Yankees' sweep of Texas how it should be

BY KAT O'BRIEN
kat.obrien@newsday.com

May 3, 2007, 10:23 PM EDT

ARLINGTON, Texas -- For the first time, the Yankees know what it might look like to have the front end of their starting rotation together.

And what does it look like to have Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte and Chien-Ming Wang leading the rotation again? Pretty good.

Pettitte and Mussina were the starters in yesterday's doubleheader as the Yankees finished off a three-game sweep. They won the day game started by Pettitte, 4-3, and the night game started by Mussina, 5-2, with Mariano Rivera saving each win.

"He worked fast, he threw a lot of strikes," Joe Torre said of Mussina. "He gave us all we could have asked for. His stuff was all we could have asked for."

Said Mussina, "I was hoping five innings was what I was going to be able to do ... I had better command than I might have expected. I had a little better velocity than I expected. It was a good day."



Derek Jeter

The Yankees return to New York with far better vibes surrounding them than when they departed Monday. Their flight to Dallas left just hours after owner George Steinbrenner had a statement sent out giving a reprieve to Joe Torre regarding his job security. The team had lost eight of its last nine games.

But in the Rangers, they met another struggling team and came out on top. Now they are approaching the .500 mark (12-14) and are out of the American League East basement.

One thing the Yankees can almost count on getting when Mussina, Pettitte or Wang is pitching is innings. Mussina (1-1) went only five innings in the second game, but that was because it was his first start since he went on the disabled list April 15 with a left hamstring strain. Wang has gone at least six innings in both starts since coming off the DL (right hamstring). Pettitte has pitched six-plus innings four times, including his six innings in the Yankees' Game 1 victory over the Rangers, although the bullpen cost him a victory for the third time this season when Luis Vizcaino allowed a tying home run. Despite making six starts and posting a 3.00 ERA, Pettitte is just 1-1.



Joe Torre

Pettitte was not impressed with himself. His pitching line did not look bad (two earned runs, five hits and three walks in six innings), but it didn't feel right to him. "I was just out of sync again," Pettitte said. "I was fighting myself, trying to battle through it with my command."

Pettitte's schedule has been mangled the past month as a result of a snowout, a rainout and a game postponed because of tornado warnings. He pitched yesterday's matinee on an extra day's rest after the Wednesday tornado threat. Pettitte needed 47 pitches to get through the first two innings but threw 60 in the next four innings.

It wasn't a huge offensive afternoon for the Yankees. Jason Giambi hit a solo home run, Hideki Matsui had two doubles -- including one that broke a 3-3 tie with two out in the eighth -- and two RBIs, and Melky Cabrera was 3-for-4 with a triple.



Mariano Rivera

In the second game, the start of which was delayed 40 minutes by rain, Matsui was back at it with a pair of hits, including another double. Doug Mientkiewicz's two-run homer off Rangers starter Robinson Tejeda put the Yankees ahead for good at 2-0 in the second. Derek Jeter went 3-for-5, including an RBI single in the seventh and an RBI double in the ninth, to extend his hitting streak to 20 games. He was robbed of a fourth hit when Matt Kata leaped at the wall in leftfield, came down with the ball and doubled off Cabrera.

Not only the starting pitchers provided the Yankees with reason for hope. Rivera pitched a 1-2-3 ninth in the first game and recovered after giving up hits to his first two batters in Game 2. He struck out Gerald Laird for the second time in the doubleheader and got Kenny Lofton to ground into a double play to end it.

Said Mientkiewicz, "It's nice with what we went through before we got here to sweep all three, especially against a team like that that can swing it with the best of them."