Clay Holmes spoils homer party for Anthony Volpe in Yankees' loss to Twins

Anthony Volpe will remember Friday night’s game forever. Even if he, and the rest of the Yankees, wish it had ended before the eighth.

Volpe hit his first MLB home run — one of three homers by the Yankees — but Clay Holmes failed to protect a lead in the eighth as the Twins won, 4-3, at the Stadium, marking the first time the Yankees have lost back-to-back games this year.

Holmes, in to protect a one-run lead in the eighth, allowed a leadoff single by Michael A. Taylor and walked Byron Buxton before Carlos Correa lined a sinker up in the zone for a two-run double into the rightfield corner to give the Twins the lead. All three of those baserunners reached after Holmes had worked them to 1-and-2 counts.

“I need to make better two-strike pitches and finish these batters off,” Holmes said. “The sinker is moving. I’m making some good pitches, but tonight, it’s pretty frustrating. I find myself in some pretty good counts. I just didn’t finish the batters off.”

Holmes, who had a rocky start to the season after a rocky second half last year, seemed to have settled down lately. He entered Friday not having allowed a run in his last five outings, and he said Thursday that his sinker finally was where it needed to be. Friday’s mini-meltdown was a frustrating regression as his ERA rose to 5.40.

“I thought, overall, for the most part, he executed with the exception of the two-strike pitch to Correa,” Aaron Boone said. “I feel like he’s throwing the ball well. He got him tonight.”

The bumpy end quashed what started as a celebratory night at Yankee Stadium, courtesy of Volpe and Aaron Judge. Three pitches into the Yankees’ first at-bat, they led 2-0. Volpe led off the first with the first homer of his career and Judge followed with his 225th career homer on the very next pitch. You’d be hard-pressed to figure out who was happier: the rookie who got to live out a dream or the grinning captain who ran up behind Volpe to hug him in the dugout.

“It was a special moment that I tried to share with the rest of the guys,” said Volpe, who was just about to meet the family who caught the ball (and get it back). He’ll never forget “how it all happened and Judgy going back-to-back. I think, too, the great teammates I’m fortunate enough to play with over the last couple of weeks. So many guys have had so many conversations about hitting [with me]. They’re just so knowledgeable and experienced.”

He won’t remember too much else about the actual moment, though.

“I completely blacked out,” said Volpe, who said he hadn’t even hit a home run there in batting practice (his family, he said, was on hand to see it). “It was amazing to see the reaction of the crowd . . . It was special.”

Suffice it to say, Twins starter Louie Varland had a first inning to forget — not that Volpe will be obliging him anytime soon.

Volpe smashed a 95.4-mph inside, letter-high fastball 394 feet to left on the second pitch he saw from Varland, becoming the first Yankee to hit his first career homer leading off a game since Bobby Richardson in 1959, according to MLB statistician Katie Sharpe (he’s also the third-youngest Yankee to do so).

Varland’s very next pitch actually was worse: a 96-mph meatball at the dead center of the plate to Judge, who hit it 404 feet to right-center.

Giancarlo Stanton tacked on a fifth-inning homer to left in the fifth, giving the Yankees 23 — a distant second to the American League-leading Rays, who have 34. It was only the third time in 32 games that the Yankees lost a game in which both Judge and Stanton homered.

Nestor Cortes allowed two runs, both courtesy of homers, in seven innings. He gave up five hits with no walks and seven strikeouts. Cortes has allowed two or fewer earned runs in nine straight starts, matching the longest such stretch for a starter in Yankees history.

The Twins cut it to 2-1 on Correa’s 331-foot homer to right in the sixth and 3-2 on Kyle Garlick’s homer in the seventh.

That got the Twins just close enough, and Correa did the rest against Holmes — a sour note to end a promising start.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.