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.
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.
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 missed 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.
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.
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.
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