There are plenty of rumors floating around in Yankees nation about the possibility of Joba Chamberlain being injured. He had a good start last night, but his velocity is still way down from where it was when he used to pitch out of the bullpen. He’s not consistently in the 90-93 mph range, where he was 98-100 mph as a reliever. It makes sense that he would be pacing himself to go 6 or 7 innings, but I would still expect him to dial it up to 96 or 97 mph to get a strikeout. His top speed in his previous start was just 95 mph, and that was several mph above his average fastball. Can he only dial it up to 95 now?

Joba is averaging about 7 K’s per 9 innings this season, which is down a few strike outs for him. He is also walking more batters. I don’t like the combination of lower fastball speeds and less control. That tells me there might be something wrong with his mechanics or there could be an underlying injury that he’ll have to deal with. Let’s just hope he keeps on making quality starts and he can get through what we hope is a temporary dulling of his skills.

Tags: baseball, injury, joba chamberlain, new york yankees