Yanks’ Secret Versus Twins? Take a Trip to the Bullpen
By BEN SHPIGEL
NYT
Delve into the Yankees’ recent playoff history with the Minnesota Twins, and a distinct pattern emerges: each game has its own rhythm and flow, and yet it ends the same way as every other.
In each of the teams’ last eight postseason meetings, the Yankees have come from behind to win. In the last four, they have scored the go-ahead run in the seventh inning or later. Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire referred to his team’s inability to beat the Yankees in the playoffs as “continuing difficulty,” a euphemism if ever there was one.
“I don’t see how you couldn’t be,” said Joba Chamberlain, when asked whether he believed the Twins could be discouraged, adding, “At the end of the day we’ve won the games. We got the hits when we needed to, made pitches when we needed to. If you want to get frustrated by that, that’s why you play the game.”
The competitiveness of the first two games of this division series — both were tied through six innings — created a feeling that was less tension than inevitability, that the outcome had been predetermined, with only the details left to unfold. The fact that it keeps happening in such an unrelenting fashion takes away some of the drama associated with the postseason.
(More here.)
NYT
Delve into the Yankees’ recent playoff history with the Minnesota Twins, and a distinct pattern emerges: each game has its own rhythm and flow, and yet it ends the same way as every other.
In each of the teams’ last eight postseason meetings, the Yankees have come from behind to win. In the last four, they have scored the go-ahead run in the seventh inning or later. Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire referred to his team’s inability to beat the Yankees in the playoffs as “continuing difficulty,” a euphemism if ever there was one.
“I don’t see how you couldn’t be,” said Joba Chamberlain, when asked whether he believed the Twins could be discouraged, adding, “At the end of the day we’ve won the games. We got the hits when we needed to, made pitches when we needed to. If you want to get frustrated by that, that’s why you play the game.”
The competitiveness of the first two games of this division series — both were tied through six innings — created a feeling that was less tension than inevitability, that the outcome had been predetermined, with only the details left to unfold. The fact that it keeps happening in such an unrelenting fashion takes away some of the drama associated with the postseason.
(More here.)
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