Rays win pitching duel, 1-0, in 11 innings, take over first place

Why? That's the question. Girardi played with fire letting Gaudin try to finish the 10th - which he did - but then instead of going to one of the better relievers on the team (Mariano, Joba, D-Rob, Hughes, neither of whom pitched yesterday), he put up the white flag, aka Sergio Mitre. You just knew it was over that inning. A few pitches later and it was: Reid Brignac homered into the rightfield stands to end the 11-inning affair.

Kerry Wood threw 11 pitches. Logan threw five. They couldn't go any longer?

Before that, we saw absolute gems from both Sabathia and Price. As well as Price pitched (8 ip, 3 h, 0 r, 2 bb, 4 k), Sabathia was even better (8 ip, 2 h, 0 r, 2 bb, 9 k), yet neither hurler got the win.

You can't really like that Posada stole (or tried to steal) second in the fifth. The Yanks finally had a runner on, Austin Kearns was having a good AB vs. Price, and the slowest member of the team gets thrown out trying to steal.

Then, of course, Gardner takes off for third in the bottom of the 10th... why? There's two outs already. And Gardner will score on a single anyway. I thought maybe Benoit had a lot of wild pitches, which would make the attempted steal a bit more sensible... no, he has one all year. Regardless, Girardi and Thomson gave him a stern talking-to between innings. As Murphy's Law would have it, Kearns ended up singling in his AB to lead off the 11th. Would it have happened if Gardner wasn't thrown out? We'll never know.

This is the Yankees' first four-game losing streak, and their third walk-off loss in their last four games.

Play of the Game: y'all know what it is (-35%).

Comment of the Game: yankeesNZ1, because Chad Gaudin is interesting.