Twins hungry for more as Correa's bat feasts in Bronx

NEW YORK -- If there’s any place for a Twins star to have his clutchest moments, it sure doesn’t hurt for it to be Yankee Stadium.

Carlos Correa's first season with Minnesota in 2022 didn’t have as many of those signature game-changing moments as fans may have hoped, but he stepped up last September with a huge, game-winning homer against these Yankees to snap a 10-game Twins losing streak at Yankee Stadium.

And on Friday night, he did it again.

The Twins’ historic house of horrors became, again, the site of triumph when Correa’s go-ahead two-run double down the right-field line in the eighth inning paired with his solo homer in the sixth to prime a 4-3 come-from-behind victory. Behind a pair of Correa’s signature efforts, the Twins have won three games in a row against the Yanks for the first time since 2013-14.

“I looked up on the screen, I don’t know what day it was, and it said he was sixth all time in postseason RBIs at the age that he is,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I think he likes big games, and he likes the spotlight, and he likes it when the stands are full and he can show everyone what he can do in the biggest moments.”

The biggest moments feel even bigger at the Stadium for these Twins, who were 2-16 in their last 18 games in the Bronx and escorted out of the playoffs by the Yankees year after year after year this century.

Those biggest moments sure sound bigger when Correa steps to the plate, with the combined might of 41,039 aggrieved New Yorkers making for the loudest boos the shortstop hears away from Target Field.

“It's gasoline in your Ferrari,” Correa said. “I love it.”

But time after time, Correa has come through in those moments in this building. His solo blast to the short porch in right field off an otherwise dominant Nestor Cortes in the sixth inning marked his fourth straight game at Yankee Stadium with a home run -- and he has also hit safely in his last eight games against the Bronx Bombers.

Cortes held down the Twins’ lineup aside from that blast and a Kyle Garlick solo homer, while a trio of solo shots by the Yankees off spot starter Louie Varland gave New York a 3-2 lead heading into the eighth.

That’s when Yankees manager Aaron Boone turned to closer Clay Holmes -- and that’s when the Twins’ bats got to work.

Knowing the absurd movement Holmes can get on his sinker, Minnesota hitters vowed to try to see the ball up in the zone, trying not to hit pitches into the ground -- and Michael A. Taylor led off the inning with a single off the end of his bat on a pitch upstairs, before Byron Buxton battled back from a 1-2 count for a walk.

“Holmes’ sinker is -- you don’t see that,” Buxton said. “You don’t see that at all.”

Correa, too, fell behind 1-2 after three sinkers -- but the fourth caught too much of the zone, and he roped the 98 mph pitch just fair down the right-field line, bringing home Buxton and Taylor as the Twins flipped defeat into victory. Correa stood on second base, clapped his hands, punched the air and struck a pose at the visitors’ dugout.

“That’s a ridiculously impressive at-bat that he had today, to hit a ball like that against the guy he’s facing, [given] where he was in the count, what he saw previously in the at-bat,” Baldelli said.

It was only fitting, then, that Correa was also responsible for the final three outs on defense, fielding a double-play grounder off the bat of Oswaldo Cabrera in the ninth before snagging the game-ending popup by Willie Calhoun to secure a 2-0 lead in the four-game set and the Twins’ first non-losing series at Yankee Stadium since 2014.

Correa had also pumped up closer Jhoan Duran as he jogged to the mound for the ninth, telling the right-hander, “Show everybody why you're the best closer in the game,” after Duran had allowed homers in his last two outings.

That’s what Correa does: He boosts his teammates, he cracks big hits -- and he leads the way in trying to turn around the Twins’ weighty history of futility against these Yankees.

“This was a tremendous character win for our team,” Baldelli said.

“We have a lot of talent, we've got great brains in the front office and we've got that dog in us,” Correa said.