Joba lasted 3 innings under the "Joba Rules", surrendering 3 runs, 2 earned on 6 hits and 2 walks. He struck out 2. He routinely fell behind batters again and needed 59 pitches to finish his short work. Meanwhile, his defense absolutely fell asleep in the first inning. RF Eric Hinske didn't go back far enough on a ball hit by Aaron Hill and let it go off his glove. As is the norm in baseball, it was ruled a double. Rarely will an OF be charged an error if he's moving on a catchable ball. Later in the inning, SS Ramiro Pena let a grounder go through his legs for an error and allowed the 3rd run of the inning to come around and score. Joba probably should have escaped that inning unscathed.
The Yankee hitters, though, easily were worse than their fielding. Halladay retired 14 straight Yanks to start the game before Jorge Posada worked a 2-out walk in the 5th. Pena finally broke up the no-hit bid with 1-out in the 6th when he laced a clean double down the RF line. Halladay may have been a little rattled, because he walked Hinske and Tex to load the bases with ARod coming to the plate. Down 4-0 at the time, it would be the at bat that determined the game and killed the Yanks last shot. ARod struck out looking. Thank God Pena played in the stead of a resting Derek Jeter. I shudder to think that Halladay may have actually had his no-hitter in The Captain did play. Since his torrid August, he's gone 3-17 in his last 4 games and apparently has a very minor "pinky" issue according to Yankee announcer, Michael Kay.
The Yanks, though, were able to lower their magic number to 21 when the Bosox were mopped up by the Chisox, 12-2. Boston's latest reclamation project, Paul Byrd, was knocked out by the 3rd inning. Good thing the game was played in Chicago - the White Sox were up 12-1 after 4 innings. I'm sure if the game was played in Boston, the Red Sox would have pulled some miracle game out of their ass. Texas beat Baltimore and trails the Sawx by 2 games in the wildcard race.
Yankees Record: 86-49
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