After watching his team throw away its best pitching performance of the homestand on Friday night, Yankees Manager Joe Girardi mused that the Angels knew how to win games in a lot of different ways.
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Mike Mussina played for seven innings against the Angels on Friday as he coolly defanged their offense.
On Friday, the Angels used brilliant pitching to edge the Yankees. The night before, they had simply bludgeoned them. So on Saturday, the Yankees took on the Angels on both fronts with an outstanding performance from starter Mike Mussina and a show of offensive power that could make their remaining seven games against the Angels a little easier to bear.
“Everybody who put on the uniform thought this was an important game today,” Mussina said.
Wilson Betemit, Bobby Abreu, José Molina and Alex Rodriguez homered against Angels starter Jered Weaver in an 8-2 victory, giving the Yankees their first four-homer game since May. With each homer, Weaver’s frustration seemed to bubble a little more as he threw his arms down and wrung his hands when the ball cleared the fence.
It was that kind of relentless offense that carried the Yankees through an eight-game winning streak after the All-Star break and got them back into the race in the American League East. But that was before they lost five of six games last week, a spell that culminated with Mariano Rivera’s surrendering the winning run in Friday’s loss to the Angels.
After being outclassed by the Angels in the first two games of the series, the Yankees could take Saturday’s victory as a reassuring sign that the Angels — with the majors’ best record and a 37-29 mark against the Yankees since 2002 — are mortal.
“We haven’t looked very good for about a week now,” Mussina said. “We needed to win a ballgame. These guys have always given us trouble. They really stuck it to us the first night and then won a tough game the second night, so it was a big deal to go out and win today.”
After allowing two runs in the second, Mussina never seemed seriously troubled by the Angels as he coolly defanged their offense. He struck out Chone Figgins to end the second, the first of 16 straight hitters he retired before leaving after the seventh. He gave up two hits and one earned run and struck out five for his 14th victory.
“Hey, it just means it’s one more than 13,” he said. “I hope I’m not done yet. I’m going to keep going. I’m not going to stop here because it’s better than last year was.”
The 39-year-old Mussina has the most victories on the Yankees’ staff this season. And with the Old-Timers’ Day game scheduled earlier Saturday afternoon, Mussina joked that he was going to start that one, too.
“When he was younger and his arm had more velocity, he had great command of all his pitches,” Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said. “That why he was a perennial Cy Young award candidate. He has changed his approach but still has uncanny command, an ability to change speeds and to make his pitches.”
Weaver, who had won both of his previous starts at Yankee Stadium, seemed virtually unhittable in the first two innings. With his deceptive off-speed pitches, aided by a generous strike zone, he struck out the first four batters he faced. But by the fourth inning, the Yankees’ offense had found a gear that had all but gone missing over the past week, and saddled Weaver with four runs, six hits and a two-run deficit.
The Yankees took the lead in the bottom of the third after Molina, who went 3 for 3, scored on Derek Jeter’s double-play ball. Abreu tacked on a run by crushing a pitch over the fence in right, his fourth homer in four games. Since the All-Star break, Abreu is batting .362 with 5 home runs and 16 runs batted in.
Molina chipped in with a homer in the fifth, his first of the season and first in 221 at-bats.
“When he hit that home run,” Girardi said, “it seemed like I used to see him do that a lot against us when he was with the Angels.”
By then Weaver looked ragged and frustrated, his failings only magnified by Mussina’s effectiveness. After Weaver allowed a home run to Rodriguez and a walk to Jason Giambi, Scioscia went to the bullpen, which gave up two more runs. Meanwhile, the Yankees’ pitching went according to plan.
Although Mussina wanted to pitch the eighth, Girardi brought in José Veras, who allowed a walk before striking out the side. Brian Bruney, who was making his first appearance since he injured his foot on April 22 in Chicago, worked the ninth. With a six-run cushion, Bruney made sure that the Yankees’ best game in a week did not go to waste.
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