Tex homers twice as Yanks top Angels, 5-3

Joe Girardi didn't want to sound greedy before Sunday's game but . . . "It's been a good trip for us,'' he said. "Obviously, if you can win today, it would be a really good trip for us.''

Really good it is.

Behind three home runs, including two by Mark Teixeira, and an outstanding effort by a well-rested bullpen, the Yankees finished their nine-game West Coast trip with a 5-3 win over the Angels before a sellout crowd of 43,524 at Angel Stadium.

Finishing the trip 6-3 was especially impressive given that the Yankees (33-24), who are off Monday before beginning a three-game series against the second-place Red Sox at the Stadium Tuesday night, lost the first two games in Seattle after blowing leads. They have won 13 of their last 18, with four of those losses by one run.

"The first two were disappointing because we were so close to winning those games,'' said Teixeira, who hit his 17th and 18th home runs and has nine homers and 19 RBIs in his last 16 games. "But when you can win six of nine on a West Coast swing against three really good teams . . . The pitching we've faced, I don't know if we'll face another nine-game stretch of that kind of starting pitching, and to win six of those games is big.''

It was the Yankees' first series win here since 2004, when they also took two of three.

Teixeira's second homer, a two-run shot off Joel Piñiero in the fifth, produced a 4-2 lead. He trails only Toronto's Jose Bautista (20) for the major-league lead.

Nick Swisher's fifth homer of the season and third of the trip, a drive off the screen attached to the rightfield foul pole in the eighth, made it 5-3. "I've been working hard,'' Swisher said. "I've been putting in a lot of time and it's starting to pay off.''

Winning pitcher Bartolo Colon (4-3, 3.39) was not as sharp as he had been last Monday in Oakland, when he pitched a four-hit shutout. He allowed three runs and six hits in 51/3 innings before turning things over to a bullpen that, because of efforts like Colon's last Monday, had received plenty of rest.

"Today I felt strong but I didn't throw as many strikes,'' Colon said.

David Robertson didn't, either. After getting Mark Trumbo, who homered off Colon in the third, to ground into a fielder's choice at third for the second out of the sixth, he walked two to load the bases. But Robertson, rarely flustered when in trouble, even of his own making, escaped by striking out Maicer Izturis on an 82-mph curveball.

"David Robertson's Houdini out there,'' Teixeira said. "He gets out of more jams than anyone I've ever seen.''

Robertson has not allowed a run in 91/3 innings in his last 10 outings, lowering his ERA to 1.16. "I didn't have my best stuff,'' he said. "I had to work really hard for it. I was really fortunate.''

Joba Chamberlain needed 35 pitches to get through 12/3 scoreless innings, which included a key strikeout of Howie Kendrick on a low, outside 80-mph curveball with two on in the seventh.

Mariano Rivera allowed singles by Izturis and Bobby Abreu to put runners on first and third with one out in the ninth, but he got Torii Hunter to ground into a 5-4-3 double play, the Angels' second in two innings, for his 16th save. A night earlier, he needed only one pitch to record his 15th.

Robinson Cano doubled and scored on Brett Gardner's two-out double in the second for a 1-0 lead. In the third, with two runs already home and runners on second and third with two outs, Cano made a spectacular play to save Colon, coming in on Hunter's chopper, barehanding the ball and throwing across his body in one motion for the out.

"I really believe in this team. I really believe we can do a lot of things, and we did it,'' Girardi said. "I thought it was a very good road trip. Going in, would I have predicted we'd go 6-3? I would have felt pretty good about that. But being 0-2, not so much.''