Just about everything that can go wrong lately for the Yankees has. Losing games? Well, obviously. Injuries? Unfortunately, yes. Offense going cold? You know it. Pitchers who\u2019ve been having good years having unexpected off days? That too. Defensive lapses? Duh.<\/p>\n
However over the years, there\u2019s always been one thing that can help the Yankees get some wins: playing the Minnesota Twins. Well, that\u2019s who\u2019s up next so this weekend, we\u2019ll see how big the slump truly is.<\/p>\n
Having traded away a lot of their notable players at the trade deadline last year, the Twins are in something of a rebuild. While Byron Buxton, Joe Ryan, and some others you know are still around, they\u2019re a different team than they\u2019ve been in recent years. They\u2019re still somewhat in the playoff race, but that\u2019s more a product of the AL Central than anything else.<\/p>\n
With the two teams starting a three-game set later tonight, let\u2019s take a look at the probable pitching matchups for the next few days.<\/p>\n
Friday: Gerrit Cole vs. Mike Paredes (7:04 pm ET)<\/p>\n
Upon first coming off the injured list, Cole hit the ground running, throwing two 6+ inning shutout performances, including striking out 10 in one of them. However over the five starts since, he has a 6.12 ERA and a 5.95 FIP. His main issue in that time has been home runs, allowing seven in those five games. Hitting home runs has not been the issue for the Twins, as they were ninth in MLB with 110 going into Thursday\u2019s games.<\/p>\n
This will be the Yankees\u2019 first ever meeting with the rookie Paredes. This will be just his fifth career start and seventh game in general, having gotten called up in late May. He\u2019s been okay so far, with a 4.26 ERA and a 103 ERA+. However, his FIP is noticeably worse, 5.44, as he really doesn\u2019t strike many hitters out.<\/p>\n
Saturday: Carlos Rod\u00f3n vs. Zebby Matthews (1:35 pm ET)<\/p>\n
Rod\u00f3n can often be a tedious watch. His 4.6 BB\/9 rate is quite high, and only 61 percent of his pitches on the season have gone for strikes. That being said, he\u2019s been effective. He has a 3.30 ERA and a 3.45 FIP. The issue is always just, will walks burn him and how deep into the game can he go?<\/p>\n
Matthews is another fairly inexperienced pitcher, but in this case, the Yankees have seen him a couple times before and have gotten to him. They faced him last year in August and September, and in the second of those meetings the Yankees\u2019 offense got him for nine runs on 11 hits in just three innings. His nine starts this year have generally been right around league average.<\/p>\n
Sunday: Ryan Weathers vs. Joe Ryan (1:35 pm ET)<\/p>\n
Weathers is another pitcher that\u2019s a bit of a taxing watch, but unlike Rod\u00f3n, his numbers don\u2019t quite grade out as \u201cpretty good.\u201d His ERA (4.08) is technically better than average (104 ERA+), and his FIP (4.13) isn\u2019t atrocious either, but when he\u2019s bad, he tends to be bad enough to pitch the Yankees way out of games. In his last start, he lasted just 1.2 innings, having allowed five runs to the Tigers. The defense hurt him, as only two of the runs were earned, but he didn\u2019t exactly cover himself in glory that day.<\/p>\n
After a borderline ace-type season in 2025, that saw him in trade rumors during the Twins\u2019 deadline sell-off, Ryan has taken a bit of a step back so far this year, at least if you just look at his ERA. However, his 2.95 FIP is the best of his career, and his 0.9 HR\/9 rate is by far his best ever. If the Yankees\u2019 offense are in one of their moods, he could very well breeze through them, even if a casual glance at his stats makes it look like he\u2019s not as good this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just about everything that can go wrong lately for the Yankees has. Losing games? Well, obviously. Injuries? Unfortunately,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10,76843],"class_list":["post-285814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-yankees-game-information"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}