By David Gibb

Few would argue that Joba Chamberlain is a key piece of the Yankees’ future. Chamberlain has the build, the stuff, and the toughness to be a front-of-the-rotation pitcher for many years to come, even in the hard-hitting American League Eastern Division. Joba dominated the league in his debut season, allowing only one earned run in 24 regular season innings. He is a stud, a beast capable of mowing down the opposition, and yet the New York Post reported on Tuesday that the Yankees will continue to handle him with kid gloves.

Barring injury or an unusually rough spring, Chamberlain will start the season where he left off last year: setting up Mariano Rivera. This is a curious move as the 22-year-old bulldog projects as a starter, and one has to ask “will this stunt his growth?” The Yankee organization insists that his arm must be protected and have instituted an innings limit as hard-and-fast as it is secretive (many experts estimate the limit at 140). However, the Yankee plan is intuitively backwards.

As it stands, Chamberlain would open the season in the big league bullpen, then go down to the minors in June to prepare himself to start for the Yankees down the stretch. The plan would make sense if wins in August were somehow more meaningful than wins in April, but all baseball fans know that that simply is not the case. Also, from an arm-protecting perspective, a pitcher is far more susceptible to injury or fatigue if his innings are drastically increased as the season progresses. Were Joba to open the season as a starter, gradually reducing his innings would reduce wear and tear, allowing him to give his all in short, one-inning bursts.

Another factor the Yankees have failed to consider: Joe Girardi. Unlike Joe Torre, who prematurely exploded more arms than a U.N. weapons inspection team, Girardi has been praised for his handling of young pitchers, particularly in his year as the Marlins’ manager, in which he won the 2006 NL Manager of the Year Award. Throughout his playing career as a big league catcher, Girardi was known for having an uncanny ability to understand pitchers’ body language and dissect their thoughts and feelings, even when they were unwilling to share them. All these factors make Girardi the perfect man to manage a pitcher like Chamberlain.

The Yankees are simply being overprotective because during the reign of George Steinbrenner, they forgot as an organization how to raise young pitchers. Other teams give far more freedom to their young pitchers, giving them a chance to prove themselves and build confidence at the highest level. Chamberlain is going to be a star, no question, but the Yankees need to stop slowing his ascent.