Yankees get game back against M’s

NEW YORK – Alex Rodriguez grimaced in pain after rolling his right ankle in a collision at third base. Chien-Ming Wang walked off the mound gingerly with a stiff lower back.

Even blowouts are tense for the New York Yankees these days.

“It was a little scary,” Rodriguez said Tuesday night after New York beat the Mariners 12-3 and boosted it’s A.L. wild-card lead to two games over the Mariners and 3 1/2 in front of Detroit.

Wang smothered Seattle to get his 17th win and tie Boston’s Josh Beckett for the major league lead. Jorge Posada homered twice, and A-Rod and Bobby Abreu also homered for New York – with Rodriguez hitting a rare drive into the left-field upper deck.

But with the Yankees clinging to a small lead and already worried about Roger Clemens’ sore right elbow – which will receive a cortisone shot today – New York is jumpy over any whiff of injury. So when Wang didn’t bend on his first two pitches of the eighth, Posada went out to the mound and signaled to the dugout.

“It didn’t look good,” Posada said. “Something about it just didn’t look right.”

Wang said he was confident he’d be ready for his next turn in the rotation.

Rodriguez sounded more concerned. He was hurt in the seventh inning, when he slid into Adrian Beltre and the third baseman toppled backward onto his right leg, turning A-Rod’s ankle. Rodriguez came out at the end of the inning, and postgame X-rays were negative. He wasn’t sure whether he’d be able to play today.

“It’s a little sore right now,” he said. “I’ll see how I feel in the morning.”

Posada, Abreu and Robinson Cano had four hits each. Abreu was in a 2-for-15 slump coming in and Cano was in a 2-for-16 slide. New York, struggling to regain consistency in the season’s final weeks, had 20 hits and busted open the game with three runs in the sixth and the big seventh, which made it 11-1.

It was a close game for most of the night, with Hideki Matsui throwing out Beltre at the plate in the fifth to preserve a 1-0 lead. Seattle manager John McLaren said third-base coach Carlos Garcia couldn’t be faulted.

“Carlos felt bad about it. It’s something we can’t take back,” McLaren said. “Just one of those things. If you haven’t been out there at third base, you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Seattle lost for the 10th time in 11 games and was ensured of leaving town trailing the Yankees when the three-game series concludes today.

“We just got to bounce back tomorrow,” McLaren said. “Two out, and all we need to do is get that streak we’re looking for, get that streak at the right time.”

Wang (17-6) allowed one run and five hits in 71/3 innings, throwing just 86 pitches. Inducing inning-ending, double-play grounders in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings, Wang improved to 8-2 when pitching following Yankees’ losses this season, winning his last six starts in that situation. He is 6-0 against the Mariners in his career.

Beltre ended Wang’s shutout bid with a seventh-inning homer.

Posada put the Yankees ahead with a leadoff homer in the second off Horacio Ramirez (8-5), and Rodriguez hit his major league-leading 46th homer to make it 2-0 in the sixth, a drive that landed about seven rows into the upper deck.

“It doesn’t matter where it lands,” Rodriguez said. “It only counts for one run.”

M’s add four players

Outfielders Jeremy Reed and Wladimir Balentien were recalled by the M’s from Tacoma along with infielder Nick Green and catcher Jeff Clement.