NEW YORK — The pitch that the umpires ruled nicked Anthony Rizzo’s foot may not have hit him, and the fly ball that DJ LeMahieu hit that just got out in right field wouldn’t have been a home run in other parks.
But it didn’t matter on Sunday: The pitch was ruled to have hit Rizzo, pushing Aaron Judge, who would go on to score, to second base, and LeMahieu’s fly ball was a home run at Yankee Stadium, the ballpark that mattered.
Oh, and Gerrit Cole stifled the Twins’ offense completely, anyway.
Cole allowed just two hits on Sunday as part of a complete-game shutout, the second pitched against the Twins this season. The Yankees’ 2-0 victory in the Bronx sent the Twins to a series split after winning the first two games and made a tough-luck loser out of Twins starting pitcher Pablo López.
“Sometimes those things happen,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Sometimes you’re going to go six (innings), give up two runs and pitch really well and those two runs are not necessarily — I don’t want to say his fault — and he did a lot to hold them down. He did a nice job against their lineup.”
López worked around baserunners in nearly every inning of his start but was able to minimize the damage against him. The first run, which scored on LeMahieu’s two-out hit in the third inning, brought home Judge and wound up giving Cole all the support he needed.
“I was very aware of how he was throwing the ball,” López said of Cole. “It’s one of those things that you want to compete. You see the other guy throwing the ball as good as he did today (and) you want to go out there and try to compete against him. I tried to give it my all.”
The Twins’ offense tried to compete against him, too, but was unable to amount much of anything. Cole didn’t allow a hit until the fifth inning — a two-out single by Donovan Solano — and struck out 10 on the day, improving to 4-0 with a 0.95 earned-run average this season.
“He was pretty good throughout the whole game,” Twins third baseman Jose Miranda said. “He was spotting his pitches, throwing a lot of strikes. He had his ‘A’ game, so we tried to grind every at-bat. He was a little bit better than us today.”
The Twins (10-6) have had success against the Yankees’ ace in the past. During one game last season, they knocked him around for seven runs in 2 1/3 innings, socking five home runs against him.
That version of Cole didn’t show up on Sunday.
In the fourth inning, he struck out all three batters — Edouard Julien, Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton — on 10 pitches, just missing out on an immaculate inning. That was part of a stretch during which he fanned six of seven hitters.
“He always looks good. First pitch of the game is always crisp. Last pitch of his outing is always crisp. Everything in between, it’s good,” Baldelli said. “He’s excellent. He was more locked in today and making better pitches than even normal, and sometimes, that’s what you get.”
