2020 MLB Season: Simulating AL games, May 25-28

The Minnesota Twins ride a weather break to a sweep of the Yankees. The 2020 MLB season hits the two-month mark. Here are the results for the AL.

The New York Yankees have been beaten up all season by injuries. Now Mother Nature is turning against them, too.

Hampered by injuries to such key figures as pitchers Luis Severino, James Paxton, Masahiro Tanaka and sluggers Gary Sanchez, Giancarlo Stanton, and Aaron Judge, the Yanks have somehow managed to cling to first place in the AL East’s 2020 simulation.

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But Wednesday at Yankee Stadium, the weather heaped damp insult upon that stack of injuries. With ace Gerrit Cole cruising to an 8-0 lead barely three innings into New York’s game with the AL Central-leading Twins, the game was halted by a downpour and re-scheduled as part of a Thursday doubleheader.

Naturally Cole was unable to return to the mound on such short notice, and naturally  New York lost the makeup 8-4. The outcome gave Minnesota a sweep of the three-game showdown between AL division leaders.

After New York completed a weekend series with Seattle by winning 5-2 Monday, the Twins took the Tuesday opener 7-6 on Josh Donaldson’s eighth inning tie-breaking home run off Jordan Montgomery, 0-2.

Still, squaring the series Wednesday looked like a cinch. Cole fanned four of the first eight batters he faced, allowed no baserunners, and was backed by four-run first and second innings including home runs off the bats of D J LeMahieu, Judge and Stanton.

Then the clouds broke and were never put back together all night, forcing the erasure of all that had occurred.

On Thursday, with a jacketed Cole watching in frustration from the dugout, the Twins lit into Luis Cessa for seven runs inside of six innings for an 11-1 victory in the opener, then touched emergency starter Jonathan Holder for five more runs inside of four innings in the makeup. Jose Berrios (6-3) and Homer Bailey (3-1) were the winners.

In other AL games, Toronto won two of three in Tampa Bay, Boston and Kansas City split a four-game series, and the Orioles and White Sox also split in Baltimore.

Cleveland did its best to keep pace with the runaway Twins, sweeping the Angels in Anaheim. Houston and Oakland split a four-game series in Houston, and Seattle followed up its Monday loss to the Yankees by taking two of three from Detroit.

In inter-league play in Arlington, the Washington Nationals beat Texas two of three.