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MINNEAPOLIS — The Yankees established themselves as one of the best teams in baseball during the regular season using a specific formula: a potent offense, a starting rotation that could deliver solid but not particularly long outings, and stout relief. To cruise past the Minnesota Twins in their American League division series, the Yankees stuck with that pattern.
Luis Severino, making just his fourth major league start of 2019, tossed four scoreless innings in Game 3 on Monday, then Yankees Manager Aaron Boone relied on the bullpen against the Twins’ power-hitting lineup. And the Yankees’ lineup provided just enough offense in a 5-1 victory that secured the team’s second trip to the American League Championship Series in three years.
The Yankees will face the winner of the other best-of-five A.L. division series, in which the Houston Astros lead the Tampa Bay Rays by two games to one.
The Twins have now been eliminated by the Yankees in six of their past seven playoff appearances. Dating to 2004, the Yankees have defeated the Twins in 13 straight games in the playoffs — the longest head-to-head postseason winning streak in major league history.
Now, the Yankees have time to rest, plan and reconfigure their roster for the Championship Series, which is scheduled to start on Saturday. In the Yankees’ last visit to the championship series, in 2017, they lost in seven games against the Astros.
In a series that was expected to produce seesawing action between the two best home run-hitting teams of all time, the outcome was decidedly lopsided.
Severino missed much of regular the season with several injuries, making just three starts before the postseason. He wasn’t particularly sharp on Monday, but he summoned enough to wriggle out of jams. When the bases were loaded with no outs in the second inning, he got Miguel Sano to pop out on a 98-mile-per-hour fastball, and then struck out Marwin Gonzalez and Jake Cave on diving sliders.
Severino completed four innings on 83 pitches and Boone decided not to push him farther. The relief corps injected some drama into the contest, but escaped with help from the Yankees defense.
Tommy Kahnle, shakier than usual of late, got two outs but gave up a single to lead off the fifth inning. (It would have been a double if right fielder Aaron Judge had not played it well off the wall.) Adam Ottavino, another normally solid reliever who has sputtered recently, walked his only batter, Nelson Cruz.
But Chad Green, who relieved Ottavino, got Eddie Rosario to drill a ground ball into the Yankees’ shifted defense. Second baseman Gleyber Torres slid to stop the ball in shallow right field and threw to first base, where D.J. LeMahieu scooped up the throw in time for the third out.
With Green on the mound and a runner on base in the sixth inning, Judge robbed Gonzalez of an extra-base hit with a running catch.
At the plate, the Yankees again took advantage of the Twins’ pitching staff. Torres smashed a second-inning solo home run off Jake Odorizzi, the Twins’ starter. The homer snuck over the left field wall, upheld after a replay review. The only Yankees younger than Torres, 22, to hit a home run in the postseason were players such as Derek Jeter and Mickey Mantle.
The Yankees added to their lead in the third inning when Brett Gardner, their 36-year-old outfielder who has become an unlikely No. 3 hitter, slapped an R.B.I. single past a diving Sano, who had moved a few steps in the other direction only moments before. The Yankees again scored on a well-placed hit in the seventh, when Didi Gregorius’s run-scoring single bounced down the first base line.
Zack Britton gave up a solo home run to Rosario in the eighth inning and left the game soon thereafter with a trainer. He had walked a bit gingerly the previous inning after racing to successfully cover first base. He was relieved by Aroldis Chapman, who hadn’t logged a multi-inning appearance during the regular season but notched a five-out save to secure Monday’s victory.
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