The Yankees open their final road trip of the regular season Monday night in Minnesota, and the three-game trip starts with Will Warren on the mound against Dean Kremer at Target Field. The schedule gives the New York Yankees three straight chances to take control against a Twins club that has spent the past month sliding away from the race.
The timing matters because the Yankees need help tracking down the AL East title, and this is their last chance to bank road wins before the regular season closes. Warren goes first at 7:40 pm ET, followed by Max Fried against Bailey Ober on Tuesday at 7:40 pm ET and Carlos Rodón against Zebby Matthews on Wednesday at 1:40 pm ET.
Warren gives them a starter who has been throwing as well as anyone in the group. Since August 19th, he has worked to a 2.22 ERA and a 3.84 FIP, including 2.1 scoreless bullpen innings, and that kind of stretch gives the Yankees a useful edge in a series that arrives late and still means something. Fried, meanwhile, has not been the winning pitcher of record since April 27th, so Tuesday brings a different sort of pressure even if the matchup on paper looks manageable.
The Twins are still technically within shouting distance of a playoff spot, but the numbers have been working against them for weeks. They went 10-17 after the Trade Deadline, then 4-7 in September, and the loss of Byron Buxton for the season strips away one of the few factors that could have changed their late push. Dean Kremer, traded to Minnesota at the deadline this year, has a 4.79 ERA and a 4.00 FIP in seven starts as a Twin, which adds another layer to the first game of the set.
That is the friction in this series: one team is trying to finish a chase, while the other is trying to stay attached to a race that has already started to slip away. Rodón has a 2.25 ERA and a 3.81 FIP in five games since coming off the IL, and Zebby Matthews has a 5.45 ERA in his MLB career and a 4.98 ERA this year, so Wednesday could tell the same story in a different way. If the Yankees are going to keep the AL East pressure alive, this is the road trip where they have to start looking like the better team, not just the more urgent one.
