As big-dog moves go, as a way to remove any doubt about who's in charge, it's hard to beat 876 feet of home runs in the first 10 minutes.
So it was on Tuesday, when the Yankees, as they have so many times before, made themselves at home at Target Field. Aaron Judge drove Cole Sands' seventh pitch, a helpless fastball in the middle of the plate, halfway up the juniper bushes in center field, 431 feet away. Giancarlo Stanton soon outdid his teammate, launching a blast 445 feet, onto the second deck above the bullpens.
The fireworks concluded, the Yankees proceeded to grind out a fairly standard-issue drubbing of the Twins, 10-4 in their home away from home. New York has lost in Minneapolis only a dozen times in Target Field's 13-year history.
"We actually talked about trying to attack a little down and away [to Judge]," Sands said. "Typically, I don't usually go down with my fastball, so it kind of leaked back up and he took advantage of it. So yeah, right where he wanted it."
Oh, Minnesota kept the game close for awhile, handing righthander Jameson Taillon — who last week carried a perfect game into the eighth inning — his worst start of the season. They peppered the righthander with nine hits, three of them by Jorge Polanco, including an RBI double and a solo home run, and knocked Taillon out before he retired a batter in the fifth. They even brought the tying run to the plate in that inning.
But another 410-foot rocket, Anthony Rizzo's contribution to Tyler Duffey's ballooning ERA, bounced off the scoreboard above the right field stands in the seventh inning, scored three more runs, and ended all doubt.
"We had a chance to get back in that game," Duffey said. "I got two quick [outs], felt good about it, and then a walk to Judge — got behind him, you don't want to give up the damage there. … And then of course, [got] Stanton, a three pitch-strikeout after" Rizzo's three-run homer. "It's frustrating."
The rest of the night was spent watching the crowd of 27,643 gradually head for the exits, manager Rocco Baldelli among them.
Baldelli was ejected in the seventh inning after home plate umpire Alex Tosi failed to recognize that a Max Kepler foul ball didn't actually touch his bat, but was deflected instead by catcher Jose Trevino's glove. When the rest of the crew didn't overrule the call, Baldelli registered his dissent loudly enough to earn his seventh career ejection, perhaps a reflection of the Twins' eternal Yankee frustration as much as a single miscalled strike.
"I don't have a great angle from the dugout, but we know that it was not a foul ball. We wanted to get the calls right," Baldelli said. "Probably some frustration there also added to it. I was talking balls and strikes and about some of the other calls that were made in the game."
Sands, thrown into the furnace of facing baseball's best slugging team in his second career start, actually recovered from the explosive beginning, holding New York scoreless in the second and third innings and holding Judge in the park in the fourth, a mere run-scoring single.
Another rookie, Yennier Cano, also stepped up against Judge an inning later. With the bases loaded and Juan Minaya having already walked in a run, Cano was summoned for a rare matchup of No. 99 vs. No. 99. The rookie was the victor, bravely sneaking in a 2-2 changeup that Judge swung through to end the inning.
Small consolation, though, for a Twins team that watched two of its former players — Josh Donaldson and Aaron Hicks, batting fifth and sixth in New York's lineup — take part in the Yankees' annual domination. The pair went 3-for-8 with three walks, with Donaldson prompting some booing from the impatient crowd.
Luis Arraez collected two hits in four at-bats to raise his AL-leading batting average to .361. He left the game in the eighth inning with some shoulder soreness, but Baldelli said that the issue appears minor.
"Luis is good. He had some shoulder tightness. He's dealt with this in the past," Baldelli said. "This is more of a mild case, we think, than what he was dealing with last year, so we'll work through it."
