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NEW YORK - When Bill Mueller's homer sailed over the leftfield fence in the first, the Yankees seemed headed for another long day against Boston's relentless offense.
Instead, Andy Pettitte shut down baseball's highest-scoring team and gave the Yankees the lift they needed.
Pettitte struck out 10 in eight innings and Curtis Pride homered in his Yankees debut, leading New York to a 7-1 win over the Red Sox on Sunday.
"He's pitched some big games for us," manager Joe Torre said. "I don't know if he's pitched any bigger regular-season games than this one because of the way we were beat up the last two days."
Alfonso Soriano went 3-for-5 with a two-run triple to help the Yankees snap a three-game losing streak and move three games ahead of second-place Boston in the AL East.
"This wasn't a must-win game, but it was big," Pettitte said. "I knew we had to have it in a big way."
After watching David Wells and Roger Clemens get hammered for eight runs each in the first two games of the four-game series, Pettitte got New York back on track.
He was almost perfect after Mueller's homer, Boston's 11th of the series. He retired 16 straight between Kevin Millar's leadoff single in the second and Manny Ramirez's one-out single in the seventh.
"If you make a mistake, they're going to hurt you," Pettitte said. "Even when you don't they'll get you. They're a great hitting ballclub. I was very fortunate to be able to hold them down."
By the time Ramirez got his hit the Yankees led 4-1 despite again squandering many scoring opportunities. New York was 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position in the game and 2-for-28 in the series until breaking through in a three-run seventh.
It didn't matter because Pettitte allowed four hits to win his fifth straight start.
The Red Sox averaged nearly 10 runs over their past 11 games before being shut down by Pettitte.
"He had everything working together today. He was nasty," Ramirez said. "It was the best we've ever seen Pettitte."
He even shut down David Ortiz, who became the first visiting player with consecutive multihomer games at Yankee Stadium. Pettitte struck out Ortiz all three times.
"Pitchers are trying to figure out how to get hitters out and hitters are trying to figure how to get hits," Red Sox manager Grady Little said. "I think Andy figured it out a little better today."
The Yankees overcame the early deficit quickly, scoring twice in the first against John Burkett.
Soriano led off with a double and Burkett retired the next two before Ruben Sierra hit a soft single to center to tie the score. Sierra scored on Hideki Matsui's double to left-center.