Yankees will rely heavily on three young arms in 2008

The Yankees are looking for Philip Hughes to be the team's No. 3 starter in 2008. AP

By Ted Keith, SI.com

TAMPA, Fla. -- The Yankees may be baseball's Donald Trump, but there's a lot of Tony Robbins to them as well.

After all, no one loves a good fortune cookie slogan like the Bronx Bombers. For proof, one need only consult the walls outside their locker room in the team's George M. Steinbrenner Field spring training complex. They're swallowed by oversized signs proclaiming such aphorisms as "In my mind, there has never been a direct correlation between statistics and the size of a player's heart," and "God willing -- and given the chance -- let me carve my name in something bigger than a clubhouse bench," and the Ralph Waldo Emerson classic, "Do not go where the path may lead. Go where there is no path and leave a trail."

Even though they have trampled the baseball landscape for the better part of a century, the Yankees of 2008 are, nonetheless, going where there is no path; or, if there is one, it has long been untread by them. For the first time in recent memory, the Yankees did not add a big-name, big-money free agent starter in the offseason. They chose instead to entrust their present -- and the team's streak of 13 consecutive postseason appearances -- to a trio of right-handed starters for whom the team's four World Series wins between 1996 and 2000 count as ancient history.

Yet 22-year-old Joba Chamberlain, 21-year-old Phil Hughes and 23-year-old Ian Kennedy may prove to be worth the gamble. As general manager Brian Cashman noted in a quote worthy of wall space, "The hard path is to bet on the future, but that's the path I believe in."

Over the last decade, the Yankees have added a number of high-profile hurlers, including Roger Clemens (1999), Mike Mussina (2001), David Wells ('02), Jose Contreras ('03), Kevin Brown ('04), Randy Johnson ('05) and Andy Pettitte ('07). This offseason they tried to add Johan Santana to this list but failed.

Or did they?

Exercising remarkable and unusual restraint, the Yankees did not overbid for Santana, and the result is that Hughes and Kennedy, two names dangled as potential trade bait, are still in pinstripes. They and Chamberlain are expected to anchor a starting rotation that will be among the youngest in the game, and the biggest indicator yet of the team's youth movement. "It's their positions to lose," says Cashman.

Chamberlain is the closest to a proven commodity, yet he is likely to begin the season in the bullpen, both to ease the burden on an otherwise questionable 'pen and to limit his own workload. Chamberlain, who burst into the major leagues with a scintillating two-month finish to last season, is already a big enough deal that teammate LaTroy Hawkins was seen walking around in a "Joba Rules" T-shirt, an allusion both to Chamberlain's dominating debut in '07 and the unusual law that he had to be given an off-day for every inning pitched.

While Chamberlain's explosive high-90s fastball and darting slider (his only two plus pitches) make for an unbeatable presence on the mound, his fun-loving personality make for an invaluable presence in a clubhouse that is often more boardroom than locker room. He's surely the only member of the team who got nipple rings this winter (when asked why, Chamberlain simply shrugged and said "I was bored).

And no one batted an eye when a pitcher with 24 innings of big league experience entered the clubhouse and strolled lazily toward his locker on Sunday, just minutes before he was scheduled to take the field, still wiping the sleep from his eyes, and said loudly enough for half the room to hear, "Man am I tired. I hit the snooze. You should have seen the size of the drool spot on my pillow."

Chamberlain can be excused such eccentricities because a year ago he left an even bigger mark on the club than that drool spot on his pillow. He went 2-0 with a 0.38 ERA and 34 strikeouts against just six walks and emerged as the team's bridge to closer Mariano Rivera. He enters this spring again targeted for the bullpen, but it's likely he'll be starting before long. "I don't care one way or the other," says Chamberlain. "Not one guy is going to be the difference. I just want to be a part of that puzzle."

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