I think it's obvious that Sabathia was BOTH lucky and effective. My opinion is that if he gave up 11hits in 6 innings and only gave up 2 ER, especially against the Rangers lineup, that he was extremely lucky. He might not have been statistically lucky (in giving up those hits), but he was statistically lucky when you look at his strand rate (runs scored vs. total number of runners).
I think the confusion comes in that saying that Sabathia was effective implies that he was pitching better than he did. For example, if the Yankees didn't win the game, I don't think many people would be saying that he was pitching effective. I think that a better way to say it would be that Sabathia had an effective outing, which speaks more to the outing as a whole rather than the actual specifics of Sabathia's pitching, which is where RSR and Emmz are saying that it implies that Sabathia was better than he was.
He's obviously a great pitcher, but he's lucky that 11 hits didn't turn into 11 runs with that Texas offense.