Well, I guess it’s 5 starts after today’s game against Texas.

From George King III (NY Post):

Joba Chamberlain isn’t wild about the innings limit on his right arm and how it has led to long stretches of inactivity in the second half. But he admits his arm is in very good shape.

“I feel great,” said Chamberlain, who starts tomorrow night against the Rangers at Yankee Stadium. “I feel a lot better at the beginning of the year. It’s a win-win situation for everybody.”

Chamberlain last worked Aug. 16 at Seattle and will be going on eight days rest tomorrow. Chamberlain says he will get six more starts this year and if he averages the 5 2/3innings per start he has in 23 games so far that will get him to 160 2/3 innings for the season. That’s more than the 140-innings set in spring training but a total the Yankees wouldn’t be uncomfortable with.

If the Yankees truly cement their AL East lead as the regular season comes to a close, maybe Joba’s final few starts can be given to someone else so that the team can limit his innings total as much as possible, prior to the playoffs. Perhaps we’ll see Chad Gaudin or Anthony Claggett get a start in, instead. That would seem like a wise decision given that the Yankees face teams like Baltimore, Toronto, Seattle and Kansas City in September (they also face Tampa Bay and Boston). Joba’s cap is influenced by the way the team plays, though, down the stretch.

Last year, I couldn’t help but be a little bit captivated by the whole Rays phenomenon. I was a believer from even before the season started, though I admit to thinking they’d hit some kind of prolonged dry spell some time during the season that they never actually hit. They were an easy team to root for, with their speed, defense and teeming corps of young, exuberant starlets, especially as they took on the purportedly unbeatable Boston Beaneaters.

But you crazy kids had your dream season and enough is enough, right?  Yesterday’s brash prodigy is today’s annoying punk.  I’m sick of these brats and am looking forward to a fresh 2009 without them biting at our heels.  They’re bound to regress, after jumping so many games from 2007, right?  Not according to the NY Times’ Tyler Kepner in this article, here.  He doesn’t go into too much depth, but he, and a growing trend of other pundits, seem to feel that they are for real, and many are predicting a second year of reigning atop the A.L. East.  So what’s the deal?  Are the Rays as good as they were last year (or even better) or are they likely to regress to a good, but probably sub 90 win team?

Offense:

The biggest knock on the Rays is simple: they can’t score runs (supposedly).  Looking at last year’s stats, that’s not necessarily true.  They finished in the middle of the A.L. pack last year in runs scored (ninth), partly due to losing major contributors like Crawford, Navarro, Longoria, and Pena for large chunks of the season (none of them reached 500 ABs).  Moreover, their WOBA was excellent (6th – just behind the Yanks), and their BABIP was a little high (sixth) but not alarmingly so (very comparable w/ the Yankees), so they shouldn’t see a major regression in that area.  If anything, they should be a little better with the bats this year.

I was listening to Friday’s ESPN Baseball Today’s podcast and was less than shocked to discover they had predicted the Yankees to finish third in the A.L. East. Now, I have no problem with anyone picking the Yankees behind Tampa or Boston. They are both tremendous clubs, and I think it’s pretty much a toss up between which of the three mega-powers will emerge from the division. I did have a problem, however, with the ignorant reasoning that went along with their prediction.  There are two specific issues I want to address.

#1: The Yankees were predicted to win 87 or 88 games. What!!!??? This is just sheer lazy thought. All Karabell and Pascarelli had to do was look at the records last year to find that the Yanks won 89 games with 2 decent starters but now, with 5 starters ranging from solid to studly, the Pinstripers will somehow win LESS!? They offer zero explanation for why they will win less games despite substantial upgrades at catcher, first base and each rotation spot.  Additionally, every major statistical projection model in existence has the Yankees winning at least 90+ games, and there’s a good reason for that: these models actually look at statistics!

#2: The Yankees have a shaky bullpen which is much worse than Boston’s. This is more lazy, unprepared commentary that is a typical belief among the media types who don’t bother looking at statistics. One easy glance at the rankings last year will show that the Yanks had the 5th best pen in the A.L. which was two spots BETTER than Boston, despite having to pitch over 60 more innings!!  Anyone with any knowledge of the game will tell you that overextending a bullpen due to poor starting pitching will wreak havoc on bullpen stats, yet the Bombers were a solid fifth despite pitching the third most innings in the A.L.  They’ve also fortified the pen by having Marte and Coke available all year, which should make them among the most versatile relief corps in all of baseball.  Add in probable appearances by young studs like Melancon and Robertson by mid-season and there’s little question that the pen should be better, yet somehow Pascarelli and Karabell insist that it’s sooo much worse than Boston’s?  How does that make any sense?

I would have some sympathy for these guys because they have to cover all of baseball and can’t be expected to have detailed knowledge of the vagaries of every single club, but this wasn’t an off-the-cuff series of answers to some live q & a session.  This was a prepared segment in which they had time to do research in advance.  They knew they were previewing the A.L. East and had plenty of time to take a long look at all the relevant stats, but they clearly did not do so.  These are the clearest and most obvious stats to look at, so they obviously did absolutely no research at all.  They just lazily mailed in their performance without even trying.  Come on guys, I know the podcast is free, but take some pride in your work.

We’ve spent some time delving into the hated Red Sox, but there’s a new kid in town that’s being virtually ignored by most of us who have become so accustomed to the Beantowners being the Big Bad we need to knock off every year. Are the Rays for real, or was last year a fluke? Well, probably the greatest predictor of success (other than being declared “dead” by Chris “Mad Dog” Russo”) is the rotation , so let’s have some fun with the respective starters and compare the two clubs.

For this post, I’m mainly using the CHONE projections as most of the buzz I’ve been hearing lately is that they’re liked slightly better than Marcel. The Bill James projections are generally disliked as being overly optimistic. I’m also going to pair similar pitchers together for better comparison rather than matching them up by their place in the rotation. For example: