Yankees 9, Twins 5
MINNEAPOLIS -- The hot-hitting New York Yankees secured a four-game sweep of the Minnesota Twins with 9-5 win on Thursday afternoon at Target Field.
Like they had all series, the Yankees banged out plenty of hits (13) and got another dominating performance on the mound to fizzle the Twins' hopes for a win at home on the Fourth of July.
Yankees starter David Phelps pitched 6 1/3 strong innings, giving up four runs, eight hits and no walks with five strikeouts for his sixth win of the season.
Phelps' counterpart, Kyle Gibson, in his second major league start, faced a potent Yankees lineup that pounced on the rookie early in the game.
Ichiro Suzuki, who finished the game a home run short of the cycle, led off the first inning with a double to right and Zoilo Almonte moved him to third with a single. Robinson Cano, hitless in a game for the first time in the series, lifted a sacrifice fly to the warning track in left to score Suzuki.
Travis Hafner doubled to move Almonte to third and both scored on a Vernon Wells single, giving the Yankees a 3-0 lead.
The Twins gave away a run in the third. Gibson hit Hafner with a pitch. Hafner took second on a wild pitch and scored on Wells' bloop hit to left. Wells then scored on a Luis Cruz single to give the Yankees a 5-0 lead.
Phelps pitched out of a two-on, no-out jam in the third, but in the fourth the Twins got on the board. Justin Morneau hit Phelps' first offering on a line over the right-field fence.
The Yankees sent Gibson to the showers in the sixth with a walk to Lyle Overbay, a double by Cruz and a weak single by Alberto Gonzalez that scored Overbay to make it 6-1.
Gibson threw 79 pitches in 5-1/3 innings, giving up eight runs, 11 hits and one walk with two strikeouts.
Reliever Brian Duensing, who allowed four runs in relief earlier in the series, gave up a triple in the sixth to Suzuki, scoring Gonzalez and Austin Romine, who had reached on a fielder's choice. Suzuki then scored on an Almonte grounder to third.
The Twins rallied in the seventh, scoring first on singles by Chris Parmelee, Aaron Hicks and Pedro Florimon to end Phelps' afternoon.
Brian Dozier then scored Hicks with a single to center and Florimon scored on a Joe Mauer sacrifice fly.
In the eighth, Morneau hit his second homer of the game and sixth of the season to pull the Twins within four, but the early Yankees runs had put the game out of reach.
NOTES: The Yankees have gone 14-3 (.824) against the American League Central this season, the second-best record by a major league team against a division within their league. ... Cano has compiled six straight games with at least one run and two hits -- the first Yankee to have reached those totals in six consecutive games since Alex Rodriguez in 2007. ... Since May 20, the Twins have committed just 18 errors in 41 games, which is tied for fifth fewest in baseball. ... With two double plays in the game, the Twins have now turned 95 this season, the second most in baseball.
