The Yankees NEED A Sweep Against Minnesota

The Yanks stole a games Wednesday with a walkoff home run to save themselves from being swept be The Rockies for the 2nd time in a week but the desperately need a sweep against The Twins this weekend. Minnesota is the worst team in the league and while the Yankees took 3 of 4 last weekend, anything less than a sweep will put us at best back to .500 and in a situation where we would’ve just wasted two weeks.

With this being an important series there is no better guy to have on the mound than Tanaka. Last week when Tanaka faced the Twins he had one of his best performances, giving up 1 run over 8 innings. We don’t necessarily need the same start again, but we will need a dominating performance and to try and save some of the bullpen for the rest of this homestand. Tanaka has a history of stepping up as the Ace when needed and tonight it one of those games because we need to set a tone for the rest of the week.

The Twins are starting Tommy Milone who was just recently called up from AAA so there isn’t a ton of history between him and our lineup. However, Carlos Beltran has homered in 3 of his last 5 games and is 3-5 with a home run against Milone. Beltran has been the guy carrying the team all year so him seeing a favorable matchup to kick the weekend off could be big for us. Add in that A-Rod has a career .444 average against Milone with a 2 homer game against him last year and we could see some big production out of the middle of our lineup. Alex has slumped all year but has hit well against Minnesota so far which gives me some hope that he can be productive in this series rather than a distraction.

It stinks that the season is on the line basically every series this team plays but when you have an older team that doesn’t live up to their potential, that’s the situation you find yourself in. Should be a fun next year and a half.