ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) _ Rick Helling allowed three hits over seven innings and Royce Clayton, David Segui and Ruben Mateo hit home runs as the Texas Rangers held off the Anaheim Angels 6-5 on Saturday night.

The Rangers hung on in the ninth when John Wetteland got Mo Vaughn to ground out with two on and two out to end the game.

Helling (5-1) won his third straight game. Clayton's two-run homer in the sixth inning gave Texas a 5-1 lead.

Wetteland was shaky in the ninth before picking up his fifth save. He allowed Scott Spiezio's pinch-hit sacrifice fly to pull Anaheim within a run, but Vaughn grounded out to short for the final out.

All three Texas homers came off Jarrod Washburn, who made his first start of the season for the Angels.

Helling pitched out of a bases-loaded jam with none out in the seventh. His fielding error allowed Garret Anderson to reach first, and then he walked Troy Glaus and Orlando Palmeiro to load the bases.

Bengie Molina and Benji Gil hit successive sacrifice flys to make it 5-3, then Erstad's foul pop ended the inning.

Both runs were unearned. Helling was charged with one earned run in seven innings, lowering his ERA to 2.28, second in the American League to Pedro Martinez's 1.01. Helling walked five and struck out two.

Vaughn gave Anaheim a 1-0 lead with his 10th homer in the first. After Segui tied it with his third homer in the second, Rafael Palmeiro's RBI single in the third broke the tie and Mateo made it 3-1 in the fourth with a 441-foot shot to dead center for his sixth homer.

Clayton followed Mateo's two-out single in the sixth with his seventh home run.

The Angels got within 5-4 in the eighth, when Anderson's RBI single off Tim Crabtree scored Vaughn, who had doubled off Mike Venafro.

Chad Curtis' RBI single in the ninth made it 6-4.

Washburn (0-1) allowed five runs on six hits and three walks in six innings. He struck out five.

Washburn, who had been 3-0 in five starts for Triple-A Edmonton, began the season on the disabled list with a strained oblique muscle. He was making his first big-league start since going 8 2-3 innings in a 1-0 win over the Rangers on the final day of the 1999 season.

Notes: Clayton's grand slam in the Rangers' 13-11 win Friday night was only the second ever hit by a Texas shortstop on the road; Toby Harrah connected for the first, on July 29, 1975 at Oakland. ...Helling's teams now are 35-11 when he goes 7-plus innings. ...Gil singled in the third to snap an 0-for-11 drought. ... Luis Alicea went 0-for-4, ending his nine-game hitting streak.