Is Joba worth the risk?

There’s no denying Joba Chamberlain’s ability.

He posted tremendous numbers this season: in 100 innings (65 as a starter), he struck out 118, walked 39, and allowed only 5 homers, good for an ERA of 2.60 (and a FIP of 2.65). Of course, next season the Yankees plan on using him as a starter. What should you expect?

Well, in his 65 innings as a starter, Joba had a K/BB ratio of 74/25, and allowed only four homers. He has tremendous stuff and has shown the ability to maintain his stuff deep into games, suggesting that the numbers he posted during his starts this year could be indicative of his true ability. In other words: yeah, he’s this good.

Given 200 healthy innings, Joba is a decent bet to have the highest strikeout rate of any AL starter. He will probably walk a fair amount too, but will get so many strikeouts that he will limit the balls put in play, and thus limit the amount of hits he allows. Furthermore, Joba has shown the ability to induce a lot of ground balls – 52% of his balls in play were grounders this year – thereby helping him limit the amount of homers he allows. In fact, Joba’s combination of a high number of strikeouts and a high number of ground balls suggests that he may not allow more than 10-15 homers over 200 innings.
Thus, over 200 healthy innings, it’s fair to say that Joba could be one of the best pitchers in the American Leaugue – and one of the best pitchers in fantasy baseball as well. Of course, the real question is: can Joba stay healthy for 200 innings?

And the simplest answer is: probably not.

Joba pitched in 100 innings this year and 112 in 2007. He has battled numerous issues during his short professional career, and the Yankees have handled him with great care. I expect that to ease up somewhat next season. While the Yankees are unlikely to be reckless with their star righty, I think that they are going to let him loose on the AL, and basically hope he holds up. They are likely to put him in the starting rotation on opening day and keep him there fore the whole season. They will certainly monitor his health and his innings count closely, but they probably won’t be sending him to the bullpen any time soon.

It’s quite possible that Joba ends up on the DL at some point during the year – the Yankees will surely take precautionary measures if Joba feels a twinge anywhere, and a stint on the DL could also help keep his innings total under control.

Whether you should draft Joba is going to depend almost entirely on how other people value him. It’s possible that people will get enamored with his upside and ignore the significant risk, causing them to take Joba too early in drafts, or pay too much money for him. But it’s equally possible (and perhaps more likely) that the opposite happens: people think he’s simply too risky, and he slides to the middle/middle-late rounds of the draft. If this happens, you should snatch him.

You probably don’t want your pitching staff hinging on Joba Chamberlain. If you do decide to draft him, you’ll probably want to couple him with some very-low-risk, medium reward pitchers such as Scott Baker, Kevin Slowey, or even a guy like Andy Sonnanstine. You want to hedge the inevitable risk associated with Joba, so that if he does get hurt you don’t have the worst pitching staff in the league. However, a pitching staff with a few low risk guys who only offer medium reward, coupled with one or two high-risk high-reward guys like Chamberlain makes a lot of sense.

I’m usually extremely wary of pitchers who are injury risks. The thing is, there are very, very few pitchers who can be as good as Joba Chamberlain is when he’s healthy. Even if Joba only pitches 120 or 140 innings this year, those innings are likely going to be so dominant as to make him quite valuable. And if he is able to approach 180 innings (or more), he could be the best pitcher in fantasy baseball. That’s a risk worth taking.