The Minnesota Twins are one of baseball’s sweet stories, the small market team that can, that could, that does every year. They are built around a couple of sluggers named Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau, and some stubborn pitching. They are managed by a pugnacious skipper, Ron Gardenhire, and the team plays like its manager: hard, hard-nosed, smart.
“They don’t beat themselves,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said last night.
Mostly, that is correct. Mostly, the Twins win 90 games a year because they run the bases well, because they catch the ball, because they are not easily intimidated. Mostly: as in when they play at 29 of the 30 stadiums in major league baseball, against 13 of the 14 teams in the American League and whomever the schedule-maker throws their way from the National League.
Just not in The Bronx. Just not at Yankee Stadium, either incarnation. Just not against the Yankees. The Twins were 0-10 against the Yankees last year, including a three-game sweep in the ALDS. They lost three consecutive walk-offs at the Stadium in May 2009. They lost a late lead in Game 2 of the playoffs, ran themselves out of rally after rally the whole series. They haven’t won at Yankee Stadium since July 4, 2007, 11 straight losses and counting after last night’s 8-4 defeat.
This should be impossible. The Twins are the class of the AL Central. If they aren’t entirely in the Yankees’ weight division, they certainly aren’t the Orioles, the Royals, the Indians. It makes no sense.
Only, the more you watch, the more it makes perfect sense. There were Joe Nathan’s late-game meltdowns last year. There were those baserunning follies. And last night, there was Gardenhire refusing to believe in the arithmetic of baseball.
“Numbers aren’t everything,” he said.
In certain contexts, that’s actually a laudable trait. Managers who are slaves to integers can turn baseball into an unwatchable drag. As wonderful a read as “Moneyball” was, after all, it isn’t like anyone has papered the Bay Bridge with all the World Series pennants the A’s have won under Billy Beane. Managers are supposed to win games with a little guile, a little guts, and a little grit thrown into the statistical matrix.
So, last night, after his team had rallied back and taken a 4-3 lead in the seventh inning, Gardenhire saw his starting pitcher, Scott Baker, surrender an infield single to Francisco Cervelli and a fluke double to Derek Jeter that ricocheted off Baker’s leg. Gardenhire — smartly — summoned lefty Brian Duensing and the reliever coaxed a soft fly ball out of Brett Gardner. So far so good for the Twins. Except this is where a small problem emerged for the Minnesotans.
This is where Gardenhire lost his mind. Quite literally.
He had Duensing walk Mark Teixeira — maybe you could argue against that, because Teixeira was hitting exactly .209 at the time, but you can also understand trying to set up a double play. Except in walked a 31-year-old right-hander named Matt Guerrier, to face Alex Rodriguez. Guerrier has had a fine year, allowing only three earned runs in 16 innings.
“He’s our best right-handed reliever in that situation,” Gardenhire said. “It was our only call right there.”
Against most of the other 748 players on major league rosters, that might actually be true. But in Guerrier’s career, to that very moment last night, he had faced Rodriguez seven times, surrendered a walk and four hits. Three of those hits were home runs. Numbers aren’t everything? Fine. Those numbers are something.
Maybe Gardenhire thought they were typos. Maybe he felt his pitcher was “due.”
He wasn’t. Rodriguez blasted Guerrier’s second pitch over the State Farm sign in left. Grand slam. Make that 5-for-7 now, one walk, four home runs. Make that 11 straight losses in The Bronx. Make that 5-28 for Gardenhire in his last 33 trips to the neighborhood.
“Anytime you’re in a position where you have to load the bases to try and work your way out of a jam,” Gardenhire said, “it isn’t a great place to be.”
Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Something always seems to go awry for the Twins here, after all. Someone naps on the basepaths. Someone ends up with a pie in the face. Or, this, time, in Gardenhire’s case, mud.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com