Lackey Gets a Win That’s Jam-Packed

It would be difficult to concoct a more lethal recipe for disaster than the one John Lackey brewed Thursday night. Two runners on base in three of the first five innings. The leadoff runner on in four of six innings. Three walks in the first four innings. An excessively high pitch count.

Too often, these ingredients contribute to the big innings that lead to Lackey’s demise, but against one of baseball’s most potent lineups, and in one of the game’s most hostile environments, the Angel right-hander strolled across this tightrope without the need of a safety net.

Lackey gave up one run and seven hits and struck out five in 5 1/3 innings, and a bullpen relay team of Jake Woods, Brendan Donnelly, Scot Shields and Francisco Rodriguez combined for 3 2/3 scoreless innings in the Angels’ 3-1 victory over the New York Yankees in front of 51,951 in Yankee Stadium.

Vladimir Guerrero and Darin Erstad keyed the offense with run-scoring singles against Yankee starter Kevin Brown, and the Angels won the final two games of a three-game series after getting blown out, 12-4, in the opener Tuesday night.

“Any time you come to Yankee Stadium and get one win -- that’s difficult to do,” said Donnelly, who hasn’t given up a run in 6 1/3 innings of his last five appearances. “To come out of here with two wins, that’s a bonus.”

This is no novelty act for the Angels, though. The Angels swept a three-game series in New York last August and are now 25-19 in Yankee Stadium since 1996, the best record of any opposing team in the Bronx during that time span.

“I don’t know that we get up for the Yankees as much as we don’t back down from them,” said Erstad, an Angel since 1996. “Some teams are beat before they come here. We don’t talk about it, but our guys take it as a challenge.”

Erstad is known for approaching the game with a football mentality, for having a similar mind-set whether the Angels are in Tampa Bay or New York, “but I’d be lying if I said my intensity level doesn’t go up when you step on this field,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun to play here. There’s a buzz you can’t re-create in a lot of places.”

Lackey has wilted in this kind of setting over the years -- he had a 1-5 record and 7.07 earned-run average against the Yankees entering Thursday night -- but almost every time he got into a jam Thursday, he reached back for a little ... less.

With two on and two out in the second, Lackey struck out Derek Jeter with a slow curve to end the inning. After Jason Giambi’s leadoff single in the sixth, Lackey struck out Jorge Posada with a full-count changeup, his 111th and final pitch of the game.

“A couple times in tough spots, I didn’t try to go too hard -- I tried to locate and go off-speed,” said Lackey, who improved to 2-1 with a 5.61 ERA. “They’re an aggressive team, and I think I caught them a little off-balance. Your natural instinct is to try harder when you get into trouble. Sometimes, that’s not the answer.”

Lackey caught a break in the first. Jeter led off with a walk but broke too early on a stolen-base attempt and was picked off. After Tony Womack and Gary Sheffield singled, Hideki Matsui lifted a towering drive that seemed headed for the bleachers above the short porch in right field.

But the wind knocked the ball down, Guerrero made the catch in front of the wall, and Lackey struck out Alex Rodriguez looking at a 94-mph fastball to end the inning.

“I thought Matsui’s ball was gone,” Lackey said. “It doesn’t take much to get it out of here in that location. The wind helped me out a bit.”

Lackey lost his shutout in the fifth when he hit Jeter with a pitch to open the inning and Jeter scored on Matsui’s double to right-center to make it 3-1. But Woods, Donnelly, Shields and Rodriguez, who struck out two of three in the ninth, did not allow a runner past first.

Woods replaced Lackey in the sixth and retired Tino Martinez on a fielder’s choice, further cementing his role as a left-handed relief specialist. Donnelly, who has rebounded nicely from the mechanical problems that marred his first four outings, lowered his ERA to 3.75, Shields hasn’t given up an earned run in 10 1/3 innings and has a 1.23 ERA, and Rodriguez has five saves and a 1.74 ERA.

“The bullpen has been good since I came here in 2002,” Rodriguez said, “and it was one of the reasons we won tonight.”