June 1 vs. Indians

June 2nd, 2009 | by Craig Williams |

Despite the reemergence of the infamous midges, Joba Chamberlain did his thing today. Undaunted, Joba ate the Indians (figuratively) and the midges (literally) while working eight innings and only allowing two runs. Chamberlain did allow a bomb to Victor Martinez who continues to be locked in. However, despite the minor blemish, Joba only allowed six total base runners while delivering 66 of his 106 pitches for strikes. Whenever you’re throwing strikes on over 60% of your pitches, it has a chance to be a solid night. When you combine that with five punch outs and twelve groundball outs, you are probably in line for a W – Joba’s third on the season. Just to add a cherry on top of his outing, Chamberlain also came through with Baseball Tonight’s top Web Gem with his diving snag on a Kelly Shoppach bunt attempt.

Not only does Joba get fired up when he makes diving Web Gems, but he also unleashes the fist pump when he pours an awesome bowl of cereal, or when he executes a towel tri-fold to perfection.

Another piece of good news for the Yankees is that they broke the record for consecutive games without an error as Monday marked the 18^th game without a defensive miscue (actually, there could technically be a “miscue” that wasn’t scored an error but we’ll just let it slide). The fact that we’ve been playing sound defense is certainly encouraging but the streak is even more valuable because we wiped the Red Sox off of the record books.

I don’t care much for following standings at this point in the season but for what its worth we stand at 30-21 and a game up on the Sawx. Texas comes in for a three-game series which could be three games of fireworks. Phil Hughes owns the Rangers but fortunately for them they don’t have to see him. Instead they’ll see Burnett, Pettitte and Sabathia while sending Padilla, Feldman and McCarthy to the bump.