Same old story as Twins fold with Yankees in town
After two first-inning runs the Twins' bats fell silent while the defense was uncharacteristically bad to help the Yankees win the first of a three-game series in Minneapolis by a score of 8-4 Tuesday night.
What wasn't uncharacteristic was New York making the Twins, as the New York Post has said for years, their "personal punching bag." The Yankees are 24-11 all time at Target Field.
Ryan Jeffers knocked in a pair of runs with a double down the left-field line in the first inning, but that's all the offense was able to muster until Rob Refsnyder's double scored Trevor Larnach in the sixth, then again in the ninth on a fielder's choice and throwing error.
The Yankees, meanwhile, scored runs without living up to the "Bronx Bombers" nickname. They scored on a bases-loaded walk, wild pitch, sacrifice fly and a pair of throwing errors.
They weren't the Bronx Bombers for eight innings, but in the ninth Gary Sanchez welcomed Griffin Jax to the big leagues with a solo home run, and two batters later Miguel Andujar smoked a second-deck shot off Jax for an 8-3 lead.
Sanchez was the first batter Jax faced in his MLB career, having been promoted to the MLB and to the rank of captain in the Air Force earlier this week.
Michael Pineda, Andrelton Simmons, Jorge Polanco and Willians Astudillo were all charged with an error in the game.
The Twins are now 24-36, .
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.