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I'm going to make a statement. It may not be a popular one, but here goes. Joba Chamberlain should go back to being a setup man. I also want to end the statement by saying that if Joe Girardi and Dave Eiland believe that making him a starter is the best thing to do, I would have confidence in their decision because they're closer to it than anyone else.

I just think this move puts an a lot of pressure on Chamberlain. At this point, the risk is larger than the reward. I think that point holds true if a starter has less than 400 innings pitched in the Minor Leagues as a starter. This depth of experience strengthens the arm, toughens up a pitcher mentally and teaches the craft of pitching before these young pitchers can even throw a ball to Major League hitters. Joba throwing only 88.1 innings of Minor League baseball in 15 starts throws up a red flag and is disconcerting.

Again, if a guy hasn't pitched four or five hundred innings in the Minor Leagues as a starter and become acclimated to the routine of being a starter, then I'm going back to my comment that the risk is greater than the reward.

For someone as young and inexperienced as Joba is on the Major League level, the stuff that he has is much more comfortable for him to pitch as a reliever because you come to the park everyday almost like an everyday player. You might get in the game tonight, particularly if your team is winning, but there's not that build up of pressure that there is for a starter thinking ahead. The sensible thing is to send a young pitcher to the Minor Leagues and give him at least five starts. It's not pressure enough that this 22-year-old is starting on the biggest stage in the Majors, but now he has four days to think about it, one day to perform, and if you pitch poorly you have four more days to wait again.

As a reliever you come in spur of the moment. You don't have time to get nervous. Maybe you don't always do it, but you're going to be out there again in a couple of days. I just think it puts a whole lot more pressure on young talent. That's what 400 innings down in the Minors gives these players. It gives them a chance to gain mental toughness for pressure situations; it allows a young pitcher to gain a routine.

You're telling me at 15 Minor League starts and just about 90 innings, Joba might be a prodigy, a phenom in fact? He might be able to do it, but I think it's asking an awful lot of him. There's a routine of knowing how much to throw between starts, how to warm up properly and not waste it all out in the bullpen. Maybe they feel Joba is capable of doing that. I just think it would have been a much more sensible route to send him to Triple-A Scranton or Double-A Trenton.

Just look at it this way, would you want someone to be named the CEO of a company if that person has little or no background training for the big stage? The answer most certainly is no. Then why would you do that to a 22-year-old whose only experience on the big stage has been a one inning reliever?

With the Summer Olympics coming up, here is another analogy: A reliever is like a sprinter. They come out, get their adrenaline flowing to face one or two innings' worth of batters and try and get them out as quickly as possible. Conversely, a starter has to have the mentality of being a marathon runner. How long do you think it would take Michael Johnson, Carl Lewis and Maurice Greene to be retrained in being the best long distance runner in the world? It's just a very different mindset.

Another reason why the Yankees should keep him in the bullpen is because that was the strength of their ballclub. In 1982, my manager was Whitey Herzog when I was on the championship Cardinals team. Whitey told us that he wanted to build his pitching staff with solid starters, but he really wanted to build the staff from the ninth inning back; make the starters set-up men for the shut-down relievers that would close out the game. That was kind of revolutionary, and the model of how they do it today. He went out and got Hall of Fame closer Bruce Sutter, and I was fortunate to be a part of that bullpen. I was a lefty-lefty specialist. We won the World Series that year, and we had a strong core of guys at the end of the game. We all knew what to do, and we were all were pretty good at doing it. That was a strong part of our team.

That's what I felt that Yankees had going for them if they got Ross Ohlendorf, Edwar Ramirez, Jose Veras, LaTroy Hawkins and Kyle Farnsworth going. If they got a couple of these guys to step up and then hand the ball off to Joba and Mariano Rivera, they would have that core at the end of the game that you need for success. So even if he's successful as a starter, I still think they have to find a way to replace Joba at the end of the game.

This move is definitely a gamble. If it works out, the Yankees look like geniuses, but if it doesn't, it not only is an unsuccessful move, but you can really hurt that pitcher's mental state for a very long time.

Minnesota Baseball Outdoors — Baseball Concerns
In 2010, the Minnesota Twins will open their new stadium without a dome or retractable roof. When I started my career, I played in Minnesota in the outdoor venue of Metropolitan Stadium. The weather elements were definitely tough to deal with in April and if we made it to October. However, having an outdoor stadium in Minnesota does not concern me anymore than when the powers that be at Major League Baseball started World Series games in Boston at 8:30 at night in late October. It's just another example baseball's spinelessness when it comes to standing up to the networks and saying, "Look, this is not good for the quality of the game. We're not going to play games this late at night."

They need more of the Augusta National approach where they say, "We got a special product here and if you want to televise it this is when we're going to play."

Greed is not going to allow them to do that. I think they're going to have the same weather concerns that we saw earlier this year.

I saw an ESPN Sunday night baseball game where guys couldn't grip the ball; it's ridiculous to ask them to play it in those conditions. I think the only key when you're playing in Minnesota or Boston, even in New York on occasion with bad weather in April and October, is that you should be playing games during the day. The game wasn't made to be played in those months at night. I don't think it's going to be any more difficult to do it in Minnesota than in is in Boston, or maybe Chicago. I've played in and broadcasted many a game in Chicago earlier in the year, where it's been 38 degrees, and you say what in the world are we doing playing baseball here? That would be the key: if baseball could ever get sensible enough and start to play day games in April and September.

So when it comes down to it, I know there has been some concern throughout the league that baseball is going to be played in Minnesota outdoors, but I don't think it will be any worse than an April, September or October game at night in markets like Chicago, New York or Boston.