Wang's 17th extends Wild Card lead

Wang's 17th extends Wild Card lead

Yankees righty pushes Mariners two back with 7 1/3 innings

By Anthony DiComo / MLB.com

NEW YORK -- There's no denying how much the Yankees need strong pitching performances every night, and there's no cheapening how valuable an ace like Chien-Ming Wang can be.

But when the Yankees' offense is clicking, it's hard to imagine any of that mattering.

Wang allowed one run in 7 1/3 innings against the Mariners, guiding the Yankees to a 12-3 win and pushing their American League Wild Card edge back to two games. And while the Yankees needed that dominance early, they weren't quite as dependent on it later, after the offense awoke for three runs in the sixth inning and seven more in the seventh to blast open the game.

The Yankees drilled four home runs in all -- one each from Alex Rodriguez and Bobby Abreu, and two from Jorge Posada -- and tallied up 19 hits. Eight of those came in the seventh, when the Yankees sent 12 batters to the plate and scored more than half of them. By the time that rally was complete, every Yankees starter other than Hideki Matsui had collected at least one hit and one RBI, and Matsui reached base twice himself.

Abreu and Robinson Cano had four hits apiece, while A-Rod, Posada and Wilson Betemit also chipped in with multi-hit games. By the time Wang left the game in the eighth, the Yankees had already taken a 10-run lead and replaced a third of their regulars with reserves.

And in the end, all of that overshadowed Wang's brilliance. The right-hander needed only 86 pitches to cruise into the eighth, allowing just five hits and an isolated Adrian Beltre home run. He struck out only on7 but induced 17 ground-ball outs, leaving to a standing ovation.

The Yankees survived a scare in the seventh inning, when Rodriguez, attempting to go from first to third base on a Posada single, slid headfirst into the third-base bag. A-Rod rolled over and clutched his right knee in pain, but after a short delay and a visit from the training staff, he remained in the game. Alberto Gonzalez replaced him for his second at-bat of the inning, with the Yankees having already built a 10-run lead.