SEATTLE (KRT) — The Seattle Mariners made history this season, setting an American League record with 116 wins.
But two games into the 2001 AL Championship Series, it is the New York Yankees who have history on their side.
No team has lost a league championship series after winning the first two games on the road. That is the comforting position the Yankees find themselves in as they head back to the Bronx with a two-games-to-none lead in this best-of-seven series.
The Yanks won Thursday night by riding the strong starting pitching of Mike Mussina and the impressive bullpen work of Ramiro Mendoza and Mariano Rivera to a 3-2 victory over the Mariners in Game 2 of the ALCS at Safeco Field.
A loud throng of 47,791 Mariners fans packed the stands and saw their team’s 25-year-old starting pitcher, Freddy Garcia, turn in a terrific effort while working on just three days’ rest.
Garcia pitched seven innings and allowed just three runs, all coming in the second inning. But that was enough support for the Yankees’ pitchers, who have held the highest scoring team in baseball to four runs in two games.
After the Mariners’ loss in Game 1, manager Lou Piniella said that they were going to have to beat the Yankees’ starting pitching to advance to the World Series. Their chore gets no easier now. They must face Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez and Roger Clemens in Games 3 and 4. Hernandez is 9-1 in the postseason, and Clemens won 20 games this season.
The Mariners must win at least two of the next three games in New York to bring the series back to Seattle.
In beating Garcia on Thursday night, the Yanks avenged the two defeats he had thrown at them in last year’s ALCS.
The only runs that Mussina allowed over six innings came on Stan Javier’s two-run homer in the fourth. That blast came two innings after Scott Brosius, who hit a two-run single, and Chuck Knoblauch, who hit an RBI single, gave the Yanks a 3-0 lead.
Knoblauch, the Yanks’ leadoff man, collected two hits and reached base three times. He had totaled three hits in Game 1. So far, he has been the more impressive of the two leadoff men in the series, with the Yanks having kept Ichiro Suzuki in check.
After Mussina departed, Mendoza and Rivera teamed to pitch three scoreless innings. Rivera earned his fourth save of this postseason and his 23rd postseason save overall.
The pitching matchup featured two of the best righthanders in the AL. Garcia won the league’s ERA crown with a 3.05, and Mussina was second at 3.15.
Garcia, 25, was a top prospect with Houston before the Mariners picked him up in the July 1998 trade that sent Randy Johnson to the Astros.
The Yankees shelled out $88.5 million to sign Mussina to a six-year contract last winter. Mussina had spent a decade in Baltimore. The decision to leave Baltimore, in his words, came down to “which place would give me the best chance of still playing in October.”
Mussina turned around the Yankees’ division series against Oakland with seven shutout innings in Game 3. The Yanks went into that game down by two games to none and facing elimination.
There aren’t many better hitting teams in the AL than Oakland. The team Mussina faced Thursday night is one of them.
Mussina listed Suzuki, Edgar Martinez and Bret Boone as the keys in the Seattle lineup.
“If I can stop Ichiro and Edgar and get Boone out, then I should be able to slow them down enough that we can win the game,” Mussina said before the game. “You have to be on top of your game to face that lineup.”
Mussina faced Seattle twice in the regular season, losing in April and winning in August. He pitched seven shutout innings in the victory.
Mussina wasn’t as sharp Thursday night as he had been against Oakland in his last start. But he had the luxury of an early lead.
Garcia allowed a single to Tino Martinez and a walk to Jorge Posada with none out in the second. With one out, Brosius clubbed a two-run double to left. Two batters later, Knoblauch drove Brosius in with a single, giving the Yanks a 3-0 lead.
Mussina allowed baserunners in each of the first four innings. He tap-danced his way out of trouble in the second, leaving runners on second and third when he struck out David Bell on a full-count slider. An inning later, he survived a two-base error by centerfielder Bernie Williams, who dropped a long drive by Suzuki.
But in the fourth, the Mariners finally solved Mussina, cutting the Yanks’ lead to one. Mike Cameron drew a one-out walk, and Javier unloaded on a 1-0 fastball, sending it over the center-field wall for a two-run homer.
The Yankees might have followed their three-run second inning by doing more damage in the third, but Cameron, the man who succeeded Ken Griffey Jr. in center field for Seattle, robbed Williams of extra bases with a sensational leaping catch at the wall. There was one out and a man of first when Cameron made the catch.