Last night's game was nothing short of abject disaster, and not just because of the pathetic display put up by new Yank Marte - nay, I'll give that fellow a one-time pass since he's a newbie and has shown that surely he can do much better than that (right?). The true bust/catastrophe was the early departure of an apparently wounded Joba, who was escorted off the mound in the middle of the 5th inning clutching his right shoulder (sidenote: I like how the article on yankees.com makes sure to specify that he was holding his right shoulder with his left hand... lest we think he has the ability to turn his various arm bones into noodles in order to gently cradle that right shoulder with the hand from the same arm). Joba explained that while he usually ain't a crybaby - "As a pitcher, unless my arm falls off, I'm probably not going to say anything" - something was amiss.

"That's just the way it is. Sometimes you've got to learn that maybe you should call somebody, but it's something that it grabbed and popped and got stiff."

He headed back to NY today rather than hang with the team in the blazing hot hellhole that is Texas, presumably to undergo a buncha tests so that the team can find out whether the injury is one we should be crying about or if we can breathe a sigh of relief and rest assured that he'll be gone for just a couple starts. Aside from the worry we're surely all feeling about the injury itself, there is also the horrible fact that the Yankees will have to replace him with one of the many less-than-optimal options they currently have at their disposal - folks like Igawa, I-Ken (who would have thought a year ago that we'd be referring to IPK as a less-than-optimal rotation man? For now, anyway...), and Dan Geise. My money is on IPK.

Are you ready to give him another chance?