The New York Yankees won against the New York Mets by a score of 9-8. Joba got the start and got a no decision. Mariano Rivera got the win. Wow, talk about getting a gift. That was unbelievable to me. I was cursing A-Rod out under my breath when he popped the ball up but then I saw second baseman Luis Castillo drifting like he didn’t have a good handle on it. I had a glimmer of hope when he started stumbling towards the pop up and then he dropped it! Thank you! Joba started out well during the first two innings even though his 4-Seam fastball was in the low 90’s. Joba has a lot of confidence in his slider and throws it a lot when he has a 3-2 count against batters. His slider was tight and hard and his change up was excellent. His velocity was poor the first two innings but in the last two innings it was topping out at 95 mph. Joba broke in his secondary pitches too early in the game. He usually throws them in the fourth or fifth inning. He started throwing his curveball and change up in the third inning. He was hanging on to his fastball too long and his shoulder started flying open. This made him throw the ball inside. He was not sharp with his control. Throughout Joba’s start, he kept getting Met batters in 0-2 counts and then he would reach 3-2 counts. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to pitch and that drove up his pitch count. He just couldn’t get the Mets out when he had them in an 0-2 hole and didn’t know how to finish them off. He didn’t know what pitch to go to. Joba was becoming very predictable because he was throwing a lot of 3-2 sliders. Jorge didn’t want him throwing so many sliders on 3-2 counts but Joba seemed to insist. Joba threw the slider on 3-2 counts to the left-handed batters that were balls. He didn’t throw his slider for a strike and the Mets didn’t swing at it. The result was five walks in four innings. In the third inning, he gave up two runs without giving up a hit. He was all over the place. He had terrible strike to ball ratio and reached 100 pitches by the fourth inning. It also seems that he doesn’t like working with Jorge Posada since he kept shaking him off. On the bench, it seemed he was voicing his frustration to Jose Molina about Jorge’s game calling. A pitcher needs a good relationship with their catcher and this is not good if Jorge and Joba aren’t on the same page during games. Mariano tried to go away to David Wright in the eighth inning after walking Carlos Beltran. He didn’t get the pitch away because the ball flattened out right where David Wright liked it and Wright drilled it in the gap for a double. The Mets then went ahead at that point. The Yankees won but they didn’t really look good. Joba wasn’t good, Mariano wasn’t good and A-Rod wasn’t good. It’s still a win but it was a gift. It wasn’t championship baseball I saw. Player of the Game: Derek Jeter. He hit a change up on the outside part of the plate which was a very tough pitch to get to and delivered a hit which resulted in him being the tying run. This happened in the bottom of the ninth.
