Joba as SP

Joba Chamberlain makes his ninth start today and at this point not many people sans Goose Gossage are questioning the move to make him a starter. He has built up his arm strength to the point he can easily throw 110 pitches per start without a worry. So much of his power comes from his legs a la Roger Clemens (hopefully without the PEDs) that there is little worry about hurting his arm (knock on wood). 

The results have been there too. As a starter he has pitched 41.2 innings with a 2.81 ERA, 46 Ks, 21 BBs and a .245 BAA. He seems to dominate his starts except for one bad (meaning 2-3 ER) inning. If he can learn how to get rid of this inning (often this means not giving up the bloop hit with RISP and 2 outs - see his last Blue Jays start) and make it past the 6th inning (less wasted pitches and maybe pitching to contact more) then he can become a legitimate ace.

On the last parenthetical point, there is obviously a tradeoff between Ks and pitches thrown. SABR guys love pitchers with high K rates as it decreases the probability of lucky hits and illustrates a pitcher's dominance. Still, especially with a bullpen as streaky as the Yankees, at what point should a SP with Joba's stuff start pitching to contact to make it deep into games, especially if he can control the contact (i.e. weakly hit and/or ground balls). Personally I think he should not worry about changing his style, especially at such a young age. If he can continue to keep his K-rate up I would think he should, and hopefully the ability to make it deeper in games will follow.