---

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Joba Just Makes Me Happy

-Joba Chamberlain had, arguably, the best performance of his pro career last night. Chamberlain dominated hitters with his fastball, curveball, slider, and even the change. On most nights, Chamberlain can work with 2 or so of those pitches and he’ll be fine, but on this night, with all them going it was unfair. There was no point in the game where it seemed like the opposition had a shot and Chamberlain might have even had a higher K total had the strike zone been just a bit more favorable. I mentioned this on John Sickels’ site tonight, but Joba is an impressive guy to observe. His fastball is TREMENDOUS and if he’s commanding it and the rest of his stuff is even ok, he can dominate rather easily.

-I mentioned this in the Liveblog, but it needs to be repeated, Phil Hughes’ first minor league rehab start will be this Monday. That means he should be back by the last week of July, which means no more Kei Igawa in the rotation.

-Jose Tabata was 4 for 6 with a double. I don’t know if he just got healthy from his cyst issue or if he just decided to turn it on, but Tabata has been excellent at the plate as of late. Tabata has 16 XBH in 285 ABs, but 7 of those are in his last 93 ABs.