Yankees Finish Off a Now Hollow-Feeling Sweep Against the Twins

If ever there was a morning where it feels pretty improper to be celebrating a sweep of the Twins, an eight-game winning streak, and the best record in baseball, this is it. Thursday night, Juan Soto was removed from the game with left forearm soreness, and now we wait on pins and needles to see how serious it might, or might not be. Why does it feel like the other shoe just dropped? Lets get to it.

June 6: Yankees 8, Twins 5

It was right around this time last year - and curiously, the Yankees are about to start playing the same opponent - when the 2023 season went to die. Aaron Judge smashed his toe into the wall at Dodger Stadium, missed the next two months, and the Yankees collapsed without their captain.

Thursday night, following a 56-minute rain delay in the Bronx, when the Yankees took the field in the sixth inning Juan Soto was suddenly missing from his right-field spot. The team announced he has left forearm soreness and he will get imaging done Friday to see what’s up.

So now we wait for those results which hopefully will show nothing, but also knowing that we’re talking about the Yankees, a team with a disastrous history of injuries the past few years, so we must prepare for the possibility that for a second season in a row, an injury to a superstar outfielder could derail what, to this point, has been a magical season.

“We all decided to not start getting warmed up again after an hour sitting down here (in the clubhouse),” Soto said of his leaving the game after consulting with the medical staff and Aaron Boone. “We didn’t want to risk anything like that, so we just decided to stop.”

Soto said he woke up with soreness a couple weeks ago and he’s been dealing with it because it really hasn’t affected him in the field when he’s throwing, and certainly not at the plate as he leads the AL with a .318 average and is second in MLB to Judge in OPS at 1.027.

“It’s more like soreness that I feel with any kind of move that I make with my arm,” Soto said. “It definitely doesn’t stop me from anything baseball-wise or in the field. We’ve been trying to get away with it and it hasn’t gone (away).”

Soto has been one of the most reliable players in MLB. He has played all 64 games as a Yankee this year, he played in all 162 for the Padres in 2023, and he has played in at least 150 games in three other years. Essentially, the guy never gets hurt - his last IL stint was more than three years ago - but now he’s a Yankee, and when you’re a Yankee, shit happens.

“It’s just been something that’s been bothering him for the last week or so; he’s been getting treatment on it,” the ever upbeat Boone said. “It hasn’t really affected him in his baseball stuff, throwing or swinging or anything. When you take a player the caliber of Juan out of a game, there’s always concern about that. But we’re hoping we’re just being cautious here.”

Yeah, let’s hope that’s all it is, but the pessimist in me hears forearm discomfort and that is almost never a good thing because it is often related to the elbow, and then in many cases that results in Tommy John surgery. There are countless pitchers who will tell you that. Hell, top Yankees prospect Jasson Dominguez will tell you that.

Here are my observations:

➤ You knew early on that Marcus Stroman didn’t have it Thursday. Carlos Correa homered in the first inning and Stroman struggled with his command throughout his brief - at least for the Yankees’ recent standard of brief - outing of 4.2 innings. He was given a 7-2 lead but then gave up three runs in the fifth and left having allowed five runs on six hits and two walks with only two strikeouts, easily his worst start as a Yankee. “It was a tough one for sure. I just felt like my feel was off,” Stroman said. “Struggling to get a grip a little bit, but yeah, they put together some great ABs. I didn’t execute when I needed to, but luckily we were able to keep the game where it was at.”

➤ But if Stroman struggled, what do we call what Pablo Lopez was doing for the Twins? He has been a terrific pitcher in previous years, but this season he certainly has not been that with a 5.45 ERA. He walked a career-high six men, gave up four hits including a stunning two-run homer to Trent Grisham, and needed 96 pitches to get through four innings, during which he gave up seven runs.

➤ Grisham’s homer came in the second - just his third hit of the year so he’s now batting .071 - and after the Twins tied it at 2-2 in the third on a Christian Vasquez homer, the Yankees put up three in the third as Lopez walked Soto, Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, then gave up a two-run double to Gleyber Torres and a sacrifice fly to Austin Wells.

➤ The Yankees added two more in the fourth as Anthony Volpe singled, Judge walked, and when they pulled off a double steal, Vasquez threw the ball into left field trying to nail Volpe at third and he got up and raced home. Judge then scored on a sac fly by Grisham whose three RBI matched his season total coming into the night.

