Its all about the desire to be great. You can be George W. Bush and try and make the world a better place and run the risk of completely flaming out or you can be George H.W. Bush and be competent and decent and have mediocre results as your legacy, but hey, at least you never risked flying too high and getting burned. The Yankees used to embody greatness. Joba is the Promethean spirit personified. If you can’t take the responsibility for that potential just stop trying altogether.

I just wrote this over on Jason’s site, but it applies here too, so I’m cross-posting:

My favorite part of the article is when Matthews opines, “Greater baseball minds than mine have analyzed this situation at great length and determined that Joba for the first six innings every five days is better than Joba out of the bullpen five times a week.” Five times a week? FIVE TIMES A WEEK? FIVE…TIMES…A…WEEK???

You know, because the best way to keep a young, hard-throwing pitcher with a history of arm trouble out on the mound FIVE DAYS A WEEK. Teams usually play six game a week, so that would put Joba on track to appear in somewhere close to 135 games. Good idea, Wallace. As a Twins fan, I heartily endorse your plan.

However, if by some miracle Joba was able to pitch 135 games with little to no additional risk to his long-term health, I’d say this would be an incredibly efficient use of his talents. Again, I encourage the Yankees to try it.

http://www.the-common-man.com

I’m still not sure Joba’s place, given his arm troubles, is in the rotation, but I won’t disagree he’s more “valuable” as a starter. Starters are much more valuable than relievers. Still, just because he’s more “valuable” as a starter, it doesn’t mean the best decision is to make him one. We’ll just have to wait and see, but I think the Yankees are taking the right approach.

In a meta sense, Joba would be more valuable as a starter. But the real question is whether he would, over the next 5 years or so, be more valuable relative to the average starter than he would relative to the average reliever.

To me, its merely a matter of health. If the Yanks are confident he can stay healthy as a starter, that is by far his best role. As long as teams are putting guys like Sidney Ponson in the rotation, a good starter will always have far more value, because teams can find good bullpen guys all over the place if they look hard enough.