Twins Demolished By Yankees, Signaling True Return of Baseball Season

Ah, baseball season. With spring training in full swing, it's nice to have the familiar sights and sounds of America's pastime back. Green grass, blue skies, the sound of a ball hitting a glove or the barrel of a bat, and the Minnesota Twins getting mercilessly obliterated by the New York Yankees.

In all seriousness, spring training results mean very little. Nonetheless, it's at least somewhat amusing — in a nihilistic sort of way — that the Twins lost 17-5 to the Yankees on Friday afternoon in Fort Myers, FL.

Since 2002, the Twins are 46-127 in games that count against the Yankees, which is a winning percentage of .266. That includes 16 straight postseason defeats. And 57 of those 127 losses have come by at least four runs.

The Yankees led this one 8-1 after the top of the second inning and 15-1 after the top of the sixth. The Twins actually salvaged the final score a little bit in the late innings.

Marco Raya got the afternoon started for Minnesota with a dreadful outing. He faced six batters and allowed four walks and a single. Raya left the game having recorded one out on 31 pitches. He was charged with four earned runs. The Twins still have some belief in Raya, who was once a top prospect, but he clearly has a lot of work to do. After recording a 6.02 ERA with 57 walks in 98.2 Triple-A starts last season, a move to the bullpen feels inevitable for the Texas native.

Cole Sands began the second inning and wasn't much better, which isn't ideal for one of the most important arms in the Twins' bullpen. Sands gave up three earned runs on two absolutely demolished home runs by Jasson Dominguez and J.C. Escarra. Both balls were hit over 109 miles per hour for no-doubt blasts. Sands needed 31 pitches of his own to get through the inning.

The Yankees then tacked on six more runs in the fifth inning against Twins non-roster invite Raul Brito, who was in Triple-A with the Padres last year. That frame included long home runs from Spencer Jones and Paul DeJong. Duke Ellis hit the Yankees' fifth homer of the day an inning later.

It wasn't all bad for the Twins, who finished with 10 hits to New York's 13. Trevor Larnach crushed a solo shot off of Luis Gil in the bottom of the first inning. Eric Wagaman hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth. Prospect-wise, Gabriel Gonzalez had a couple hits and Emmanuel Rodriguez stayed hot with an opposite-field RBI double in the ninth.

Trevor Larnach just UNLOADED! HUGE home run! 💥
405 feet, 109.4 off the bat.

This was straight up DAMAGE.#MNTwins pic.twitter.com/SKxgrq9xKM
— Talkin' Twins (@TalkinTwins) February 27, 2026

It's the fifth straight spring loss for Minnesota. Again, spring training scores are largely meaningless. But even with that being the case, the Twins would probably prefer to win another ballgame one of these days. They'll be back in action on Saturday against the Red Sox.