MINNEAPOLIS — The thick and expensive Yankees muscle surfaced last night at Target Field when the visitors crushed three homers.
The replay gods ruled in their favor and CC Sabathia was good, if not great, in an 8-4 win over the Twins in front of 41,126 fans.
Andruw Jones reached the facing of the third deck. Mark Teixeira deposited a two-run homer in the second tier, and Nick Swisher simply put a two-run blast into the left-field seats.
And to think Alex Rodriguez, the cleanup hitter and active leader in career homers, is set to return tomorrow to a lineup that collected 15 hits.
“It makes our lineup deeper,” Teixeira said of getting Rodriguez back from the disabled list after knee surgery.
Still, as always, the question smothering the Yankees is, do they have enough starting pitching? It’s an area Rodriguez can’t help.
Sabathia was the beneficiary of the three-homer night and was up and down while halting a personal two-game losing streak.
“I was slinging the ball early in the game,” said Sabathia, who benefited from Justin Morneau’s two-run homer in the first being reversed to a foul ball after three umpires watched replays.
Sabathia gave up two runs in the second, but hurled blanks at the anemic Twins across the next four frames until giving up two runs in the seventh, which ended with second baseman Robinson Cano making a run-saving snag of Jim Thome’s bid for base hit to right.
“I had a tough time with the change-up tonight,” said Sabathia, who is 17-7 after allowing four runs (three earned) and 10 hits in seven innings. “In the middle of the game I felt good and then it got away at the end when I got back to slinging the ball.”
The Yankees’ fourth win in five games enabled them to remain a half game ahead of the Red Sox in the AL East.
Francisco Cervelli’s two-run single in the ninth provided a four-run bulge and kept Joe Girardi from having to use Mariano Rivera.
Even though Girardi saw Morneau’s ball go to the right of the right-field foul pole, he wasn’t convinced the umpires would rule in his favor after he requested a replay for the second straight night. The umpires blew a call Wednesday in K.C. that cost the Yankees a run early in an eventual 5-4 loss.
“They go in threes, right?” Girardi said.
When it was ruled foul, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire argued and was ejected, Morneau returned to the plate and Sabathia fanned him.
According to Teixeira, getting the ace an advantage is the best recipe for a victory.
“If you give CC a lead, he will hold it,” Teixeira said. “He is one of the best guys who pitches to a lead. You give him a four-run lead and he isn’t going to nibble. He will go right after them.”
Sabathia would have given up just a run in the seventh instead of two that cut the Yankees’ lead to 6-4 if third baseman Eduardo Nunez hadn’t committed his team-high 16th error. That made Cano’s diving stop of Thome’s grounder to the right side all the more important because it would have turned it into a one-run game.
The power show was impressive. They didn’t get hosed by another bad replay call. Sabathia showed enough to believe the two-game slide is slowly vanishing even if 10 hits in seven frames against a lineup that was hitting .167 (16-for-96) against the Yankees’ ace is a lot.
Then again, it was the Twins, against whom the Yankees are 14-3 in the past 17 regular-season games.
george.king@nypost.com