Yankees continue mastery over Twins as Carlos Rodon deals, Giancarlo Stanton homers in victory

MINNEAPOLIS – The managers change, the players change, even the venues.

The verbiage does not.

Nor, by and large, do the results.

“I think they’re really good,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said Tuesday afternoon of the Twins, winners of 17 of their last 20 games entering this series.

Similar language over the years came out of the mouths of Boone’s most recent predecessors in the manager’s chair, Joe Torre and Joe Girardi, when they would talk about Minnesota’s professional baseball team.

Then the game begins.

And, as so often happens, the Yankees handle the Twins yet again, this time, 5-1, in front of 23,805 at Target Field on Tuesday night.

How soundly have the Yankees dominated the Twins the last two-plus decades?

Think Reagan-Mondale or Johnson-Goldwater levels of one-sidedness.

With Carlos Rodon controlling the Twins over six innings and the Bombers pounding out 13 hits, including Giancarlo Stanton’s ninth homer of the season and a two-run double by Alex Verdugo, the Yankees moved to an astounding 118-44 against the Twins since 2002, including the postseason.

“Everyone got a hit,” Stanton said of the lineup. “It just puts tremendous pressure on opposing pitchers, and sooner or later you’re going to score some runs.”

The Yankees, winners in 8 of their last 10 games and 11 of their last 16, got two hits apiece from Anthony Volpe, Stanton, Gleyber Torres and Oswaldo Cabrera in improving to 28-15.

Rodon quickly rebounded from allowing a homer to the first batter he faced, Ryan Jeffers, giving up that run and six hits over six innings. Rodon (4-2, 3.31 ERA) struck out six, did not walk a batter and retired 11 of the final 12 he faced.

“His command was amazing,” Torres said of Rodon, who has not walked a batter in his last three outings.

Torres, somewhat jokingly but not completely, suggested to Rodon on the plane ride here from Tampa that the pitcher use his changeup more. Rodon got three of his strikeouts with the pitch Tuesday.

“Throughout the week I had a good feel for it,” Rodon said. “That righty-heavy lineup (of the Twins), it’s just something going away from them. It worked out.”

Juan Soto singled and walked, making it 37 of 43 games he’s reached base at least once, doing so multiple times in 25 of those games.

Twins righty Chris Paddack came in 4-1 with a 4.34 ERA but would end up tagged for five runs and 12 hits in five innings.

The Twins (24-17) did score first when Jeffers led off against Rodon and buried a 0-and-1, in-the-wheelhouse 94-mph fastball to left, his 10th homer making it 1-0.

The Yankees took the lead for good in the second.

Anthony Rizzo improved to 11 for his last 33 (.333) with a leadoff single and Torres and Austin Wells followed with hits of their own to load the bases. Cabrera’s sacrifice fly to center tied it at 1-1 and Volpe, who struck out in the first, dumped an RBI single to center, making it 2-1. Stanton’s rocket in the third, which came off his bat 114 mph and traveled 427 feet, made it 3-1, and Verdugo’s two-out RBI double in the fourth made it 5-1.

“I thought pretty good at-bats from the jump off him,” Boone said of his club’s battering of Paddack. “I just thought overall, everyone kind of throwing good at-bats against him tonight.”

Notes & quotes: Jasson Dominguez, starting a rehab assignment with Class-A Tampa Tuesday night, went 1-for-3, the hit coming on the first pitch he saw in the opening inning against former Yankee Domingo German, now in the Pirates organization. “It feels good,” Dominguez told the Associated Press afterward. “Everything’s going as planned.” . . . Gerrit Cole (right elbow inflammation), who stayed behind in Tampa when the Yankees flew here Monday night, threw a 35-pitch bullpen Tuesday at the club’s minor league complex. Cole, who has thrown three bullpens so far in his rehab, will meet the team when it returns for Friday’s home series against the White Sox and is slated to throw another bullpen Saturday . . . DJ LeMahieu (non-displaced fracture in his right foot) faced live pitching at the minor league complex Tuesday and, Boone said, is likely to start a rehab assignment with Double-A Somerset “either Thursday or Friday.” Boone said there is no prescribed number of at-bats for LeMahieu before he’s activated, though the manager said he’ll likely need in the range of 5-8.