Time To Trade Joba

Can we be honest for a minute?

Clearly, both the Yankee braintrust and Joba himself are delusional. As an example, Joba actually believes he " had it going" yesterday.

Joba has been made into a basket case. He was originally a surprising and exceptional gift to the Yankees with obvious, dominating skills as a set-up guy and potential closer.

And a key principle of this baseball thing is you take advantage of obvious player strengths. His strength could not have been more clear to the entire world, excepting the brilliant talent evaluators on the Yankees.

But some committee of jamokes, and I include Joba in this category, somehow
"committed" that Joba, despite evidence to the contrary, must be a starter.

He has endurance ; four pitches ; upper nineties on his fastball; low nineties on his slider.
And he did display these skills as a set-up guy.

But the Yankees determined that he has to be a starter. So now he starts
in " middle relief mode" and rarely gets out of the third inning.

The fact that Chad Gaudin, who was bagging groceries two months ago, is far better seems to not register on these brilliant Yankee minds.

So Joba gets 3 innings or 106 pitches, whichever comes first. Lately, those measurements also come with an ERA between 9.00 and a clean 27.0 He can't get a third strike on anyone. He walks people. He often goes from 0-2 on the number 8 hitter into a 12 pitch at bat.

And now he appears to have mastered the art of the " three run dinger." One or two of the pitches that got away from him and put us down 7 runs early.

It is always better to trade a player a year ( or, in this case, a decade ) early, than a year or a day too late.

In my opinion, Joba has been ruined and I don't think he will get up again. You can see it in his eyes. He needs a shot and a beer more than he needs another 3 inning gig as a starter.

Hopefully, not every team knows that yet.

Maybe we could get another Andy Brackman for our Charleston club. Or another Sanchez.

I've reached the point where I'd rather let Ian Kennedy pitch.

And you know what that means.