Yankees Barely Break a Sweat in Sweeping Sleepy Twins

The Yankees are back in first place and they’re the first AL team to win 30 games, as they waltzed their way to an easy sweep of the Twins, finishing it off with a sleepy 5-0 victory Thursday. They finished their road trip 5-1 and now they head home for a weekend series against the worst team in the AL, the White Sox. Down in Box Score Briefs, rather than a trip around the majors, I’m updating you on some of the top Yankees prospects in the minor leagues. Let’s get to it.

May 16: Yankees 5, Twins 0

You know how I often say that it’s never easy for the Yankees, because on so many nights, it isn’t? I sure can’t say that about their three-game sweep of the Twins.

Seriously, that was one of the easiest, low-stress, never-a-doubt sweeps we’ve seen in a long time. And it wasn’t like the Yankees blew Minnesota out - the scores of the games were 5-1, 4-0 and on Thursday, 5-0. But in reality, none of them felt remotely close.

Consider this: Ryan Jeffers led off the bottom of the first inning Tuesday night for the Twins and on the second pitch he saw from Carlos Rodon, he hit a home run. From that moment on, the Twins never scored another run and they had just 13 other hits in the final 26 innings. Crazy, especially for a team that came into the series having won 17 of 20 games.

“That’s not an easy thing to do, to walk in here against a team playing as well as they are, and have that kind of success,” Aaron Boone said. “It makes for a really good road trip.”

This was just the eighth time in Yankees history counting the postseason that they allowed one or zero runs during a three-game series. Eight times! In franchise history! They did it against the Rangers in the 1999 and 1998 divisional round, and in the regular season it hadn’t happened since 1952 against the Red Sox. Before that it was 1920, then twice in 1906, and once in 1904 when the team was still called the Highlanders.

Of course, we shouldn’t be surprised, right? The Yankees have owned the Twins for more than two decades. Including the playoffs, this is the 17th time since 2002 that the Yankees have swept a series and they are 120-44 against them, a winning percentage of .732. That is simply unbelievable in baseball.

The Yankees now lead the AL in runs scored (216) and fewest runs allowed (149) which computes to a sweet plus-67 run differential. Only the Phillies in the NL have more wins (31) and only the Dodgers (+76) and Phillies (+71) have better run differentials.

I’ll admit it, I’m very surprised by how well the Yankees have played. But before we get too giddy, I’ll also remind you of 2022. That year they started 30-13, were eventually an incredible 61-23 with a 15.5-game lead, but then went 38-40 the rest of the way and eventually got swept in the ALCS by the hated Astros.

Long way to go in 2024, but this has been fun.

Here are my observations:

➤ Aaron Judge kept his heater going. Dating back to his last at bat of the first game Tuesday through his first two in this game, Judge was on base eight consecutive times. He started this one with a first-inning walk after Anthony Volpe opened the game with a home run off Joe Ryan. Judge took second on Alex Verdugo’s single and scored on Gleyber Torres’ double when his fly to left-center glanced off the glove of Alex Kiriloff. To put it mildly, the Twins outfield defense in this series was horrendous. Anthony Rizzo then drove in Verdugo with a grounder to make it 3-0.

➤ Judge led off the third with a double but was stranded and then finally, in the fifth, the Twins retired him on a deep fly to center that was nearly a home run. He doubled in the seventh to push Juan Soto to third, and Soto scored on Verdugo’s sacrifice fly to make it 5-0. The Yankees fourth run had scored in the sixth when Torres doubled and came home on Austin Wells’ two-out single.

➤ In the last two games Judge had five doubles and one home run. On the road trip - during which the Yankees went 5-1 and moved back into first place in the AL East as they became the first AL team to reach 30 victories - Judge went 9-for-20 , scored six runs and drove in four. So far in May, he’s hitting .396/.517/.896 with an OPS of 1.413. That’ll work.

“I’ve seen him obviously do a lot of great things the last six, seven years, but the way he’s swinging the bat right now and seeing the ball,” Boone said. “This trip alone, obviously he had the results and the success, but he probably had another five, six balls to the fence that were caught. But just seeing it and not missing when they do make a pitch to him.”

➤ And Judge wasn’t even the story of this game, or this series. It was the Yankees starting pitching, which meant Thursday, Clarke Schmidt. What a performance for the righty, a career-long eight innings and a career-high tying eight strikeouts while allowing just three hits with no walks. That’s as good as it gets, Gerrit Cole-esque. He had the Twins off balance and the key was that he attacked them all day. We all know his biggest problem is nibbling, getting ahead in counts and then screwing around and it drives up his pitch counts and knocks him out early. Not in this game. Absolutely tremendous and with his 6.2 scoreless innings in Tampa last week, he has not given up a run in his last 14.2 innings. His ERA is down to 2.49 with a 1.130 WHIP.

“Obviously you have to earn that right to stay in those games,” Schmidt said. “You gotta earn that right to be able to face lineups three times and earn that trust factor. That’s something I’m trying to do every time I go out there and make (Boone) feel comfortable giving me the ball in the sixth, seventh, eighth innings. Definitely a step in the right direction these past two starts.”

