In sports, hyperbole is used a lot. Someone will say, “Oh that guy always hits home runs against us!” when in reality the guy has three home runs in his career against their team. Or “Ugh, this guy always pitches well against us!” when he really only has pitched one good game, it just seems like more. But there are those rare times when a statement is made and it’s not an exaggeration. Like for instance when people say, “The Twins can never beat the Yankees.” it’s not an exaggeration.

The Minnesota Twins cannot beat the New York Yankees. Since Ron Gardenhire took over as manager for the Twins, the two teams have met 80 times and the Yankees have won 61 games – including the playoffs. That’s just insane.

Phil Hughes continued his resurgence. He may not have had his strike out pitch working tonight – he only had two K’s on the night – but it didn’t matter. He gave up only one run on two hits and retired 14 batters in row at one point between those two hits. He hit his season high in pitches with 106 and pitched until there were two outs in the eighth inning.

Hughes’s only blemish was Trevor Plouffe’s solo homer in the first. After that hit he shut the Twins down – including five 1-2-3 innings in a row – until Luke Hughes touched him for a single in the eighth inning.

Boone Logan came in and recorded the final out of the eighth. He was followed by Luis Ayala who pitched a scoreless ninth to close out the game.

In his last three starts, Hughes is 3-0 with a 1.37 ERA and has a .136 BAA.

Helping Hughes pick up his fourth victory of the year was his battery mate Russell Martin who was 3-4 with two home runs, three RBI.

Mark Teixeira also had three RBI and finished the night 2-4 with two doubles. Curtis Granderson and Robinson Cano each added an RBI and the Yankees won their fourth game out of five – so far – on their road trip. They have two more against the Twins before returning to the Stadium to face the Oakland Athletics on Tuesday.

Congratulations Are In Order
Mark Teixeira picked up career RBI 1,000 tonight

Tomorrow, AJ Burnett (9-9, 4.61 ERA) will try for August victory number two as a Yankee. His opponent will be Francisco Liriano (8-9, 5.12 ERA). The game is an hour earlier with a 7:10 p.m. start time on YES.