MINNESOTA — With the Yankees’ offense struggling, Aaron Judge made it known Monday that he wanted the Bombers to score sooner.
The Yankees had just wrapped up a loss to the Twins and a stretch of games that saw the majority of their limited runs come in the eighth inning or later. It was a case of too little, too late, and Judge hoped to end it.
“We got to try to just jump out early on teams, score early and kind of put the pressure on them,” Judge said. “Right now, we’re kind of taking a while getting into the game, feeling it, and just not doing the job. So we gotta jump on ‘em early.”
On Tuesday, the Yankees fulfilled the captain’s wish with some help from Judge himself. The outfielder singled with two outs in the first, and DJ LeMahieu drove Judge in with a single after the latter advanced on a wild pitch.
But the early run hardly solved the Yankees’ offensive woes, and they dropped another game to Minnesota, 6-2. In doing so, the Twins secured their first season series win over the Yankees since 2001.
Despite another quiet night, Aaron Boone saw improvements at the plate.
“Looking at it kind of holistically, tonight was, I thought, a lot better in the approach and the aggressiveness and taking the fight to ‘em. The problem is we weren’t able to get an extra-base hit,” the manager said. “But I thought at-bat quality was much better tonight and much improved, but in the end, we just couldn’t break through with them.
“In the end, you add it up, and it’s only two runs. So obviously, we gotta do better than that.”
The Yankees’ only other run of the game came on a Twins error. But the visiting team’s defense wasn’t exactly crisp either, which hurt Nestor Cortes.
Minnesota took a 2-1 lead in the third after a pair of doubles from Donovan Solano and Jorge Polanco. Cortes was only charged with one earned run, though, as Anthony Volpe made his third error in as many games.
Volpe said that the grounder, hit by the speedy Michael A. Taylor, had “weird spin,” but he felt he should have made the play.
“Not impossible, but as soon as Taylor hit it, I went ‘Oh, no,’ because he squibbed it,” Boone said. “And it’s Taylor running. He’s gonna get down the line. So you got to go after it, and it’s kind of a do or die with that spin on it.”
The Twins added four more runs in the sixth thanks to a pair of two-run homers. The first came off the bat of Byron Buxton — and after Aaron Hicks couldn’t track down a catchable ball near the left field wall, which was ruled a double. Trevor Larnach took Ron Marinaccio deep a few batters late.
Buxton’s blast knocked Cortes out of the game. Only three of the four runs scored off Cortes were earned, but he had allowed no more than three runs in 16 consecutive starts.
The southpaw finished the night with one walk, six strikeouts and five hits over five innings of work.
“I’d say average,” Cortes said of his performance. “Felt like I could have done a better job locating the inside part of the plate. In that last inning, Byron Buxton hit a cutter that didn’t get in enough.”
Cortes added that he didn’t think about the Yankees’ offense, which minimized his margin for error.
“I can’t control that,” he said. “I’m controlling what I can control, and as far as today, I couldn’t keep runners off and allowed that big hit. So those three or four runs that I let up are on me.”
Joe Ryan, meanwhile, stifled the Yankees for the second time this month.
The Twins’ right-hander posted a line nearly identical to the one he recorded on April 13 in the Bronx. That night, Ryan held the Yankees to three hits and one earned run over seven innings while walking none and striking out 10.
Ryan gave up four more hits on Tuesday, but he limited the opposition to one earned run and zero walks again while striking out seven.
“Ryan’s good, and he was able to kind of settle in a little bit,” Boone said. “We weren’t quite able to get to a couple of his heaters. Hit a couple balls on the nose for outs, but we gotta find a way right now.”
The Yankees have now scored less than four runs in 10 of their last 12 games. They’ve also lost three in a row for the first time this season.
The Yankees will try to change those trends Wednesday when the series in Minnesota comes to a close. From there, the Yankees head to Texas for four games against the Rangers.
“There’s gonna be ups and downs this season,” Volpe said. “We’re definitely in a down, but I feel like there’s so much talent in this locker room, and in this lineup specifically, that we’re gonna come out of it.”
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