MINNEAPOLIS -- The Twins will officially face the Yankees in Tuesday's AL Wild Card Game at Yankee Stadium at 7 p.m. CT on ESPN, as the Red Sox clinched the AL East with a 6-3 win over the Astros on Saturday.
The Twins had been expecting to play in New York all along, as the Red Sox had a magic number of two with four games remaining when Minnesota clinched its Wild Card spot on Wednesday. Veteran right-hander Ervin Santana will start for the Twins, while the Yankees are expected to turn to right-hander Luis Severino.
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"We're going to go there expecting a win," manager Paul Molitor said after the Twins clinched. "That's the mindset you have to have. We're going to a place where we recently were and weren't successful in three games, but the way things are going and the way these guys are playing right now, I like our chances. In a game-scenario, anything can go down."
As Molitor noted, the Twins were swept in New York in a three-game series from Sept. 18-20. It dropped the Twins to 9-20 at Yankee Stadium since 2009, and 1-8 since 2015. They're also 31-78 against New York dating back to 2002, winning their last season series against the Yankees in '01.
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The Twins also lost the AL Division Series against the Yankees in 2003, '04, '09 and '10. Minnesota went a combined 2-12 against New York in those four series, getting swept in both '09 and '10.
"We know who's in front of us and what we gotta do," second baseman James Dozier said. "You can ask 99.9 percent of the guys in here and they don't even know the Yankees were our kryptonite. So that's a good thing."