Major League Baseball

YANKEES SERVE SOME TEX MESS - HUGHES GETS POUNDED; LEE AWAITS IN GAME 3

Published Oct. 20, 2010 10:15 p.m. ET

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ARLINGTON, Texas - Derek Jeter made sense standing at his locker early last night inside Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

Looking ahead to a pivotal ALCS Game 3 against the Rangers tomorrow evening at Yankees Stadium when Cliff Lee and Andy Pettitte hook up, Jeter didn't buy into Lee being unbeatable.

"Just because Cliff is pitching it's not a guaranteed win for anybody," Jeter said. "You play the games for a reason."

True. But . . .

If Pettitte, the all-time leader in postseason wins with 19, puts the Yankees in the same type of ditches CC Sabathia and Phil Hughes did in Games 1 and 2, it likely will be a lock win for the Rangers, who evened the best-of-seven affair with a 7-2 win yesterday in front of 50,362.

Less than 24 hours after the Ya n kees overcame a putrid outing by Sabathia in Game 1, they weren't able to do the same for Hughes.

"I really didn't even give us a chance to win today. That's the most disappointing thing," said Hughes, who was rocked for seven runs and 10 hits in fourplus innings while working without a curveball and a fastball he couldn't locate well enough to put hitters away. "You try to go out there and minimize the damage and at least keep us in the game."

By the time Hughes recorded his ninth out, the Rangers led, 5-0, because of Elvis Andrus' double steal of home in the first, David Murphy's homer and Michael Young's RBI double in the second and RBI doubles by Murphy and Mitch Moreland in the third.

So, the two biggest questions in this series center around pitching. How will the Yankees do against Lee, whose postseason career record is 6-0? And will manager Joe Girardi turn to CC Sabathia on short rest for Game 4 instead of giving the ball to A.J. Burnett with Tommy Hunter scheduled to pitch for the Rangers?

Sabathia said he will pitch when told to. Girardi said he wanted to think about how to proceed on the flight home last night and meet with his staff today. Unlike in Game 1, the Yankees didn't rally late. Nor did they fully take advantage of scoring chances against Colby Lewis, who allowed two runs and six hits in 5 2/3 innings.

They stranded a dozen men, went 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position and the top four hitters - Jeter, Curtis Granderson, Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez - went a combined 2-for-15 and the hits were soft singles by Jeter and Rodriguez.

Jeff Francoeur saw a different mindset from the Rangers yesterday than he did in Game 1 when the hosts flushed a four-run lead in the eighth.

"We had our foot on the pedal a little more than we did [Friday]," Francoeur said. "We knew that we weren't giving this one back. We gave you one [Friday], and we are not giving you this one."

With the series reduced to a best-of-five deal and the next three games in The Bronx, the Yankees have an edge, even if Lee is in line to start Game 3 and a deciding Game 7 should the action return to Texas. "We are going home to Yankee Stadium," Sabathia said. "We still feel comfortable."

Yet, that comfort level will shrink if the lineup is asked to make up another early stagger in Game 3.

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