“Baseball is so boring!”
Yeah, not so much. The New York Yankees clashed with the Minnesota Twins in Game 2 of their three-game set at Target Field. The game lasted a shade over five hours, it went 10 innings, and there were 26 runs scored between the two clubs.
But there were a couple of instances in that game that may have given Twins fans a migraine.
No, it wasn’t the 5-5 performance from Didi Gregorius. It wasn’t the five-run eighth inning that saw an 8-4 Twins lead turn to a 9-8 Yankees lead. It was a two-run ninth-inning home run by Aaron Hicks with two outs, and a diving catch by Hicks in the bottom of the tenth that is leaving Twins fans rolling their eyes.
You might be asking: Why those two events? There were so many headaches the Yankees provided the Twins fan base last night. Why would Aaron Hicks be a little extra?
Well, if you remember correctly, Hicks began his career with three seasons in Minnesota. In those three seasons, Hicks slashed .225/.306/.349 and was decimated by injuries each season. This sparked a trade with the Yankees on Nov. 11, 2015, that sent Hicks to the Big Apple in exchange for catcher John Ryan Murphy.
Murphy played just 26 games for the Twins, slashing .146/.193/.220 before being traded to Arizona in the summer of 2017.
Meanwhile, Hicks has played 399 games in his Yankees career since that trade, slashing .244/.329/.403 –– and ripped the hearts out of the emotional Twins faithful on Tuesday night.
The Twins outfield features Eddie Rosario, Max Kepler, and Marwin Gonzalez –– and Byron Buxton when healthy. So it isn’t to say Minnesota needed Aaron Hicks to win last night; it’s just fun to look back at teams who appear to give up on young talent too early and watching it blow up in their faces in the heart of a pennant race.
Check out the catch that put the icing on the cake last night.
