MINNEAPOLIS — Nobody offers the Yankees a get-right game quite like the Twins.
That is what made Monday’s shutout of the Yankees so shocking. It is also what made Tuesday’s game so familiar, at least until the perennial punching bags began to punch back.
The teams returned to their regularly scheduled programming for a few innings, with the Yankees beating up on the Twins early before hanging on for dear life late in a 10-9 win at Target Field.
A 10-1 lead through four innings became 10-8 by the sixth inning, as Cam Schlittler and Ryan Yarbrough flirted with potential disaster.
Mark Leiter Jr. and Devin Williams restored order to the game, combining to throw 2 ²/₃ shutout innings to bridge the gap to David Bednar, who gave up a solo shot in the ninth before finishing off the save.
The win allowed the Yankees (84-67) to keep pace in the division race with the Blue Jays, who remained five games up, own the tiebreaker and are still in the driver’s seat to claim the AL East with 11 games to play.
More importantly, the Yankees remained a game ahead of the surging Mariners for the top AL wild-card spot while moving two games ahead of the Red Sox.
A night after the Yankees were shut out and struck out 14 times against these same lowly Twins (66-85), they racked up 16 hits, as every batter in the starting lineup had at least one hit by the fourth inning.
The Yankees had a handful of hitters who had cooled off of late, but the Twins provided a human thawing.
Anthony Volpe, starting for the first time in a week after slumping again and getting a cortisone injection in his left shoulder, enjoyed a strong return with a 2-for-4 effort.
He roped a double to the right-center field gap in the second inning, worked a walk in the third inning and then shot an RBI single through the right side in the fourth.
Giancarlo Stanton, who came into the night 6-for-51 over his past 15 games? He went 2-for-4 with a sacrifice fly.
Trent Grisham, who was 1 for his last 25? He went 2-for-4 with a two-run homer and a sacrifice fly.
Austin Wells, who was 2 for his last 24? He went 2-for-4 with a double and an RBI.
Even Ryan McMahon, who was 2 for his last 25, went 1-for-5.
The bottom third of the order — McMahon, Volpe and Wells — combined to score five runs, sparking rallies in the second and third innings. The Yankees scored two runs in the first inning, four in the second, three in the third and added another in the fourth.
Schlittler looked dominant at times but erratic at others as he gave up four runs across 4 ²/₃ innings while walking a season-high five batters.
He retired 11 straight batters at one point but struggled on either end of that stretch.
The rookie right-hander retired his first two batters of the night on two pitches, but then his command betrayed him.
He got ahead 1-2 on the next two batters and ended up walking both of them, with one of them coming in to score on Royce Lewis’ sharp single through the left side.
To get out of the jam, Schlittler struck out Matt Wallner on a 100 mph fastball, which began the stretch of 11 straight batters retired before he gave up a one-out single in the fifth inning.
James Outman followed that with a 443-foot home run to make it a 10-3 game.
Schlittler lost his command again, walking three of the next four batters (and throwing a wild pitch that made it 10-4), which forced Aaron Boone to pull him before he could make it through five innings.
Fernando Cruz came in to get the last out and strand a pair of runners before Yarbrough took over in the sixth, with the likely plan of trying to have him pitch the rest of the game to give the bullpen a breather.
But Yarbrough could not hold up his end of the bargain, giving up hits to four of the five batters he faced — including a two-run shot to Ryan Fitzgerald that cut the Yankees lead to 10-7.
Leiter relieved Yarbrough and allowed a bunt single and then a deep fly ball to Trevor Larnach, but it just stayed in the park to go for a sacrifice fly that pulled the Twins within 10-8 before the rally ended.
Leiter finally settled the game in the seventh, with a quick 1-2-3 inning, before Williams did the same in the eighth.
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