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MINNEAPOLIS — Gerrit Cole gave up home runs for his first three batters and a career high five in 2 1/3 innings, but the New York Yankees rallied to take the Minnesota Twins 10-7 behind two home runs Thursday night beating Joey Gallo.
Cole was down 7-3, and the Yankees equalized in the sixth point when Aaron Hicks hit his second home run of the season, a two-run drive. Hicks hit after shortstop Carlos Correa and second baseman Jorge Polanco, who failed to communicate on Gleyber Torres’ pop-up, and dropped the ball for a single.
DJ LeMahieu hit the 100th home run of his career and the Yankees grabbed their 16th comeback win, tying Colorado and San Francisco for the major league lead.
“Let’s not hang around. That’s the dynamic,” said Yankees manager Aaron Boone.
New York improved to 14-2-2 in the series and became only the second team to win after allowing their opponents’ first three batsmen to hit home runs. The Yankees’ 41-16 record leads the major leagues.
“We’re never out of a game with this team, especially this early in the game,” Hicks said after hitting his first home run since April 12. “We have a lot of veterans in this lineup who understand that I have to keep the pressure going all game. We are a team that can score a lot of runs.”
Five of Minnesota’s first 16 batters homed on Cole, who had never previously conceded more than three in a game. He allowed seven runs and eight hits, his ERA rising from 2.78 to 3.63.
“The stuff was right over the center of the record, pitch after pitch,” said Cole. “Boy that was tough, just really bad execution and just not great stuff and never really found a way to make it any better.”
Lucas Luetge, Miguel Castro (3-0), Wandy Peralta, Michael King and Clay Holmes combined for 6 2/3 innings of scoreless one-hit relief.
Holmes lowered his ERA to .33, made his ninth save on nine chances, and extended his scoreless streak to 27 innings, the longest the Yankees have had since Mariano Rivera finished the 1999 season with 30 2/3 innings
Gallo hit a two-run homer in front of Dylan Bundy in the second and combined with LeMahieu for consecutive homers in the fifth for his seventh multihomer game since 2001.
Aaron Judge led from seventh place with a doubles against Jhoan Duran (0-2) that hit the top of the wall. Judge took an 8-7 lead on Anthony Rizzo’s singles, Hicks singled in a run later in the inning, and Jovani Moran threw a run-scoring wild pitch in the eighth that bounced past former Yankees catcher Gary Sánchez.
Minnesota’s Luis Arraez, Byron Buxton and Correa became the seventh trio of teammates to open a game with three straight homers and launch a barrage on Cole. The only previous team to lose after starting with three home runs was San Diego to San Francisco on April 13, 1987.
Arraez started the rush with a 2-2 substitution and hit a 396-foot drive into the right field seats for his second home run this season.
Buxton hit the next pitch, a hanging slider, 422 deep in the upper deck of left field for his 14th homer.
Correa fouled one pitch and then pulled a cutter 413 feet down the bottom deck of left field for his fourth homer and a 3-1 lead.
The previous trio to pull off this feat were Arizona’s Jarrod Dyson, Ketel Marte and David Peralta ahead of Jerad Eickoff in Philadelphia on June 10, 2019.
Buxton gave the Twins a 6-3 lead in the second with a three-run homer on a cutter and a 370-foot drive to the left, and Trevor Larnach hit a solo homer on a fastball in the third, sending the ball 441 Walk in the second deck in the middle right.
Buxton has three two-homer games this season and six in his career, with a three-homer game in Toronto on August 27, 2017.
After Gio chased Urshela Cole with a double in the second, Jose Miranda flew to Hicks in the middle. Urshela had gone past third and forgot to touch up base when she went down to second and was called up on appeal.
“We’ve got to play crisper baseball if we’re going to get out there in the middle of the game, late in the game and make it,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said.
He didn’t blame Correa and Polanco for the missed pop-up.
“I think we definitely should have won that ball game,” Baldelli said. “The reasons we didn’t do it, I don’t think those are going to be things that are going to affect us going forward. I think those are things that we can put aside that game and build on that game even if it was a loss.”
SILVER LINING
Though the Twins lost two of their three games to the Yankees this week, the team’s offense against one of baseball’s hottest pitching staffs thrived. In their six games so far, the Yankees had only allowed seven runs. The Twins scored 19 runs in the three-game streak. Jameson Taillon, Nestor Cortes and Cole combined for 10 2/3 innings.
“We were dealing with their best pitchers who just had the best rotation in the game,” Correa said. “They didn’t go past five, so that’s a positive result of that series, and that speaks volumes about our lineup, about our group of guys, about what we can do out there when we have a collective approach.”
TRAINING ROOM
Yankees: LHP Aroldis Chapman will throw a bullpen in New York on Saturday while recovering from his left Achilles tendonitis.
Twins: Arraez returned to the line-up after missing Wednesday’s game with a sore shoulder.
NEXT
Yankees: RHP Luis Severino (4-1, 2.95 ERA) will start Friday when the Cubs visit New York to open a three-game streak. He meets LHP Wade Miley (1-0, 3.38).
Twins: The Rays are coming to Minneapolis to start a three-game set on Friday. LHP Devin Smeltzer (2-0, 1.93) will take the mound for the Twins against Tampa Bay RHP Drew Rasmussen (5-2, 3.02).
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