For two decades, Yankees have owned the Twins
Yankees' Joey Gallo, right, scores past Minnesota Twins catcher Gary Sánchez on an Aaron Judge RBI single in the fourth inning of a baseball game, Tuesday, June 7, 2022, in Minneapolis. Credit: AP/Jim Mone
MINNEAPOLIS – The names change, the ballparks have changed, the verbiage changes only slightly and the results…well, they never change.
The Yankees beat the Twins, 10-4, Tuesday night in the clubs’ first meeting of 2022. The Twins entered the series 32-24 and in first place in the AL Central, something that, when it comes to these two teams, could not be more irrelevant.
Because, the past two decades, the Yankees have consistently beaten up on Twins’ teams good and bad.
And more often than not, they’ve been good.
How lopsided has it been?
With Tuesday’s victory, the Yankees improved to an absurd 110-38 against the Twins since 2002, including the postseason.
“Those things have a way of changing if you’re not careful,” Aaron Boone said with a smile Wednesday, prudently not especially interested in digging too deep into the topic. “I look at it in the here and now and I look over there and say, that’s a good team and we have to play well to beat them.”
It would be a remarkable record even if the Twins in that time frame had been among the worst teams in baseball, but they have not. Not even close.
Since 2002 the Twins have finished over .500 12 times and made the playoffs in nine of those seasons.
The most recent year they played the Yankees in the postseason was 2019 and, on the surface, that Division Series matchup appeared as if it might be different. Or, at the very least, competitive.
“Yeah, I certainly dismiss that,” Boone said before that series of the Yankees’ success vs. the Twins. “We know what they’re capable of and we know we have to execute. If we don’t execute, you’re in trouble against that team.”
Longtime Twins president Dave St. Peter, during a call to Minneapolis/St. Paul radio station SKOR North before the start of the 2019 series, got in on the no-seriously-it-will-be-different-this-time act, as did Joe Girardi, at the time an analyst with MLB network.
“We obviously don’t get to pick who we play,” St. Peter said, according to the station’s website. “We understand the history. That’s my history — it isn’t Rocco Baldelli’s history, it certainly isn’t Nelson Cruz’s history. So I think that’ll be overblown. Organizationally, I just say it’s time to slay the dragon, right?”
Said Girardi, who managed the Yankees to ALDS sweeps of the Twins in 2009 and 2010 and also in the 2017 wild-card game: “I do believe that this is an offense that can put up big numbers on you. When I managed against them it seemed like we were always facing [Joe] Mauer and [Justin] Morneau. It seemed like they hit first and second, then they hit third and fourth and then they hit fifth and sixth. They were the only two guys who were ever up. I think this lineup is deeper and more explosive, and that makes them dangerous.”
The 2019 series turned out to be almost comically uncompetitive as the Yankees routed the Twins, 10-4, in Game 1 en route to outscoring them, 23-7, in the three-game sweep, ending Baldelli’s first season as Twins’ manager.
With Baldelli’s Twins currently in first place in the woefully mediocre AL Central – a division that, frankly, the Orioles would likely contend in – another playoff matchup with the Yankees can’t be ruled out.
Though no one organizationally would ever say it publicly, the Yankees certainly would sign up for such a matchup.
The Twins, after all, have lost 15 straight postseason games, including 13 straight to the Yankees, who took them out 3-1 in the 2003 ALDS, 3-1 in the 2004 ALDS, 3-0 in the 2009 ALDS and again 3-0 in the 2010 ALDS. The 2017 wild-card game at the Stadium was an 8-4 Yankees victory in which the Twins lost despite taking a 3-0 first-inning lead and knocking out Luis Severino after he retired only one batter.
Through five innings Tuesday night the Yankees had committed three errors, were 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position and had stranded nine runners. They nonetheless led 5-4 and would coast to a six-run victory.
Rinse. Repeat.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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