Yankees Fail to Sweep Terrible Twins

The Yankees won two of three from the Twins. Big deal. Sorry, but given the state of the Twins these days, and the Yankees’ historic dominance of them over the past two-plus decades, nothing short of a sweep was good enough in this series. Instead, the Yankees blew the finale and wasted a great chance to gain ground Wednesday when all the teams ahead of them in the playoff chase lost. Lets get to it. 

Amidst all the aggravation we’ve felt over the past two-plus months watching the Yankees piss away yet another good start to a season, now to a point where they’re struggling to stay ahead of the friggin’ Cleveland Guardians for the final wildcard spot, there have been some nice developments along the way.

For instance, Will Warren might just be an MLB pitcher after all, and not just because he had no trouble tamping down the pathetic Twins Monday night. Given the way he looked last year, I didn’t think there was any chance he’d ever become a mainstay in the rotation, but he has done so in 2025 with Gerrit Cole out all year.

Same for Ben Rice who had a few flashy moments as a rookie in 2024, but then was mostly useless and was sent back to Triple-A in mid-August, never to return. This year, Rice has been up from the start and while his stats don’t blow you away, that’s because he’s had some tough luck while hitting the ball hard all season.

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And obviously, Trent Grisham hitting 21 home runs with a .346 on-base percentage came out of nowhere given his career as a great glove/no hit outfielder.

But perhaps the biggest surprise to me has been the short season Giancarlo Stanton has put together. As much as he can drive me nuts when he strikes out on breaking balls two feet wide of the plate, the reality is that he’s been a terrific hitter this season across the 43 games he has played since returning from his dual elbow injuries.

That’s something I was not expecting, but Stanton - who carried the Yankees to the World Series with a dynamic October when he hit seven homers, drove in 16 runs, and had an OPS of 1.048 in 16 postseason games - has picked up where he left off. It’s just too bad it took until the middle of June for him to get into the batters’ box.

He started sluggish and through his first 16 games he hit just one homer and had an OPS of .637. But in the 27 games since then he has been the Yankees’ most dynamic hitter with 11 homers, 27 RBI and an OPS of 1.137.

“Ever since he’s come back, he’s just been dialed in,” Aaron Judge said of Stanton. “He’s a leader. This guy’s been one of the best in the game for quite a long time. It speaks volumes to his leadership and what he means to this team.”

And if Stanton hitting .299 isn’t shocking enough - and given that in the last three years his averages were .211, .191 and .233, that’s shocking - the fact that he has played right field in the last week because Judge still can’t throw is rather mind-blowing.

Stanton hadn’t played in the field since September of 2023, but Aaron Boone had no choice but to risk it because with Judge back off the injured list and only able to hit, he has to be the DH and Boone can’t afford to take Stanton’s bat of the lineup. Kudos to Stanton, who may be the slowest runner in all of baseball, to put the glove back on because the Yankees absolutely needed him to.

“It’s a credit to him,” Boone said. “G’s here to win, period. There’s different things that pop up over the course of the season that require changing course or doing something a little bit different. In his case, with Aaron going down for this period of time, making himself an option again in the outfield, he knows it’s important to the club. He started working hard at it to prepare for this and give us that option.”

At the plate, we all know that when Stanton gets hot, he goes nuclear and right now, he’s in one of those periods. He has hit safely in 15 of his last 17 games during which he has seven homers, 17 RBI and an on-base percentage of .391. Wednesday night he enjoyed his first four-hit game since Aug. 24, 2023 against the Nationals.

“Just feel like he has responded well to it physically and obviously want to keep his bat in there as much as possible, too,” Boone said. “He’s controlling the strike zone, I feel like, as good as I’ve seen him. He’s going up there with a good plan, and when he’s getting the pitch he’s looking for, he’s doing damage with it.”

The hope is that Stanton can stay healthy for the rest of the season, and with Judge getting closer to returning to right field, the odds of Stanton staying in one piece will increase once he returns to being the full-time DH. If the Yankees actually have a rally in their bones this season and get to the postseason, right now it feels like Stanton will be one of the key reasons why.

“I feel good,’ Stanton said. “Putting together good at bats, the timing’s there, so just got to take advantage of mistakes. It’s refreshing after missing so much time, because I contribute zero when I miss time. Anything I can do when I’m back is always nice.”

Aug. 11: Yankees 6, Twins 2

➤ It took a little while to put this game away, but for a team that has certainly had a tough time closing out games for quite a while now, the Yankees got it done after the Twins had crept within 3-2 in the seventh.

