-101mph. In his major league career, Joba has only allowed one earned run. He has stuck out 38 batters in just 28 innings. His ERA is around .32.

The long term plans are for Joba to feature in the starting rotation. While his slider and fastball are his main weapons, Joba also has a major league ready curveball (just ask Dusty Pedroia) and is developing his changeup. The reason Joba is currently in the bullpen is to protect his valuable arm. The Yankees don’t want to hurt his golden arm and have placed him under an innings limit of around 150 innings this season. As a starter, Joba would hit this limit mid-season and would be forced to sit the rest of the year. With Joba in the ‘pen, he will pitch less innings for the first half of the season at which point he will return to the starting rotation and finish out the season there.

Joba was ESPN’s pick for “Next” where they choose one athlete who they think will take over sports in the near future. He’s my pick for “the second coming of Jesus” but I’m slightly impartial.

K’s: Joba is a very emotional character who gets fired up when striking out a batter. He is a Winnebago Indian and last year made history when he faced fellow Native American Jacoby Ellsberry (coming soon) as no two Natives had ever faced each other. Joba won the College World Series with Nebraska in 2005. Joba’s real name is Justin but is called Joba after his neice had difficulty pronouncing “Justin”. Joba is the father of his two-year-old son, Karter.

*The supplementary round is also known as the “sandwich round” because it is a round between the first and second. Teams only have picks in this round if a player from their team went and signed for another team. The Yankees got this pick from the Phillies when they signed Tom Gordon.

This is Joba vs. Dusty Pedroia to clarify what I referred to earlier. Sorry for the extremely high quality…

This is Joba’s intensity. This stemmed from an opening day strikeout against Frank Thomas to end the 8th inning.