Joba Chamberlain

Joba Chamberlain pitched for the New York Yankees from 2007 to 2013, arriving as the most electric relief prospect anyone in the Bronx had seen in years and leaving as a cautionary tale about how fast a career can get complicated. He debuted on August 7, 2007, struck out the first batter he ever faced, and posted a 0.38 ERA over his first two months in the league. Then came the "Joba Rules," a move to the rotation, two brutal injuries, and a decline nobody saw coming that fast. It's one of the stranger arcs in recent Yankees history -- and it started as pure electricity.

Path to the Bronx

Chamberlain grew up in Lincoln, Nebraska, raised largely by his father, Harlan, who'd contracted polio as an infant and got around on a motorized scooter for the rest of his life. Joba pitched at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, helped the Cornhuskers reach the 2005 College World Series, and got drafted 41st overall by the Yankees in 2006 -- a pick the club owned as compensation for losing reliever Tom Gordon to Philadelphia in free agency.

He's also a member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska through his father's side, which made him the second-highest-drafted Native American player in MLB history at the time (Jacoby Ellsbury, drafted 23rd overall by Boston the year before, still sits ahead of him). Barely a year after the draft, he was in the Bronx.

The Setup Man Who Broke the Sport

The debut still holds up as one of the great relief cameos in franchise history. Chamberlain came in for the 8th inning against Toronto on August 7, 2007, struck out Ray Olmedo -- the first hitter he ever faced in the big leagues -- and finished with two scoreless innings in a 9-2 Yankees win. In those 19 appearances that summer, he allowed one earned run in 24 innings. One. The Stadium turned into a different building every time he warmed up.

That's when the "Joba Rules" started -- an informal set of workload restrictions (mandatory rest days scaled to how many innings he'd thrown, no back-to-back outings, hard pitch counts) designed to protect a 22-year-old power arm from overuse. The intent was sound. The execution turned into a running national debate about whether the Yankees were protecting their best young pitcher or slowly strangling him.

The Rotation Experiment

The Yankees spent most of 2008 and all of 2009 trying to answer one question: was Joba a starter or a reliever? He made his first career start on June 3, 2008, went 4-3 with a 2.60 ERA in 12 starts that year, then got stretched out to a full season in the rotation in 2009 -- 31 starts, 157.1 innings, a 9-6 record, and a 4.75 ERA that made clear something had slipped. His fastball, which sat 97-100 as a reliever, settled into the low-90s as a starter.

When October came around in 2009, manager Joe Girardi went to a three-man playoff rotation and simply moved Chamberlain back to the bullpen. He responded with a 2.84 ERA across 10 relief appearances (6.1 IP) and won World Series Game 4 in relief on November 1 -- a 7-4 win over Philadelphia that made him the first Yankee to pick up a relief win in the Series since Sterling Hitchcock in 2001. The Yankees closed out the title two nights later. That postseason answered the starter-or-reliever question for good, even if the front office didn't fully admit it yet.

Bullpen for Good, and Then the Injuries

By 2010, Chamberlain was a full-time reliever again -- 73 appearances, 3 saves, a 4.40 ERA -- setting up in front of Mariano Rivera and David Robertson in what was, for stretches, the best bullpen trio in baseball. Then his body started to give out. He tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow in June 2011 and needed Tommy John surgery, ending that season after just 27 appearances of genuinely good pitching (2.83 ERA).

He was still rehabbing that elbow the following March when he dislocated his ankle jumping on a trampoline with his young son -- an open, compound injury severe enough to require emergency surgery and wipe out most of 2012. It was, in hindsight, a freakin' shame; the guy just wanted to play with his kid. He didn't get back on a big-league mound until August, then closed the year strong in October (2.1 scoreless postseason innings).

By 2013, his final year in pinstripes, the diminished stuff and diminished patience were both showing. In May, Rivera asked him to quiet down during a dugout interview, and Chamberlain snapped back in front of reporters -- the two later said they laughed it off, but it read like a guy running out of runway.

What He Left Behind

Chamberlain finished his Yankees run with a 3.85 ERA over seven seasons and one World Series ring, then signed with Detroit that December and bounced around for a few more years before retiring from the majors in 2016. He never came close to matching that first summer again -- not with the Yankees, not anywhere. That's the part that still stings for anyone who watched 2007 in real time.

But the debate over what went wrong -- whether the Joba Rules protected him or unraveled him, whether the Yankees should've picked a lane sooner -- says as much about the organization's indecision as it does about Chamberlain himself. He didn't become the ace some people projected. For two months in 2007, though, he was the most electric pitcher in baseball, and nobody who was in the Stadium for it needed convincing.