In 2009, the Twins faced the Yankees in the ALDS and were swept 3-0, getting outscored 15-6.
The chance for revenge came quickly the following season. In the ALDS rematch, the Twins again faced the Yankees. And again got swept, that time being slapped around by 10 runs, 17-7.
Now seven years later, they meet again in the one-game, winner-take-all, loser-go-home-and-sulk wild-card meeting Tuesday at Yankee Stadium.
The ranks of those remaining from the last postseason get together have thinned considerably. The Yankees have Brett Gardner, CC Sabathia and David Robertson (after a side trip to Chicago). The Twins have Joe Mauer and only Joe Mauer unless, say, Michael Cuddyer un-retires and is somehow activated by 10 a.m. Tuesday. Virtually everything and everyone are different.
“It’s been seven years since we’ve been to the postseason, and I look in our clubhouse, and that’s a total different group,” said Mauer, a three-time batting champ who hit .305 this season. “Obviously, we were talking about those years before. We ran into some pretty good teams. [In] ’09 [the Yanks] won the World Series. Looking back for me, those early 2000s, 2010, 2009, stuff like that, those were very close games. We just couldn’t come up with the wins at the time.”
So it’s not like anyone was in a rush to watch film of those games to see, for example, if Andy Pettitte’s pickoff move really is a balk or not.
“I had a couple of questions … about coming here and what that means,” Mauer said. “Really, this team, it doesn’t mean a whole lot. I’m probably the only one that it means a little bit more maybe. It’s a different team, and they’ve got a different team over there. So we’re looking forward to tomorrow night and then see what happens.”
The Twins, who took the second wild-card spot with 85 victories, are one year removed from 103 defeats. They entered spring training vowing to clean up their act — and that’s what they did. They got back to stressing little things — cutoffs, relays, base-running. Baseball 101 to avoid Losses 103.
“When you get away from the fundamentals of the game, that’s when you lose 103 games,” second baseman Brian Dozier said. “In spring training, we wanted to clean a lot of stuff up: keeping double plays in order, hitting cutoff men, the little things, per se, that’s supposed to always happen at this level that we got away from. We cleaned all that up, and it’s been by far a totally different team. You start to see guys starting coming into their own, the [Byron] Buxtons, [Eddie] Rosarios.”
And one who appreciates it more than most is Mauer, 34 years old and seven years removed from the playoffs.
“Somebody asked me earlier, does it feel like seven years? I said, ‘Yes,’” Mauer said. “It feels great. I’m really excited for this group to experience this. There’s a lot of guys in our clubhouse that this is their first go-round. I was just real happy. It’s been a special year to see these guys kind of grow, and to experience that with this team is pretty special.”