➤ Just when it seemed like another easy night, Stroman gave up three in the fifth. Ian Hamilton, Victor Gonzalez, and Luke Weaver got seven outs on either side of the rain delay without much problem, but Tommy Kahnle made things uncomfortable in the eighth as he gave up a hit and a walk and had to face Correa as the tying run. Correa then ripped one to short and Volpe made an outstanding backhand play to get the inning-ending force at second to preserve an 8-5 lead. Clay Holmes then closed it out mostly stress free.

It’ll be a nod to the old days this weekend at Yankee Stadium as the Dodgers come to the Bronx for a heavyweight three-game series that gets the national TV treatment both Saturday and Sunday night. No, the MLB championship won’t be on the line as it used to be in the 1940s and 50s when these two franchises made regular hooked up in the World Series, but it’s easy to think ahead to the possibility that this could be a 2024 World Series preview.

The Dodgers spent more than a billion dollars in the last offseason to sign Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Teoscar Hernandez, yet they have not gotten off to the dominant start everyone expected. They just salvaged the final game of a series against the Pirates with an 11-7 victory Thursday and while they’re sitting at 39-25 and comfortably in first place in the NL West, it hasn’t been completely smooth. They’re just 6-8 in their last 14 games.

Their top top four batters are all superstars - Mookie Betts, Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith - and they have lived up to their billing, but the bottom half of the order has really struggled. Still, the Dodgers rank second in OPS at .770 and on-base at .335 behind only the Yankees in both categories, their 121 doubles are tied for first, and their 82 home runs are third.

And the pitching has been very good, too, as they have the fourth-best staff ERA (3.32) and WHIP (1.130). This is a great team and these games could be magnificent.

The pitching matchups are as follows: Friday at 7:05 on YES it’s Cody Poteet (2.45 ERA) against Yamamoto (3.32); Saturday at 7:35 on FOX it’s Nestor Cortes (3.46) against Gavin Stone (2.90); and Sunday at 7:10 on ESPN it’s Carlos Rodon (2.93) against Glasnow (1.82).

⚾ Kudos once again to the Blue Jays who hung on Thursday afternoon to defeat the Orioles 6-5, giving them a split of the four-game set at Rogers Centre. Look, we don’t root for the Blue Jays in this space, but when they’re playing the Orioles this year, we absolutely are. Same goes for the Red Sox and gasp, the Rays, because unless something crazy happens - oh, like a season-ending injury to Juan Soto, for example - the Yankees are going to be battling Baltimore and Baltimore only for the top spot in the AL East. And thanks to the Jays, the Orioles are now 4.5 games behind.

Yusei Kikuchi held the Orioles to one run on four hits through six innings as Toronto built a 6-1 lead on the strength of a Vlad Guerrero Jr. three-run homer in the third, Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s RBI single in the fourth, and Rochester native Ernie Clement’s two-run single in the sixth. Then the Blue Jays had to sweat out the final two innings as their bullpen nearly gave it away.

Adley Rutschman’s second homer of the game, a two-run shot in the eighth, made it 6-3, and in the ninth, Ryan O’Hearn’s two-out, two-run homer cut it to 6-5 before Yimi Garcia - who is serving as Toronto’s closer while Jordan Romano is sidelined - struck out Kyle Stowers to end it.

⚾ Elly De La Cruz continues to emerge as a budding star for the Reds. On the one-year anniversary of his MLB debut in 2023, he helped Cincinnati beat the Cubs 8-4 as he smoked a line-drive three-run homer in the third inning.

He still has plenty of inconsistency in his game which is why his slash line isn’t all that impressive at .240/.332/.438 with an OPS of .770. But in singular moments, this guy’s highlights are among the best in MLB. The home run was clocked at 114.7 mph and destroyed a beer being held by a fan in right field. That guy is lucky he didn’t end up in the hospital. The Reds have now won five in a row and 10 of their last 13.

⚾ The Red Sox are next in line to beat up on the White Sox and Thursday, that’s what they did, a 14-2 flogging. My God, what a joke the White Sox are as they lost their 14th straight game thanks a pitching performance where they gave up 24 hits and five walks. Jarren Durah had four hits including a home run, Emmanuel Valdez hit a three-run homer, Ceddane Rafaela went 4-for-6 with four RBI, and Rob Refsnyder and Dominic Smith had three hits apiece. The White Six are now 15-48 and the 120-loss 1962 Mets are definitely in play.