No falling behind this time for Yanks
By Jack O’Connell
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The Yankees took a different approach Saturday night in their post-season matchup with Minnesota — they scored first.
The Yankees’ modus operandi in playoff games against the Twins is to fall behind early and come back late. The Twinkies haven’t been able to hold leads throughout this post-season drought against the Yankees that had reached eight games after the Yanks won the first two games of the American League Division Series earlier in the week at Target Field.
The Yankees treated Yankee Stadium fans by drawing first blood in the second inning of Game 3 against Twins lefthander Brian Duensing. Robinson Cano, who hit .285 with 13 home runs off lefties this year and had an RBI single off lefthander Francisco Liriano in Game 1, led off the second inning with a triple. The slicing drive eluded center fielder Denard Span, who had to run the ball down when it caromed off the wall back toward the infield.
After Marcus Thames popped out, Jorge Posada lined a first-pitch changeup into left field for a single to score Cano. An announcement was made in the press box stating that it was Posada’s 41st RBI in post-season play as he passed Mickey Mantle on the career list.
This is a pet peeve of mind, so I may as well get it off my chest now. No criticism of Posada is intended here, but to compare his post-season RBI with those of Mantle is ridiculous. All of Mickey’s RBI were in the World Series. His last season in the majors was 1968, the year before divisional play began and an additional level of post-season play was added. Since 1995 when the wild card was added, post-season play has had three levels.
The format change has played havoc with post-season records, particularly those established when there was only the World Series, such as Mantle’s 18 home runs and Yogi Berra’s 71 hits. To equate World Series statistics with those in the first round of the playoffs is irrational. They should be kept separately.
For the record, Posada’s breakdown in post-season RBI is 14 in the Division Series, 16 in the Championship Series and 11 in the World Series.
The Yankees kept up the scoring over the next two innings threatening to make this a rout. They got a two-out run in the third when Nick Swisher doubled and Mark Teixeira singled. Thames hit an opposite-field home run in the fourth for two more runs.
Also scoring on the blow was Cano, who beat out an infield single. On the play, first baseman Michael Cuddyer’s hurried throw went past Duensing and struck Yankees first base coach Mick Kelleher in the, well, let’s just hope coaches wear cups.
Duensing was replaced after walking Curtis Granderson, who subsequently stole second, continued to third on an errant throw by catcher Joe Mauer and scored on a fly ball to left by Brett Gardner for a 5–0 Yankees lead. It was Minnesota that had to do the catching up now.