➤ The Twins aren’t very good, but nonetheless Will Warren pitched really well, and the best thing about his start is he got two outs in the seventh, something no Yankee starter ever seems to do anymore. That enabled Boone to shorten the bullpen and all he needed was Luke Weaver and David Bednar to lock it down. Warren gave up only three hits with no walks while striking out seven, meaning he retired 20 of the 23 batters he faced. Two of the hits were solo homers by Byron Buxton and Trevor Larnach, but solo homers aren’t killers unless you give up four like the Twins did. Warren has a 1.93 ERA over his last four starts.

➤ Cody Bellinger in the first, Stanton and Rice back-to-back in the third and Jazz Chisholm in the ninth all hit solo blasts and that was the difference, though you can make the argument that the biggest runs came in the seventh when the Yankees put together an old-style rally without a long ball. The Twins had just gotten with 3-2 but Ryan McMahon led off with a double and took third on a wild pitch and Anthony Volpe walked. Grisham and Judge then delivered consecutive RBI singles to put the Yankees back in control.

➤ Weaver retired all four men he faced, and Bednar needed just 12 pitches to go 1-2-3 in the ninth. How nice is it to have an actual closer?

What they said in Monday’s clubhouse

• Boone on Warren: “I think he’s gained a lot of confidence from what he’s been through last year, getting a taste of it up here, coming up this year, taking his lumps at times but also having a lot of success. I think he realizes he can get really good hitters out with his stuff, and he has that expectation now.”

• Warren: “I think as a starting rotation in general, I think we take pride in getting - we want to get six (innings) or more every time. Lately, it hadn’t been the case. I think we’ve been needing that spark. We’ve been playing flat, I feel like, and tonight we jumped out there with the Bellinger home run and then obviously we went back-to-back. The past month hasn’t been how we’re supposed to play baseball, and … we’ve had a gut punch lately, and it was nice to get out there and play baseball the way we were supposed to.”

Aug. 12: Yankees 9, Twins 1

➤ Carlos Rodon watched Warren cruise through this no-name Twins lineup and, as the saying goes, he said “hold my beer.” Rodon got off to a rough start as he threw 31 pitches in the first inning and right away, you just figured it was going to be a short night for him and a long night for the bullpen. Before he recorded an out there was a single, a stolen base, a walk and a hit batsmen which loaded the bases. But he rallied to retire the next three men, allowing just one run on a grounder.

➤ From there, Rodon was lights out. He pitched six more innings and gave up just one hit and two walks, finishing seven innings at 96 pitches. Rodon had pitched past the sixth inning just once in his previous 11 starts and this was as good as he’s looked since that game, his eight shutout innings against a good Cubs offense on July 11.

➤ Once again, Boone needed only two relievers and this was a stress-free mop-up for Tim Hill and Yerry De los Santos who combined to retire all six men they faced. It was such a pleasure to watch an easy win like this.

➤ Stanton was a stud as he ripped four hits - home run, double and two singles - and he drove in three runs. But he wasn’t alone. Judge tied the game at 1-1 with his first home run since July 23, a span of eight games. Then Volpe crushed a three-run bomb in the second after Chisholm and McMahon had walked. That basically decided the game, but the Yankees kept tacking on.

➤ Stanton hit a 447-foot bomb in the fifth so I wasn’t even pissed when after that, the Yankees left the bases loaded for the second time in five innings as they finished 3-for-14 with runners in scoring position. Then in the seventh, Bellinger drew a bases-loaded walk and Stanton had a two-run single to blow it open.

What they said in Tuesday’s clubhouse

• Boone on Rodon’s shaky start: “It’s one of those, is he going to get out of the first inning? That’s where your mind is for a minute. I thought he looked a lot different really in the second inning.”

• Rodon: “We were set up for disaster there, but we got through it. After the first inning, I attacked the strike zone and made them put the ball in play, and the defense played great.”

• Judge: “Things haven’t gone our way the past couple of weeks, but it’s never really changed how we feel about this group. Our mission is still the same thing: Go back to the World Series and win it. We made it a little tough for ourselves the past couple of weeks, falling out of first place, but we have a lot of ballgames left to go do our thing.”

Aug. 13: Twins 4, Yankees 1

➤ So, the first two nights were fun, beating up on a team that traded 10 players off its roster at the deadline and has a bunch of guys you’ve never heard of in its lineup. But of course when the Yankees faced an actual MLB pitcher, Joe Ryan who is having a tremendous season, they did nothing. Five measly hits and the only run came, of course, via a solo homer by Bellinger in the third.

