Yankees 8, Twins 1, and this series was over almost before it started.
Cody Bellinger made sure of that early. Two batters in, he turned on a Bailey Ober fastball and sent it 399 feet into the Minnesota night, a two-run shot that scored Ben Rice and set the tone for the rest of the evening (69 degrees, clear, wind blowing straight out to right -- perfect hitting weather, and Bellinger cashed in first). By the time the Yankees were done at Target Field, they'd won 8-1, taken the first two games of this series, and handed the Twins their third straight loss.
The Turning Point
Minnesota actually had a window here. Emmanuel Rodriguez singled home Royce Lewis in the bottom of the 2nd to cut it to 2-1, and for a minute it looked like Max Fried might have to grind through a tight one. He didn't let it get that far.
Fried worked around traffic all night -- six hits allowed over seven innings -- but he never let the Twins string together enough at once to really threaten. George Lombard Jr. answered right back with an RBI single in the top of the 3rd, and from there the margin only grew. The real separation came in the 6th, when Heliot Ramos ripped a double down the line to make it 4-1, and two batters later Spencer Jones turned a 2-2 pitch from Taylor Rogers into a 423-foot, three-run home run (108 mph off the bat, if you're into that sort of thing). Game, basically, over. 7-1 before the 6th inning was finished, and the only question left was whether the Twins would even get to nine outs looking respectable.
Star of the Game
It's Bellinger, and it's not particularly close. His WPA for the night (+16.6%) topped every hitter on either roster, and the box score backs it up: 3-for-4, a homer, two RBI, a walk. The homer is the headline, but Bellinger's whole night mattered more than the highlight reel suggests -- a leadoff shot in the first inning, when the game could've gone either way, is worth more than a three-run blast in the sixth when it's already a laugher (sorry, Spencer).
Fried deserves his own paragraph here too. Seven innings, one run, zero walks, six strikeouts -- that's a start you build a rotation around in September. His WPA (+21.7) actually topped every hitter and pitcher who touched the field, which tells you how much a start like that is worth when a team's trying to hold position in a wild card race.
Key At-Bats and the Pen
Ryan Yarbrough closed it out with two clean innings, one hit, nothing else -- the kind of appearance that doesn't make anybody's highlight package but makes a manager's night easy. On the other side, Ober took the loss (he's now 7-6) after allowing three earned runs on nine hits over 5.1 innings, and things got worse from there for Minnesota. Rogers relieved him and served up the Jones homer as part of a four-run sixth (none of it earned, believe it or not -- an error opened the door before Jones blew it off the hinges). José Caballero tacked on an RBI single in the 9th just because, making it 8-1 and giving the final score a little extra cushion it didn't need.
Season Context
This is win number three in a row for the Yankees, who sit at 88-63 and 3.5 games back of the Rays in the East (they're safely in wild card position at this point, for anyone counting). The Twins, meanwhile, drop to 70-81 and are staring down a third straight loss, with this series already decided ahead of Wednesday's finale.
Go finish the sweep.
Jimmy writes the Bronx Pinstripes game recap after every Yankees game. Beat-reporter pacing, fan's heartbeat. He calls opposing players by last name and has no patience for dead-air innings.
