Ervin Santana gets knocked out of wild-card game by Yankees

One thing you’ve got to say about Twins pitcher Ervin Santana: He knows his architecture. A day before he started the wild-card game against the Yankees, he reiterated his longstanding review of the opponent’s home field.

“The ballpark is small. Balls carry here,” he said during his news conference on Monday afternoon. That was after he had been asked about a comment he had made two years ago, after having surrendered two home runs to Greg Bird, referring to Yankee Stadium as “a joke.”

He did not repeat that phrase on Monday, but he did not back down from it, either. “You can see that any fly ball is going to be a home run or off the wall. There’s nothing you can do about it,” Santana said the day before the win-or-go-home game. On Tuesday night, he did his share to prove it.

Before he had finished two innings, he had allowed two home runs. His teammates did their share, too, having hit two home runs in the top of the first, knocking Santana’s Dominican countryman Luis Severino out of the game before he achieved a second out.

It was all probably fitting that the first postseason game of 2017 should start that way, considering that the regular season saw the greatest number of home runs in Major League Baseball history.

In a power vs. power matchup, the Twins entered the game shorthanded. The team announced in the morning, when rosters were due, that slugger Miguel Sano would not be active for this round. That was less surprising than disappointing for Minnesota, which had clung to one late hope that he would be able to contribute at least as a pinch hitter.

Sano, also a countryman of Santana, is the cornerstone of the Twins lineup and future. The franchise paid a great deal to sign him as a teenager, outbidding the Yankees and others. He was second on the club with 28 home runs despite missing almost the entire final stretch with a left shin injury — the result of having fouled a ball off his leg on Aug. 18.

He played during the weekend and went only 1-for-8. He hit in the cage during the workout at the Stadium Monday but just did not look healthy enough to play. “It was just too prohibitive as far as not being able to use his front leg as a bracing leg,” manager Paul Molitor said. “It was emotional for him because I know he wants to play, but we had to decide that, at least for now, it’s not the right thing.”

So, it was a difficult day for him and for Santana. The latter had acknowledged Monday that he never had won a game in six tries at the current Yankee Stadium. “Tomorrow is going to be one,” he said.

That did not happen. He left after two innings with the score tied at 4. He was replaced by a 23-year-old Jose Berrios, who was entering in the same kind of situation as a 22-year-old pitcher did in a winner-take-all game against the Yankees in 2005. The kid entered in the second inning for the Angels in the finale of a five-game series and pitched well enough for a win. The kid’s name? Ervin Santana.