➤ After waiting out a two-hour rain delay, Cam Schlittler pitched very well, but after five innings where he allowed just one run on two hits and two walks, Boone lifted him at 86 pitches. Why? Who knows? This is what Boone does. On came De los Santos who had a 1.63 ERA when he stepped on the mound and a 2.51 ERA when he trudged off after he was charged with the decisive three runs in the sixth.

➤ Buxton hit a rocket to short where Volpe made a great play, but his throw was low and Rice couldn’t dig it out. Then Luke Keaschall hit a grounder down the third-base line and McMahon stopped it but had no play so that was a bit of tough luck for De los Santos. However, he then threw a meatball to Kody Clemens and he smacked it for a two-run double, the second run scoring when Grisham bobbled the ball for an error which also allowed Clemens to go to third. Just one of those typically sloppy Yankees fielding blunders we’ve all become accustomed to. Mark Leiter came in and got two outs, but Royce Lewis pulled a double to left to plate the final run.

➤ From there, the Yankees were silent. Ryan completed 6.2 innings before Kody Funderburk and Justin Topa recorded the final seven outs allowing just one baserunner when Stanton singled to open the ninth, followed immediately by a Rice double play grounder.

➤ Paul Goldschmidt has some type of knee injury and he may end up on the injured list. He started red hot but the 37-year-old former MVP has been a complete dud on offense since the start of June, hitting just .207 with four homers and a .599 OPS in his last 55 games.

➤ How much have the Yankees dominated the Twins? Before this loss, they had won 31 of the last 36 games against them at Yankee Stadium.

What they said in Wednesday’s clubhouse

• Boone on losing to this shitty team and failing to gain ground: “I mean, when you lose, it sucks. It’s all on us right now. We gotta go play well. Nothing you can do about all that. We see it all, but it’s like if we want to catch those teams in theory or we want to get where we want to go, we gotta play well over an extended period. So I don’t think we look at it like that.”

• Boone on pulling Schlittler: “It was like 52 (pitches) over the fourth and fifth inning. Just coming through a tough part of the lineup, Buxton, the time prior, had seen a ton of pitches before hitting a double against him. I just felt like, it was 86, but over 50 those last two innings, so it’s like how much more are you gonna get out of him? It felt like he really had to grind through the fourth and the fifth there.”

• Schlittler: “I felt good. I’m a rookie, so you got to earn that. It’s gonna take time and consistency. No issue with the decision and I trust the bullpen.”

The Yankees are off Thursday and then they start a three-game series with the Cardinals in St. Louis Friday. Not much was expected from the Cardinals and when they started 12-17, it looked like a long season was coming. However, they went 19-8 in May and by the end of June they were only three games behind the first-place Cubs.

Now, after losing two of three at home to the dreadful Rockies, they’re 61-61 and 16 games behind the red-hot Brewers who have won 12 in a row and are running away with the division. In the wildcard race, the Cardinals are 4.5 behind the Mets for the final spot.

Here are some of the top Cardinals to watch:

➤ SS Masyn Wynn: One of the future stars in the game, and outstanding fielder who has an on-base of .319.

➤ CF Victor Scott: Another stud defender up the middle who leads the team with 31 stolen bases despite hitting just .221.

➤ C Willson Contreras: He has missed a few games with a foot injury but is expected to return Friday. He leads the team with 16 homers and 65 RBI.

➤ 2B Brendan Donovan: Arguably the Cardinals best all-around player, the All-Star leads the team with 118 hits and has an on-base of .348, best among the starters.

➤ RP JoJo Romero: Has moved into the closer role after Ryan Helsley was traded to the Mets,though he blew the save Wednesday against the Rockies. Still, he has a 2.36 ERA.

The pitching matchups are scheduled to be:

• Friday, 8:15, YES: Luis Gil (7.27 ERA) vs. Andre Pallante (4.95) who allows a lot of traffic as his 1.367 WHIP indicates.

• Saturday, 7:15, FOX: Max Fried (2.94) vs. Sonny Gray (4.06) who is the ace of the staff in St. Louis and he leads the NL with a 6.73 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Too bad he didn’t do that during his brief time with the Yankees.

• Sunday, 2:15, YES: Will Warren (4.34) vs. Miles Mikolas (4.97) who is now 36 and has been in steady decline since he made the All-Star team in 2022.