2009 Yankees: Joba Chamberlain Fell Short of Expectations

Welcome back to the next chapter of 2009 Yankees: The Last Championship - a week-by-week remembrance of the year in which they gave us their most recent World Series title. Today we reflect on the promise Joba Chamberlain represented before some screwy things happened that in effect set him on an unfulfilling path during his time with the Yankees.

TAMPA (July 29, 2009) - It’s too bad that Joba Chamberlain’s time with the Yankees is largely remembered for two things, neither of which were good, neither of which were in his control.

The first, of course, were the infamous “Joba Rules” that were instituted by manager Joe Torre - I’m sure in consultation with the entire Yankees front office, analytical, and medical staffs - for the express purpose of protecting his valuable and talented arm from overuse.

And the second was the night in Cleveland, the eighth inning of Game 2 in the 2007 AL division series, when Chamberlain was attacked on the mound by a swarm of midges and they so wrecked his concentration that he ultimately coughed up a 1-0 lead in a game the Yankees would lose in 11 innings to fall into an 0-2 hole from which they could not escape.

Admit it, that’s what you remember most about Chamberlain’s six-plus years and 260 appearances in pinstripes, during which he went 23-14 with a very respectable 3.85 ERA but not-so-great 1.383 WHIP.

Most likely, you don’t remember much about 2009, the only season in which he was a full-time member of the rotation as he made 31 starts, many of them not great as his 4.75 ERA and brutal 1.583 WHIP would indicate.

However, there was one performance that clearly stood out, without question his best of that season and among the 43 career starts he made for the Yankees.

Chamberlain had been scuffling along through his July 10 outing against the Angels, but in his next three starts he was as good as he’d ever been, maybe as good as he ever was, period. In succession he beat the Tigers, A’s and Rays and across his 21.2 innings his ERA was 0.83 and batters hit just .114 against him.

The performance against the Rays was the best of the bunch, eight scoreless innings at Tropicana Field as the Yankees earned a 6-2 victory to take a series and increase their lead in the AL East to 3.5 games over the Red Sox and 7.5 over the Rays. The only other game that even came close for Chamberlain was almost exactly one year earlier on July 25, 2008, when he threw seven three-hit shutout innings at Fenway Park to beat Boston 1-0.

“Today was, in my opinion, the best he’s been all year,” Derek Jeter said. “He was working quick, throwing strikes, not throwing too many pitches. He was easy to play behind.”

Added Mark Teixeira, who smacked one of three home runs to support Chamberlain, “He’s growing up before our eyes. I love seeing the progress he’s made. You hope that a young kid like that keeps getting better, and I think that’s what we’re seeing.”

This performance came on the eve of the MLB trade deadline, and it was known that the Yankees were actively pursuing Roy Halladay, but the deal never went through because the Blue Jays insisted that Chamberlain be part of a hefty package going back to Toronto and the Yankees said no.

That was quite a statement of confidence in Chamberlain, and it was almost like a sigh of relief that he was letting out when he took the mound in Tampa because he was told he wasn’t going anywhere.

“This is the best organization to play for, and hopefully I’m here for a long time,” Chamberlain said. “I have that comfort in knowing every time I go out, I give them everything I’ve got, and I think they recognize that.”

It’s just a shame that Chamberlain never developed into the top-of-the-rotation guy the Yankees had hoped for. They had selected the hard-throwing right-hander in the first round of the 2006 draft and they wanted to protect his explosive arm at all costs when he joined the organization, which led to what became know in the media as the “Joba Rules.”

Essentially, they stated Chamberlain would get one day off for every inning he pitched when he came up to the Yankees as a reliever in August 2007. That meant if he pitched one inning, he couldn’t pitch the next day, and if he pitched two innings, he couldn’t pitch for two days. At the same time, he would never be used for longer than two innings in any game.

“That’s in stone,” Torre said when he explained the philosophy soon after Chamberlain debuted. “That’s basically to protect the future of the kid. I’m really not of a mind to bend them, because I don’t disagree with them. Whether that’s overly cautious, if that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is. When you know going in, it’s not a guessing game.”

In retrospect, the whole thing was pretty stupid. There was no harm in easing him into big league life, but the Yankees were way too protective and ultimately, it did not help Chamberlain in any way and probably stunted his early growth. Rather than build him up to become a starter, he never started another game for the Yankees after 2009, nor for the Tigers, Royals and Indians before he retired in 2016 at the age of 30.

Even in 2009, the “Joba Rules” were in place, adjusted for his starters’ role, and he pitched only 157.1 innings because the team capped him at 160. There were several starts, especially in September, when he was pulled after only three or four innings to make sure he stayed under 160, and then in the postseason he was used as a bullpen option.

