Lee juices Rays at the Trop, 5-2

By SHELDON OCKER

The Indians ace won his 15th game and his second this season against Tampa Bay.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Just who is kidding who? It was Cliff Lee, stupid.

Are the Tampa Bay Rays expected to beat him? And never mind that they lead the East, where the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox each believe that claiming the division is their birthright.

So it came to pass that Lee was the winning pitcher Monday night, as the Indians earned a 5-2 victory to lift their season record to 5-0 against the caretakers of Tropicana Field.

As for Lee, he has beaten the Rays twice in 2008. In his career, he is 6-2 with a 2.32 ERA and 3-0 at the Trop.

‘’Cliff got better as the game went on,’’ Indians manager Eric Wedge said. ‘’I thought he was back to his old self. Last game he was good early but it got away from him in the middle innings.’’

In his last game, Lee turned an 8-1 lead over the Detroit Tigers into an 8-6 lead.

‘’This time, I tried to stay away from the middle of the plate,’’ Lee said. ‘’I wanted to be aggressive, but I did not want to miss over the middle.

‘’Honestly, I didn’t have my best stuff tonight. I had to battle the whole time. It seemed like they had guys on base almost every inning. There’s a reason these guys are in first place. They know what they’re doing.’’

Lee (15-2, 2.58 ERA) was hardly lights-out sharp. He allowed the leadoff batter to reach in five of his seven innings and twice put the first two batters on base only to escape without giving up a run both times.

‘’Any time you have a guy on second with nobody out, it’s pretty good [if he doesn’t score],’’ Lee said. ‘’It’s hard to do. To do that twice, I’m pretty pleased about that.’’

Of course, there’s something to be said for a pitcher who can get out of trouble, and Lee got plenty of practice. He gave up eight hits and two walks, hit a batter and threw a wild pitch.

Let’s just say that Lee gave the Rays every chance to do him harm, and they were up to the task only once.

Willy Aybar began the fourth inning with a single, but Lee quickly retired the next two batters. Gabe Gross followed with a late-swing semi-liner that landed near the left-field line and rolled to the wall for a double that put runners on second and third.

Akinori Iwamura’s single scored both runners.

‘’I tried to sneak a fastball past him,’’ Lee said. ‘’When I look back, if there was one thing I wanted to do differently, that was it.’’