By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/10/04/reality-bites-the-twins/Before he took the mound in Yankee Stadium Tuesday night, Ervin Santana, the Twins’ wild card game
starter, did his best to shake off how much he doesn’t really like Yankee Stadium. Anyone who doesn’t
believe in miracles,” the veteran tweeted, “is not a realist.”
Oh, boy, did reality bite. Hard.
Someone should have reminded Santana of the admonition of Jesus Christ: “Judge not, that ye not be
judged.” Or, Judged, as the case turned out to be for the Twins as they went home for the winter on
an 8-4 loss.
Santana got off easy like. Aaron Judge couldn’t hit anything better off him than a first-inning single
with nobody out and Brett Gardner aboard with a walk. One out later, though, Didi Gregorius banged
the gavel on Santana’s head with a launch into the right field bleachers.
That tied a game that opened with the Twins up 3-0 and chasing Yankee rookie starter Luis Severino
faster than you could say “soul sacrifice.” It got this bad for the rookie star: during the season he
got swinging strikes every eight pitches, but in the wild card game he got none in the 29 pitches
he threw.
Brian Dozier merely led off hitting a 3-1 fastball into the left field seats. A one-out walk to Jorge
Polanco later, Eddie Polanco turned Severino’s 1-1 slider into a two-run bomb, followed by Eduardo
Escobar’s single and Max Kepler’s double, and Yankee manager Joe Girardi decided too much was
enough.
He went Indians at once and brought in Chad Green. And Green struck out both Byron Buxton
and Jason Castro for the side, delivering two and two thirds of relief enough that was spoiled
only when the Twins pushed a fourth run home on an infield out. That merely re-tied the game
after Gardner—whom Santana was silly enough to try brushing back one pitch earlier—jerked a
full-count fastball into the second deck in the bottom of the second.
The Yankees then got fast and loose in the Twins’ bullpen while the Twins could do nothing against
Green’s successors. David Robertson, the former Yankee closer re-aquired in July, pinned the Twins
in three and a third with three scattered hits, five punchouts, and one measly walk. Then Tommy
Kahnle, another July acquisition, threw two and a third perfect.
Jose Barrios must have felt he’d gotten off light when Greg Bird sent Gary Sanchez (leadoff double)
home with a two-out base hit in the third. But after Gardner laced a one-out single in the fourth,
here came the Judge, and over the left field fence went the 1-0 curve ball in a 108 miles-per-hour
hurry.
“We’ve had a quite a few games where we’ve gotten down early,” Judge himself said to reporters
after the game. ”Just keep battling. Just stay calm. Just play your game, and good things will happen.”
It may have seemed a kind of perverse relief that the eighth and final Yankee run of the night came
home on a bases loaded walk to Aaron Hicks in the seventh by the third Twins pitcher of the inning,
Alan Busenitz.
That’s how you relieve Severino of having the shortest postseason start by any Yankee pitcher since
Art Ditmar opening the 1960 World Series and Bob Turley in Game Two of the 1958 Series.
But there’s no relief for the Twins, who haven’t won a postseason game since another Santana—
Johan—beat the Yankees in Game One of the 2004 division series, the only game in that set that
the Twins would win. Until Tuesday night, they’d been to three division series, in 2006, 2009, and
2010, and got swept out of all three.
And you have to worry just a little bit about how far the Yankee relievers in the game were extended.
Green, Robertson, Kahnle, and Aroldis Chapman—who struck out the side to end the game—threw
a combined 142 pitches. Good thing they don’t start their division set with the Indians until Thursday.
For Judge, Tuesday night was the sweetest relief after he’d spent the second half mostly cooling
down from his torrid first half until he ramped it back up in September. The only question about
the kid whose bombs and personality have inspired the creation of a Yankee Stadium section
known as the Judge’s Chambers was whether he could be clutch during the only time that ever
really counts as clutch for Yankee fans.
With one swing in the fourth Judge answered “Yes!” with his own distinctive type of gavel bang.
And in one wild card game that started three deep in the hole the Yankees showed a team depth
that could, in theory, give the Indians a run for their division series money.
But Judge’s jack gave them early and badly-needed insurance, turning a one-run lead into a
three-run lead faster than you could holler “All rise!” The gentle giant who obliterated the rookie
season home run record let it show how much fun he had doing it, his big grin flashing several
times as he rounded the bases.
He impressed the Twins and their manager, Hall of Famer Paul Molitor. “All I’ve heard about this
guy,” Molitor said after the game, “he’s the kind of guy that you want to have up front in our
game. And so I tip my cap to him for that, for understanding the transition of stardom in our
game, and I think we’re in good hands with people like him.”
That’s for the game at large. For the Twins Tuesday, they were in anything but good hands with
him and the Yankees. Their thirteenth straight postseason loss tied the record set by the Red
Sox between 1986 and 1995. In five of their last six postseason gigs the Twins were eliminated
by the Yankees. Puts a big smothering on their rarest achievement: going from a 100+ loss
season to the postseason immediately following.
“Nobody expected us to be here,” Buxton said after the game.
“I just told them I don’t want them to allow this to take away from what they did this year,” said
veteran Joe Mauer, referring to his talk to his mates after it ended. Mauer, whose best seasons
are long gone as he’s battled the injuries that turned him from a top catcher into a first baseman,
almost tied the game in the top of the sixth with two out and two on, until Gardner ran it down
and caught it just in front of the wall.
“These guys showed me a lot of character and resilience all year long,” Mauer continued, “and
it was no different tonight.”
That’s something for the Twins to take with them for 2018. The problem is, the Yankees let
them take things only so far in 2017. The Twins take into their offseason not just a jolt of
disappointment but yet another search for reliable pitching, up and down the organisation.
And Santana, who’d spent his spare time before starting Tuesday night acting and talking like
a calm leader, sounded after the game like a man who’d surrendered when the surrendering
was good.
“It’s disappointing, but you don’t get excited in this stadium about three runs,” he said of the
3-0 lead to which he was staked at the outset but lost almost as fast, “because anything can
happen. The ball flies here.” And the Twins’ season crashed there.
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