Except for a poorly located change-up that Jacque Jones of the Minnesota Twins crushed for a three-run homer in the bottom of fourth inning, Wang Chien-ming (王建民) pitched another brilliant game for the New York Yankees on Saturday night, winning for the first time in seven contests to snap a six-game losing skid.
Even though he got a no-decision for his seven innings of outstanding effort off the mound, Wang, Taiwan's latest budding star in the Majors, played a significant role in the Yankees' 4-3 win over the Twins at the Metro Dome by holding a red-hot Minnesota lineup to just three runs on five hits.
"He [Wang] was tremendous," Yankees manager Joe Torre said according to a report on Major League Baseball's official Web site. "He's certainly established himself as a big league hurler. He doesn't talk a whole lot, but he goes out there and knows what he's doing."
The 25-year-old native of Tainan retired six of the first seven hitters he faced before running into some trouble in the third that took a perfectly executed double play by the New York defense to keep it a scoreless game.
After yielding the three-run blast to Jones that put the Twins up 3-0, Wang showed tremendous poise and maturity by turning away 12 of the final 13 batters he faced over the next 3-2/3 frames.
The only base hit he allowed after the fourth was a double to Juan Castro to lead off the fifth that Wang promptly neutralized with three ground outs in a row.
His ability to keep the game close gave the Yankees' offense a chance to eventually tie the game up at 3-3 by the top of the eighth.
Wang's solid performance marked only the second quality start by a Yankees starter over the past seven games -- a tough stretch for the club out of the Big Apple that sent big-name veterans such as Randy Johnson, Kevin Brown, and Mike Mussina home losers.
Wang had his rookie buddy Robinson Cano and Japanese slugger Hideki Matsui to thank for not being tagged with the loss because it was Cano's two-run double in the top of the fifth that pulled the Yankees to within a run (3-2) and Matsui's chopper to first in the eighth that brought home the game-tying run.
The Yankees eventually won it in the 10th inning on a sacrifice fly by pinch-hitter Ruben Sierra before ace closer Mariano Rivera tossed a perfect 10th for his 10th straight converted save.
Angels 13, red sox 6
Garret Anderson homered and drove in four runs, Darin Erstad added four RBIs and the Los Angeles Angels scored 11 times in the final three innings to rally past the Boston Red Sox 13-6.
Bartolo Colon (7-3) struck out 11 in six innings, throwing a season-high 119 pitches for the Angels. Anderson's go-ahead, three-run homer capped a four-run seventh and gave him a club-record 990 RBIs.
"I just kept saying, `Keep it close. Just keep it close,'" Colon said through a translator. "If I just kept it close, three or four runs was going to be all right."
Kevin Millar hit a pair of solo homers and an RBI double for the Red Sox, but the bullpen couldn't hold a 5-2 lead for Bronson Arroyo.
"We thought we were in the driver's seat. The game was going our way and then all of a sudden something bad happened," Boston's Johnny Damon said.
Anderson went 4-for-6 with a triple, and Chone Figgins hit a leadoff homer.
Struggling left-hander Alan Embree (1-3) retired just one batter and allowed four runs.
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