Gerrit Cole, Yankees beat Twins to snap seven-game losing skid

The Yankees looked differently, played differently and found a different result against a club that sure felt familiar. 

Maybe it was a lineup that looked far more whole, even without Aaron Judge.

Trent Grisham announced his return from the injured list by stroking a leadoff home run while Ryan McMahon doubled and fought for a nine-pitch walk.

The two, who had been sidelined during the entirety of the club’s slide, scored or knocked in all five of the team’s runs. 

Maybe it was the passing storm with heavy winds and a sky that opened up after the top of the third, the downpour perhaps washing away the slop and grime that the Yankees had not been able to shake. 

Maybe it was Gerrit Cole, one of the game’s great competitors, trading in gas for guts to bridge a 53-minute rain delay and find a way to grind through five solid innings. 

Or maybe it was simply an opponent that seems always willing to take a punch when the Yankees’ right hook needs work. 

Whatever the cause, the Yankees looked more like the Yankees in snapping a season-worst, seven-game skid by quieting the Twins, 5-2, on Friday night in front of 45,104, many of whom brushed off the rain and remained on a fireworks night in The Bronx. 

The Yankees (49-38) recorded their first victory since June 24, halting the hard-to-fathom skid by scoring their most runs since June 19 — they had not even plated five runs in a dozen straight contests.

For the first time in weeks, they looked like the team that had seemed destined to run away with the AL East. 

Absent for three weeks with a hamstring strain, Grisham was back in center field and atop the order, going to one knee to muscle out his ninth home run of his season in the first inning to tie the game at 1-1, the start of what would be a big night. 

McMahon, back from a throat infection, returned to third base — making a smooth play to help Fernando Cruz escape a jam in the eighth — and pushed José Caballero back to his natural shortstop.

A defense that had contributed to a stunning 17 unearned runs during the skid looked far more buttoned up. 

Ben Rice, who had gone 2-for-25 during the slide, followed up a Grisham single in the third inning by cracking his 24th home run of the season, this one pulled into the short porch, for a go-ahead, two-run shot. 

The Yankees gained separation in the seventh, when McMahon doubled and scored on a knock from Caballero, who then came around to score on a sacrifice fly from Grisham. 

Cole, too, had not looked like himself of late.

After making a comeback from Tommy John surgery and showing virtually no rust for five starts, the Yankees ace turned in a pair of duds in Detroit and Boston. 

But Cole allowed just a first-inning home run to Kody Clemens and a well-placed RBI single from Victor Caratini in the fourth, an inning that demonstrated Cole’s brain more than his brawn. 

After the delay, he managed to stay warm, warmed up in the bullpen during the bottom of the third and returned to the mound for the top of the fourth.

The frame could have gone sideways, when the potential third out was dropped as Austin Wells and Paul Goldschmidt converged on a foul pop-up and neither glove caught it, but Cole bore down and froze Ryan Kreidler with a 97.6 mph fastball. 

Cole ended up limiting Minnesota to two runs on five hits with seven strikeouts in five innings, and Brent Headrick, Paul Blackburn, Cruz and David Bednar (17th save) did the rest. 

All of their work came against a team that is perpetual pushovers around these parts.

The Yankees are now 112-44 against Minnesota since 2002 (128-46 if you include the postseason), which is the majors’ best record for one team against another in the span. 

The onslaught has been unabated despite the Twins making the playoffs for 10 of those seasons, a perfectly fine team against any opponent that isn’t wearing pinstripes.