Bell Bombs Twice as Minnesota Ruins Yankees' Fourth of July

Josh Bell went 3-for-5 with 2 home runs and 3 RBI as Minnesota put up 11 runs to dismantle New York 11-4 on Independence Day. The Twins didn't wait for fireworks — they launched five home runs before the Yankees had even scored.

Minnesota came out swinging from the jump. In the first inning, Buxton doubled to center to score Larnach, and then Clemens followed with a 393-foot blast to right center that plated Buxton and made it 3-0 before New York's crowd could settle in. The second inning was more of the same: Keaschall went deep to right center at 368 feet, and then Jackson added a 410-foot shot to left center. Just like that, the Twins were up 5-0 after two innings and the game looked like it might already be over. Larnach added a solo shot to right in the fourth — 360 feet — and Minnesota was sitting on a 6-0 lead that felt suffocating.

The Yankees made it interesting for exactly one inning. Domínguez got New York on the board with a 357-foot homer to right center in the fourth, and then in the fifth, Schuemann crushed a 418-foot two-run shot to left center to suddenly make it 6-3. The moment that gave New York its best window came when Bellinger doubled to right, scoring Grisham and moving Rice to third — the home win probability swung from 24% to 37% on that play, a 13-point jump. For a moment, with the score 6-4 and runners on base, the comeback felt real. It wasn't.

Bell shut the door personally. He homered to left at 399 feet in the seventh to push the lead back to three, and then in the eighth — after Buxton's sacrifice fly and a Clemens RBI single made it 9-4 — Bell went back-to-back on himself, launching a 376-foot shot to right center that scored Clemens and capped the scoring at 11-4. The story of the night was Minnesota's relentless power: six home runs as a team, with Bell, Clemens, Keaschall, Jackson, and Larnach all going deep. On the mound, Zebby Matthews was shaky — 4.2 innings, 4 earned runs, 4 walks — but the offense made his struggles irrelevant. Marco Raya came on and threw 2 clean innings, allowing just 1 hit. The Yankees' bullpen, for its part, had nothing to stop the bleeding. Minnesota looks like a team that showed up to make a statement on the Fourth of July, and they made it loudly.