➤ Volpe is starting to regain some of his swagger. He’s now on a nine-game hitting streak (14-for-41) with three homers and 10 RBI. And then there’s Juan Soto who has suddenly hit his first slump as a Yankee as he’s 3-for-27 since the last game against Houston on May 9. During that time he’s only drawn four walks, and his May slash line has sagged to .255/.323/.382 for a very mundane .705 OPS. Rizzo also had a rough series as he went 1-for-13.

It would be hard to imagine that a series could be much easier than the one the Yankees just played, but this weekend could follow a similar pattern as the worst team in the AL, the 14-30 White Sox, are coming to the Bronx for three.

Chicago lost 22 of its first 25 games to start the season before a stunning three-game sweep of the Rays. Yeah, I loved that. Since that awful beginning they’ve gone a respectable 11-8 so they’re starting to play better, which is why you never take anything for granted in baseball.

Their 32 home runs are tied for the fewest in MLB, they’ve been shutout an MLB-high nine times, and they are dead last in average (.216), on-base (.276), slugging (.335) and OPS (.611). Absolutely pathetic. Their best hitter is 36-year-old Tommy Pham who just joined the team and has played only 18 games. He’s hitting .319 with two homers and 10 RBI in just 69 at bats. Ex-Yankee Andrew Benintendi leads the Sox with 14 RBI but he’s batting .200 and his .516 OPS ranks 164th out of 166 qualified batters.

The pitching matchups are as follows: Friday at 7:05 on YES it’s Nestor Cortes (4.02 ERA) against Mike Clevinger (5.40 ERA); Saturday at 1:05 on YES it’s Luis Gil (2.51) against Brad Keller (2.84); and Sunday at 1:35 on YES it’s Carlos Rodon (3.31) against Chris Flexen (4.46).

There wasn’t a whole lot happening around MLB Thursday so what I thought I’d do is catch you up on what’s been happening in the Yankees’ farm system.

⚾ At Triple-A Scranton, shortstop Caleb Durbin is riding a 19-game on-base streak (since April 24), during which he is batting .308/.419/.423 with six doubles, one homer, 15 RBIs and nine steals. Durbin leads the RailRiders in runs (29), hits (45), doubles (14), RBIs (31), walks (29) and steals (19). There’s been some talk that he might get a chance to compete for the second base job next season assuming Torres is gone, and he can also play third and the corner outfield spots, meaning he’s exactly the kind of guy the Yankees love.

“He’s gonna have a big league career,” Boone said of the 24-year-old who as acquired in a trade from the Braves for pitcher Lucas Luetge in 2022. “He can really hit. He can run and is a great base-runner. Steals bases. Has some position flexibility. But I think he’s gonna be a player for a long time. I feel like he’s a winning player. Whether we see him at some point this year, I don’t know, but I do feel like he’s got a bright, big league future”

⚾ Starting pitcher Will Warren got off to a decent start at Scranton, a 3.95 ERA and .204 batting average against in six starts, but he has been rocked in his last two outings. Against Rochester and Worcester he pitched 10 innings and allowed 14 earned runs on 17 hits and three walks.

⚾ Starting pitcher Clayton Beeter has fared much better. He’s made seven starts at Scranton and in 32 innings he has a 2.53 ERA, a 1.188 WHIP and 12.4 strikeouts per nine innings. His bugaboo has been walks, though, with an untenable 5.9 per nine. He just pitched four scoreless and hitless innings against Worcester on Wednesday but he walked five men across his 76 pitches. “We’re really excited about him, and I know he’s going to help us a lot this year,” Boone said of Beeter.

⚾ Outfielder Spencer Jones is off to a slow start at Double-A Somerset. After wowing everyone in big league camp during the spring, he’s hitting just .230 with a .654 OPS, two homers and 14 RBI. Jones was hitting .348 with two homers through his first 11 games before he slumped with a .143 average and no bombs through the next 11. He went 0-for-2 Thursday night.

⚾ Starting pitcher Brock Selvidge had made six starts at Somerset before Thursday and he’d been sharp with a 2.18 ERA, a 1.150 WHIP and a batting average against of .211. He got hammered Thursday for five runs in the second and third innings, but to his credit he finished with three scoreless innings to get through six. He wound up keeping it at five runs on four hits and four walks while striking out eight. He was followed by rehabbing Tommy Kahnle who struck out all three batters he faced in the seventh, so his return to the Yankees is imminent.

⚾ Catcher Ben Rice has hit eight home runs with 15 RBI, a .371 on-base percentage and an .839 OPS in 34 games for Somerset. He had an RBI double Thursday night. This after a 2023 season when he was arguably the Yankees’ most impressive minor-league hitter as he posted a 1.048 OPS across three levels with 20 homers and 68 RBI.

⚾ Jasson Dominquez began his road back at Single-A Tampa this week and he singled in his first at bat as a DH Tuesday and it came off his former teammate, Domingo German, who was pitching for Bradenton in the Pirates system. Dominguez finished that game 1-for-3, took Wednesday off, then went 2-for-4 Thursday, all singles. “Everything is going as it’s planned,” said Domínguez, who wasn’t originally expected to be back until early in the summer after his September Tommy John surgery. “I was anxious before about when I would get back. But now that I’m playing, I’m good.”