Joba Chamberlain pitched a perfect 8th in the Yankees 3-1 victory over the Orioles on Tuesday night.

While it wasn’t the most important sequence of the game, Joba has been in crosshairs of Yankee fans recently, especially since his ERA was 5.82 heading into Tuesday’s tussle. Considering our supernatural healing powers lately, we’d like to tell you that you have nothing to fear with Harlan’s son. Joba has been much, much better than his headline numbers suggest.

Check it, check it, check it out.

In 2008, Joba made 30 appearances out of the bullpen. He posted a nice and flashy 2.31 ERA as a reliever (also made 12 starts). Excellent, right? Sure it was. But, when you look at his peripherals out of the pen that season, they’re not much different from this season.

K/9
2008: 11.3
2010: 11.2

K/BB
2008: 3.14
2010: 3.38

BB/9
2008: 3.6
2010: 3.3

HR/9
2008: 0.26
2010: 0.40

So is Joba really worthy of an ERA three points higher than what he registered as a reliever in 2008? We think not.

FIP and xFIP back our assertion up also, 2.33 and 2.93 respectively.

So why the big difference in ERAs?

You could look at batting average on balls hit into play off Joba (BABIP). In 2008, his BABIP was .313. In 2010, it’s a whoppa-whoppa-ding-dong .392! Additionally, his rate of stranding runners is a crazy low 54.1%. Contributing to both of these unusual numbers could be the very strange fact that Joba has seen no batter pop a ball up in the infield. His infield fly ball rate heading into Tuesday’s game was literally zero!

So there you have it. We still have considerable faith in Joba as a key and reliable piece of the Yankees pen. You should too.

Joba Chamberlain
Relax fans, there’s no situation here.

*Props to Louis Winthorpe III for also contributing to this post