MINNEAPOLIS — With the Yankees increasingly looking as if they’ll be the American League’s top wild-card team, the organization has a difficult decision ahead when it comes to who starts the third game of that best-of-three opening round.
Max Fried and Carlos Rodon, barring the unforeseen, are near locks for Game 1 and 2, respectively, which leaves a potential win-or-go-home Game 3 in the hands of one of these three pitchers — Will Warren, Luis Gil or Cam Schlittler.
Though, in reality, because of the up-and-down nature of Warren’s rookie season, which has included too many big innings, it’s ultimately between the hard-throwing Schlittler and the just-as-hard-throwing Gil.
“Performance matters,” manager Aaron Boone said Wednesday afternoon. “They’re each going to have a few more here, so hopefully they kind of put us in a tough situation based on them performing well.”
Neither did the last two days.
The rookie Schlittler did not perform particularly well Tuesday night in a one-run victory over the Twins, a game in which he contributed to Minnesota nearly coming back from a nine-run deficit after four.
And Gil, with a chance to pull ahead in that race, did not, either.
But with Trent Grisham hitting two more home runs Wednesday night to run his season total to 33 and Aaron Judge collecting three hits to continue his charge toward his first career batting title, it wasn’t costly as the Yankees took the series with a 10-5 victory in front of 20,206 at Target Field.
The Yankees (85-67), who also got Cody Bellinger’s 29th homer of the season — a two-run shot in the ninth to make it 10-5 — pulled within four games of the Blue Jays, who lost to the Rays, in the AL East with 10 games left.
The Yankees, now 127-46 against the Twins (66-86) since 2002, including the postseason, scored a combined 20 runs with 28 hits the final two games of the series after losing, 7-0, Monday night.
“It speaks to the guys that we have in the clubhouse, the guys we have in the lineup,” said Grisham, who has hit 10 homers in his last 22 games. “A resilient group. Up and down the lineup, it’s just tough AB after tough AB.”
Judge went 3-for-4 and is now hitting an MLB-leading .329 with a 1.132 OPS, which also leads the majors.
The Yankees, coming off a 16-hit effort in Tuesday night’s 10-9 victory, had 12 hits Wednesday. Grisham had his two homers and Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt each had two hits as well. “Up and down the lineup, one through nine, really tough at-bats, and guys off the bench [too],” said Bellinger, who entered Wednesday slashing .351/.404/.588 with runners in scoring position and knocked in Judge, who doubled, in the first for a 1-0 lead. “A really, really deep team.”
The Twins took a 2-1 lead in the second, and Grisham’s 432-foot blast off righthander Taj Bradley (6-8, 5.20) that hit off the facing of the second-deck overhang tied it at 2-2.
The Yankees sent nine to the plate in a five-run fourth. Goldschmidt doubled to right and Jasson Dominguez, who has gotten only sporadic playing time in the second half but has impressed his teammates with his daily work regardless of whether he’s in the lineup or not, doubled him in.
Jose Caballero, back at shortstop, walked and stole his MLB-leading 48th base. Grisham’s three-run homer made it 6-2. Ben Rice doubled, Judge singled and Bradley balked to bring home the lead runner to make it 7-2.
The Twins came back in the bottom half against Gil, scoring three runs, getting a two-out RBI single by Luke Keaschall and, after a walk to pinch hitter James Outman that loaded the bases, a two-run single by Lee that made it 7-5.
“You’ve got to give them credit, they were able to make some good contact on some good pitches,” Gil, who allowed five runs (four earned) and a season-high nine hits over 4 2⁄3 innings, said through his interpreter. “Definitely wanted to get out of that inning.”
Said Boone: “They made it tough on Louie tonight.”
The Yankees got terrific work from their inconsistent bullpen as Fernando Cruz replaced Gil and recorded four outs. Devin Williams struck out three in the seventh after allowing a leadoff hit and Luke Weaver, torched for five runs Monday night and given an 8-5 lead in the top of the eighth Wednesday on Ryan McMahon’s RBI single, gave up a hit and struck out one in the bottom half.
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.
#Yankees #Trent #Grisham #homers #helps #club #series #Twins
