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A-Rod homers twice as Yankees continue torrid hitting

Aug 12, 2007 - 3:44 AM CLEVELAND (Ticker) -- Alex Rodriguez and the New York Yankees continued their second-half assault on the American League.

Rodriguez hit a pair of two-run homers and Mike Mussina became only the ninth player in major league history to win 100 games with two teams, as the New York Yankees pounded the Cleveland Indians, 11-2, on Saturday night.

The Yankees are 22-8 since the All-Star break, easily the best record in the majors, and have trimmed the Red Sox lead from 10 games to five. The win also allowed New York (65-51) to remain tied for the wild card lead with Seattle (64-50), one game ahead of Detroit (64-52) as they improved to a season-best 14 games above .500.

"We knew we had to play well or that was it," Mussina said. "We had a stretch of games against teams under .500 where we had to win 20 of 27 or it would be tough. Now we are in a stretch of playing teams that are in the postseason and we have to play the same way."

Rodriguez's first home run in the second inning capped off a seven-run inning after Cleveland had taken a 1-0 lead in the first.

Hideki Matsui led off the inning with a single and Robinson Cano followed with a double down the right field line. After a Melky Cabrera sacrifice fly, Andy Phillips walked and Jose Molina singled to load the bases.

Johnny Damon doubled home two runs and Bobby Abreu followed two batters later with a two-out, two-run single to make the score 5-1.

"(Abreu) has got a lot of two-strike hits," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "He's covering the plate well and going to the opposite field. That was a big hit for us, it allowed us to get the game out of hand quickly."

Rodriguez blasted Indians starter Paul Byrd's 2-2 pitch over the center field wall for his 502nd career home run.

"One through nine, they're really, really good," Byrd said. "People talk about A-Rod and people talk about Jeter, but you look at their whole lineup and Cabrera and Cano are around .300 too."

The youngest player to reach 500 homers, Rodriguez has now homered in all five games against the Indians - all wins - this season. But he wasn't done yet.

With the Yankees leading 8-1, Rodriguez came to the plate with a runner on first and smacked Edward Mujica's pitch to right-center field for his 503rd career homer and sixth against Indians pitching this season.

"No question," Rodriguez said when asked if he's more relaxed now that 500 is out of the way. "It was good to get it out of the way so I could get back to playing real baseball."

It was the fifth two-homer game of the season for Rodriguez and 49th multi-homer game of his career.

"What impressed me the most, is all three of his home runs here have been to center field or right-center," Torre said. "That's huge for us. It will make it tougher for teams to pitch to him."

Rodriguez's offensive outburst helped Mussina add another achievement to his already impressive resume.

Mussina, who is now 100-60 with New York, became the 16th player in Yankees history to win 100 games and moved into a tie for 45th place overall on the all-time victory list with Jack Quinn with 247.

"It's a lot of wins," Mussina said. "It's exciting. I'm glad I had chance to come here and pitch long enough to accomplish this. I probably won't win 200 (with the Yankees), so I am going to savor this one. Hopefully I will win a few more."

"You do something like that in this uniform, you have done something special," Torre said.

The 16-year veteran won 147 games with the Baltimore Orioles before signing with the Yankees prior to the start of the 2001 season.

Mussina went 6 2/3 innings, allowing only two runs while scattering six hits. The righthander struck out six as he extended his winning streak to four.

"I had good breaking pitches," Mussina said. "Cleveland has been struggling to score runs, so I wanted to keep them off-balance."

Jason Giambi hit a pinch-hit solo home run in the ninth, his first since returning from the disabled list on August 6.

While New York has surged in the second half, Cleveland has gone in the opposite direction, going 13-16 since the break.

The Indians also saw their AL Central lead closed to one-half game as Detroit defeated the Oakland A's, 3-2.

Byrd failed to capitalize off of the momentum from his last start, which was a four-hit shutout of Minnesota on Monday. He was tagged for seven runs and seven hits in two innings.

Victor Martinez's sacrifice fly in the first snapped a streak of 23 games in which Cleveland failed to score a run in the first inning. Martinez also added an RBI double in the eighth, but it wasn't enough to stop the Indians home woes. Cleveland has now lost 10 of their last 13 games at Jacobs Field.

"We've had a tough spell the last couple of homestands," Indians manager Eric Wedge said. "It's baseball. There are some things there are no answers for."