Last Night's Action: Texas Covers The Spread

• Rangers 14 Yankees 2: In many ways you could see this one coming. How often can one team beat another team? The Yankees have feasted on Texas for the past two years. How long could the streak of great starting pitching last? Since last Friday, the Yankees had an ERA of 1.34 for their starters. All of these streaks came to an end when Texas bludgeoned New York for 14 runs Thursday afternoon.

  It was apparent early that Chien-Ming Wang didn’t have it. He was giving up flyballs, always a sign of trouble for him, and missing his spots. Despite that, he could have escaped the initial damage if his defense had helped him out. Bobby Abreu made two bad plays in the outfield and Jorge Posada and Alex Rodriguez couldn’t complete a rundown. Suddenly, it was 4-1 and things got worse after that.

  Inexplicably, Torre sent Wang out to pitch the seventh inning of a close game and by the time he left and Luis Vizcaino came in, it was 7-1. The Yankees got a run back in the bottom of the inning, but Vizcaino and Sean Henn combined to give up seven runs in the eighth to put the game completely out of reach.

  New York now heads to Seattle for three games and Chicago for three more before coming back to New York for a matchup with the Mets at Shea.

Photograph of Bobby Abreu trying to chase down Texas Rangers' Gerald Laird's fifth inning triple by Kathy Willens/AP