The Washington Nationals did the same thing to 2010 No. 1 overall draft pick Stephen Strasburg. Those were the “Strasburg Rules” and in 2012, his first full season, they literally shut him down when he reached 160 innings on Sept. 7 and he never pitched again that year, sitting out Washington’s trip to the NL division series where it lost to St. Louis.

Former Yankees pitcher Tommy John was contacted for comment by the Washington Post in August 2012 when it was clear what was going to happen with Strasburg, and he said, “There’s no guarantee that you’re shutting Strasburg down, that he’s going to be healthy down the road.”

John then referenced the Yankees and Chamberlain, saying, “The Yankees screwed Joba Chamberlain over. I mean, this poor kid has had all kinds of problems and they had Joba Rules. It didn’t help him a bit. And he still had to have Tommy John surgery (midway through 2011).”

The “Joba Rules” likely affected his entire career, and some would say the midges that night in Cleveland had a lasting effect on Chamberlain because he was so bothered by how he reacted and how it threw him out of rhythm.

Even with his truncated usage when he first came up in 2007, Chamberlain dazzled Yankees fans as he was used 19 times in relief and gave up just one earned run in 24 innings to earn a spot on Torre’s postseason roster.

In his first appearance against the Indians, he entered in the bottom of the seventh when Andy Pettitte, working on a shutout, got into a first-and-second jam. Chamberlain promptly put the fire out by whiffing Franklin Gutierrez on three pitches and inducing a Casey Blake fly to right.

But then in the eighth, chaos ensued. With the midges buzzing all around his head, he issued a leadoff walk, then threw a wild pitch. Time was called and Yankees trainer Gene Monahan came out and doused him in bug spray but that only made it worse. He managed to record two outs, but then a wild pitch plated the tying run, he hit a batter and walked another before finally getting out of the inning.

It was such a randomly bizarre thing as the mosquito-like flies descended from nearby Lake Erie - pushed toward Jacobs Field because of a change in the wind pattern plus the unusually warm and muggy October air that night - and seemed to all gather on Chamberlain’s neck and face as he prepared to pitch the eighth inning.

“I just remember Joba grabbing the back of his neck to wipe off sweat and his hand was black, full of bugs,” Doug Mientkiewicz, who was the Yankees first baseman, told The Ringer a few years ago. “You try to block it out, but they were so thick that every breath you took, you’d either inhale them through your mouth or through your nose.”

The Ringer also asked Roger Clemens about it. He was sitting in the dugout and he knew how difficult it was for Chamberlain. “It was just impossible to focus on throwing strikes,” he said. “It should have been treated as a rain delay.”

Years after the incident, Torre regretted not calling for the game to be stopped while the midges were creating havoc.

“I second guessed myself for not pulling the team off the field,’’ Torre recalled. “Joba was on the mound and he looked right at me and I knew he couldn’t see. We sent Gino to the mound and little did we know that the stuff Gino was spraying on Joba’s face was like chateaubriand for those bugs.’’

Here’s how the rest of Week 16 went for the Yankees:

• July 27: The Yankees opened a three-game set in Tampa with an 11-4 blowout as Nick Swisher hit a pair of home runs and drove in three, Johnny Damon had three RBI and scored twice, and Robinson Cano hit a solo homer. A.J. Burnett was masterful, giving up just one run on two hits in seven innings to win his 10th game.

• July 28: The Rays took the middle game by roughing up CC Sabathia for six runs on nine hits inside six innings of a 6-2 victory.

• July 30: The Yankees went to Chicago for four against the White Sox and things did not go well on the South side of Chicago as they dropped the first three before avoiding the sweep. In the opener, after tying the game in the top of the ninth on Swisher’s two-out solo homer, the Sox walked it off 3-2 as Phil Hughes allowed two singles and then Phil Coke gave up the winning single to Dewayne Wise.

• July 31: The Yankees jumped to a 3-0 lead but Sergio Mitre gave all of that back and then some by the third inning. Eric Hinske tied it at 5-5 with a two-run homer in the fourth, but the Sox regained the lead against David Robertson, then tacked on four runs against Alfredo Aceves in the seventh for a 10-5 victory.

• Aug. 1: A gruesome day as Chicago banged out 17 hits - none of them home runs - during a 14-4 blowout with A.J. Burnett giving up the first seven runs and Coke getting blasted for six runs in the eighth.

• Aug. 2: The Yankees salvaged the finale 8-5 which enabled them to stay a half-game ahead of the Red Sox. Sabathia wasn’t great as he gave up five runs on 10 hits, but the Yankees routed Mark Buehrle for seven runs on 12 hits inside five innings, the big blows a three-run homer by Melky Cabrera in the second, and a single by Cabrera in the fifth that made it 6-4, part of a four-hit, four RBI day for him.

NEXT SATURDAY: After eight consecutive losses to the Red Sox, the Yankees broke through in a major way as they swept a four-game series in the Bronx and extended their lead over Boston in the AL East to 6.5 games.