Yankees 8 – Royals 3
KANSAS CITY – One night after Mike Mussina’s groin didn’t bark, Randy Johnson showed there is plenty of growl in his left arm.
Facing the Royals last night, Johnson carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning before Rutgers product David DeJesus ended the drama with a leadoff triple.
By then the Yankees were well on their way to an 8-3 victory in front of a paltry gathering of 16,421 fans at Kauffman Stadium.
Jorge Posada hit a threerun homer before the nohitter was trashed and another three-run blast after. The six RBIs were one short of his career high.
Johnson, 43 in three days, improved to 16-10 with his fifth win in six decisions and sent a message to whomever the Yankees face in the ALDS that he is a force to be feared.
Johnson fanned eight and faced 22 batters in seven innings, one over the minimum. He walked two.
Derek Jeter went 2-for-4 and drove in a run to hike his average to .344, one point shy of AL leader Joe Mauer.
Johnson’s no-hit bid ended quickly in the seventh when DeJesus slipped a sinking liner off an 0-1 pitch past center fielder Johnny Damon leading off the seventh.
Until DeJesus reached base, Johnson had faced the minimum 18 Royals because Emil Brown, who walked in the second, was erased on a double play.
With the no-hitter gone, Posada helped keep the shutout bid by picking DeJesus off third in front of Esteban German walking.
The victory, combined with the Red Sox losing, lowered the Yankees’ magic number to 15 and hiked the AL East lead to nine games. That ties the high-water mark for the season.
Posada’s three-run homer in the sixth expanded the lead from 2-0 to 5-0 and pushed him past Tino Martinez into 12th place on the all-time Yankees list with 193.
Jason Giambi’s leadoff double in the sixth stopped a 0-for-21 slide and was followed by Alex Rodriguez drawing a walk.
Johnson against the Royals through seven wasn’t a fair fight. The only batter to reach base was Brown, and he was erased when Johnson induced Ryan Shealy to hit into a 6-4-3 double play that ended the inning.
Johnson fanned the side in the fourth and punched out the final two batters in the fifth to protect a 2-0 lead.
Jeter fanned in his final three at-bats Tuesday night, ending the game with the bases loaded in a 5-0 loss. He also stranded one runner in the fifth and seventh.
But the first time Jeter had a chance to drive in a run last night he came through in the fifth with an RBI double that hiked the Yankees’ lead to 2-0.
Bernie Williams greeted Runelvys Hernandez with a leadoff single before Melky Cabrera struck out.
Damon’s grounder to second base pushed Williams to second, and he scored on Jeter’s double into the left-field corner.
The Yankees’ first hit with a runner in scoring position that scored a run in 15 at-bats had a down side because Robinson Cano was thrown out at the plate to end the second inning.
Posada walked with one out and went to second on Cano’s flare single to left. Williams’ grounder to the right side moved the runners up a base and Cabrera followed with a single to center that scored Posada. With two outs, third-base coach Larry Bowa sent Cano, and he was out when center fielder DeJesus’ throw was a strike on the fly to the plate.
