YANKEES 12, ANGELS 0
BY KAT O'BRIEN
kat.obrien@newsday.com
July 9, 2007
Yesterday morning, it would not have done the Yankees much good to dwell on the "could have beens" and "might have beens" of the first half of the season. All they could do was aim for one last win to send them into the All-Star break on a positive note.
A 12-0 drubbing of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, who are a half-game off the best record in baseball, certainly was a feel-good finish. Manager Joe Torre talked about needing to get to 20 games above .500 to have a good shot at the playoffs, a lofty goal for a team that is 42-43. But the Yankees did win five of their final seven games against the Angels and Twins.
"It's good momentum for us," Alex Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez helped create that momentum with yet another superb performance in what has been a torrid season. He went 2-for-5 with four RBIs and hit one of the Yankees' trio of three-run homers. He has a major league-leading 30 home runs and 86 RBIs in the Yankees' 86 games (counting the suspended game June 28 in Baltimore), and Torre called his first half "phenomenal."
Yesterday's homer gave the 31-year-old Rodriguez 494 career home runs, pushing him past Lou Gehrig and Fred McGriff into sole possession of 22nd place on the all-time list. He has the most home runs by a Yankee at the All-Star break since Roger Maris hit 33 in 1961. He also has the most RBIs by a Yankee at the All-Star break since Gehrig had 90 in 1934.
But the performance of A-Rod's compadres might have been even more significant. Chien-Ming Wang (9-4, 3.36 ERA) went 6 1/3 innings for his eighth victory in his last nine decisions; he has a 2.67 ERA in that span. And a trio of offensive players who have lagged at times - Hideki Matsui, Robinson Cano and Bobby Abreu - came through.
Matsui hit a three-run homer off Ervin Santana (5-10) into the upper deck in rightfield for a 4-0 lead in the first inning. Cano hit a three-run homer off the screen attached to the rightfield foul pole to spark a six-run fourth and Abreu had two hits to lift his current hot streak to 11-for-22.
"Any time we've had team success this year," Rodriguez said, "all those guys you just mentioned have been hitting."
Said Cano: "That's what I'm talking about the other day. We need to step it up and get some hits and get on base for the other guys."
"We need those guys," Torre said. "... I'm expecting to hang on to it. These are things that they're capable of doing. These are things that we expect from them."
If they had been hitting this way all season, the Yankees would not be in the desperate position they're in now. They enter the break below .500 for the first time since 1995. They are 10 games behind the Red Sox in the AL East; in the wild-card race, they are 8½ games behind the Indians and seven behind the Mariners.
But they quickly did something about it yesterday. Wang walked Reggie Willits to begin the game, but Jorge Posada caught him stealing for the second time in two days and only the fourth time in 22 attempts.
Five straight Yankees reached base with one out in the bottom of the first, with Rodriguez blooping an RBI single to left-center and Matsui hitting his third home run in five games. He is 8-for-22 with seven RBIs in the last six games.
"Certainly, these last few games I've felt much better at the plate," Matsui said through an interpreter. "I just see the ball better now and I distinguish balls and strikes better right now."
The Yankees scored nine of their 12 runs off Santana. By the end of the fourth inning, it was 10-0 as Rodriguez followed Cano's home run by lining a three-run shot just over the leftfield fence off Chris Resop. Miguel Cairo added a two-run double in the seventh and Rodriguez flied out to the warning track in center in his bid for a second three-run homer.
All the while, Wang kept on getting outs. He gave up just five hits and two walks although his cracked right middle fingernail bothered him again.
"That was very good," Wang said. "After the break, we have to do the same."
That will be the true test. They have no more time for fits and starts.
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