NEW YORK -- Alex Rodriguez has spent most of the season talking about being in a good place mentally.

Now he is in a place that once belonged to Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth as the leading run producer in American League history.

Rodriguez broke a tie with Ruth and also moved past Gehrig with a three-run homer in the fourth inning that helped the New York Yankees complete a three-game sweep of the Kansas City Royals with a 4-2 victory on Wednesday.

"It's definitely an honor to be mentioned in the same breath as Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth," Rodriguez said. "It's any player's dream and it's even more special to do it here at home at Yankee Stadium and contribute to a win."

Rodriguez did both when he turned on a 0-1 slider from Kansas City right-hander Chris Young (4-1) and sent it into the left field seats. It gave him 1,995 RBIs, which is the most in the AL and one behind Barry Bonds for second on the career list and 302 behind leader Hank Aaron (2,297).

"It's amazing," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "I've talked about it. It's longevity, but it's also being productive for an extremely long time. You see the guys that he's passing, it's really pretty amazing."

Rodriguez's home run was also his 11th of the season. His 665th career homer also was his 2,880th hit, putting him 20 shy of joining Derek Jeter as the only Yankee to reach 3,000 hits.

The 39-year-old, who is 152 at-bats into his return from a season-long ban for performance-enhancing drug use, also inched closer with a single in the seventh and finished the day batting .276.

Catcher Brian McCann hit a solo home run for the Yankees, who will head out for a seven-game West Coast trip with three straight wins after dropping 10 of their previous 11.

"It's important to play this caliber of baseball," Rodriguez said. "It's what we expect and what we did the last 10 games (before this) is not tolerable and we're not going to accept it."

Right-hander Michael Pineda (6-2) bounced back from two sub-par outings and allowed one run and six hits in 6 2/3 innings. After getting five strikeouts in his two losses, Pineda fanned eight, issued one walk and threw 72 of 106 pitches for strikes.

"Today is as good as it gets," McCann said of Pineda. "He was moving in and out, he was changing speeds. That was about as well as you can pitch."

Third baseman Mike Moustakas homered for Kansas City, which has lost four straight for the first time since Aug. 28-31. During that stretch, the Royals scored 11 runs, but in this slide, they have been held to five runs in 36 innings.

"You can't stay red-hot for 162 games," Kansas City manager Ned Yost said. "You cool down. Then you just wait to get hot again."

Young faced the Yankees for the second time in three starts and allowed four runs and seven hits in six innings.

"We're a great team," Young said. "We'll bounce back."

The Royals took a 1-0 lead with one out in the first when Moustakas drove a 1-2 slider into the right-center field seats for his fifth home run of the season. New York tied it when McCann drove Young's high fastball into the second deck in right field.

After Rodriguez's home run, Pineda worked out of trouble in the middle innings.

Pineda put two on in the fourth but retired catcher Salvador Perez on a flyout to center field. In the fifth, the Royals had first and third with one out, but Pineda struck out Moustakas and got center fielder Lorenzo Cain to chase a slider out of the strike zone.

An inning later, Pineda ended another threat by striking out Perez on a slider with the potential tying run on deck.

Left-hander Justin Wilson kept the tying run on deck by getting the final two outs of the seventh. Dellin Betances struck out two after allowing an unearned run when Cain scored on a throwing error by shortstop Didi Gregorius.