NEW YORK — At least that’s over.
Add a night of uncharacteristic wildness from Pablo López to the list of wonky stuff that only seems to happen when the Minnesota Twins face the New York Yankees. López issued a career-high six walks and hit another batter Thursday night, and a potent Yankees offense was more than happy to take advantage.
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Gleyber Torres’ bases-loaded, two-run double broke a third-inning tie and New York pulled away early before holding on for an 8-5 victory over the Twins at Yankee Stadium. Getting to López for seven runs, the Yankees continued their decades-long dominance of the Twins, Thursday’s win giving them a victory in all six of the team’s meetings this season.
The Twins are now 44-123 against the Yankees since 2002.
“It’s on me,” López said. “I just was not in the zone. Usually if you’re in the zone, you’re giving yourself the best opportunity. Today I gave myself no opportunity. I didn’t use my defense. I didn’t challenge them in the zone. I just kept putting them on base, and when it was time to challenge in the zone, bases were loaded, people were in scoring position and they put the ball in play.”
López hoped he’d ironed out the inconsistencies in his performance with an outstanding showing in Houston on Friday. Though he still had difficulty commanding the sweeper in Texas, López made everything else work as he limited the Astros to a run and struck out eight in seven innings.
But López never found his footing in the Bronx.
In a sign of things to come, he walked two batters in a scoreless first inning, though Juan Soto clearly went around on a checked swing on a 3-2 pitch with one out. López wasn’t as fortunate in the second inning as Trent Grisham made him pay for hitting catcher Austin Wells with his 0-2 sweeper one out earlier, blasting a first-pitch fastball for a two-run homer and a 2-1 New York lead.
Though Christian Vázquez tied the score with a solo homer, things unraveled in the third inning. López, whom Vázquez said was sweating profusely on a humid night, couldn’t get Soto, Aaron Judge or Giancarlo Stanton to chase anything and loaded the bases with no outs.
While he struck out Anthony Rizzo and was ahead 1-2 in the count, López’s sinker caught too much of the plate and Torres punched it down the first-base line for an opposite-field, two-run double. Wells’ sac fly made it 5-2, and New York tacked on two more runs in the fourth inning, including another that was the byproduct of a López walk.
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Entering the start, López had issued 11 walks in 67 innings.
“It was really all about the command,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It’s not like they hit the ball around the ballpark on him. It was just when there’s that many base runners out there, guys are going to score. They almost have to score. You’re almost forcing the issue. … I don’t want to start making specific calls or excuses for what was going on. The humidity, the inability to get a grip on the ball, probably a part of it. But something that he will figure out almost every time and today didn’t.”
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Unlike in their first series with the Yankees last month, the Twins offense figured out how to hit this week in New York. The problem was they couldn’t keep up.
Trailing 7-2, the Twins rallied to score three times in the fifth inning. Doubles by Alex Kirilloff and Max Kepler with a Carlos Correa sac fly sandwiched in between made it a 7-4 game. Carlos Santana singled in another to cut the deficit to two.
Following a 56-minute rain delay that only extended the misery, the Twins either put the tying run on or brought it to the plate twice more over the final four innings. But Luke Weaver struck out Kepler with two aboard in the sixth inning and Tommy Kahnle struck out Ryan Jeffers and retired Correa — who homered in the first inning — on a forceout at second with the help of an outstanding stop by Anthony Volpe.
The rain delay meant a late departure from Yankee Stadium for the Twins, who open a three-game series in Pittsburgh on Friday. The team is only three games into a stretch of 13 straight contests without a day off.
“We have a lot of work to do,” Baldelli said. “We have a lot of games in front of us and nothing really slows down right now. I don’t care who we’re playing. … We have a lot of games in a row coming up and we don’t have time to dwell on anything.”
(Photo: Vincent Carchietta / USA Today)