I understand the Yankees thinking. They’re tired of old and overpriced starters like Kevin Brown and Randy Johnson who are no longer reliable and spend too much time on the disabled list. Going into this season, they have two old-timers — Mike Mussina, whose effectiveness has been declining, and Andy Pettitte, still a premier left-hander. The rest of the starting rotation will be Chien-Ming Wang, Hughes and Kennedy. Chamberlain is supposed to be there to step in when someone gets injured or proves ineffective.

The bullpen needs him from the get-go. Rivera is the one reliable arm out there, with the mercurial Kyle Farnsworth as his set-up man. After him is LaTroy Hawkins, signed from the Rockies in the off-season, who returned the favor by signing the Yankees’ reliever Lius Vizcaino.

And that’s about it for the Yankee pen. Oh, there’ll be plenty of bodies out there and there’ll be plenty of people who’ll get to try out in camp, but the pen was thin last year and it’s not really better this year. It’s not nearly enough, especially if anything happens to Rivera.

As long as Chamberlain is starting the year in the bullpen, why not keep him there? He can set up and he can save Rivera from having to pitch in back-to-back games or in three games in four days. And he can learn at the foot of the master himself.

If Rivera goes down, Chamberlain’s there. If Rivera keeps rolling, Chamberlain can help keep is that way by taking some of the load off of him. Keep Mo’s innings and appearances down, and the chances that he’ll last to the end of his contract improve.

I know it’s a huge sacrifice in the short term to put a potentially great starter in the pen at the age of 22 to be a back-up and an insurance policy. But I’m not sure how smart it is to have three kids in the starting rotation of a team that wants to win – now.

And before you start asking about how smart it is to sacrifice a potentially great starter to the bullpen, ask yourself where Boston would be without closer Jonathan Papelbon, a highly promising young starter who was forced to the closer role by injury and then chose to stay there.

It’s the most important job in baseball. The Yankees got a kid who’s showed he can fill it. Leave him there.

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