Cliff Lee of the Texas Rangers turned the tables on the New York Yankees as they lost their second consecutive game 8-0 and that, too, at their home field in New York City.
Lee managed to keep the Yankees to just two singles with one walk and scored his season best of 13 strikeouts in eight innings. He threw a total of 122 pitches with the Yanks swinging at 57 of them and missing 17 times thus earning Lee his season best miss percentage of 29.8 percent.
The two-out walk came from Mark Teixeira in the fourth inning as not a single Yankee base runner was able to do that earlier, thanks to Lee's excellent performance. The Yankees remained shy of their first hit until the fifth when Jorge Posada managed an opposite-field single to right with two outs; this was before the strikeout of Curtis Granderson.
Brett Gardner hit a single while playing as the ninth-place hitter in the sixth inning and was able to score a second. His teammates were unable to support him as they were all demolished by the Rangers.
It all started when Josh Hamilton of the Rangers took care of pitcher Andy Pettitte in the first inning on a two-run homer and that set the ball rolling for the Rangers. Yanks were trailing 2-0 until the seven innings and lost the game in ninth when Texas scored six runs in a row. Yanks are down 1-2 in the best-of-seven American League Championship Series; the teams will play Game 4 tonight.
