Tuesday night was an example. Going into top of the seventh, an inning Chamberlain used to be available to pitch, the Yankees were tied with Toronto 3-3. Going into the bottom of the seventh, the score was 9-3. Yankee fans had better get used to it.

But this move is for the long haul, both in this season and in future seasons. This year, the team has had some injuries, most notably to Alex Rodriguez and catcher Jorge Posada. A-Rod is back and Posada should rejoin the team this week. That’s a big addition.

And this year is hardly over. The Red Sox have lost David Ortiz for a month and maybe the season. That’s as big a loss as any team is likely to absorb, and it remains to be seen how Boston will react.

And if the Red Sox thunder on without missing a beat, so be it. The Yankees have decided that Chamberlain is going to be the backbone of their rotation for the next 10 or 15 years. They’ve rejected the idea of making him Mariano Rivera’s understudy, holding down the seventh and eighth innings for now and then taking over as closer when Rivera retires.

Plus, they need starting pitching. Only Chien-Ming Wang is pitching with any consistency, and nobody yet has won a pennant with one reliable pitcher. They drafted Chamberlain to be a starter, and that’s now what he is.

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On Tuesday night, he was a nervous and erratic starting pitcher. But for all the pitches he threw and all the people he put on base, he still gave up just one run all on his own and was charged with another when the man he walked in the second scored off the Yankee pen. And three of the seven outs he got were on strikeouts.

You figure he’ll get better. You also figure with his fastball, he’s going to give up some home runs. Every game won’t be a shutout.

He didn’t do what they asked him to do, which was get through at least four innings and maybe five. But we saw he can handle the job. The Yankees lost the game, but it wasn’t about one game. It’s about the future that’s still murky for this season, but a lot brighter in the years ahead.

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