Domingo German frustrates Twins (and their manager) in Yankees' win

Domingo German didn’t sugarcoat anything after his previous outing.

“It was terrible,” he said Monday night in Cleveland after a three-inning performance that featured a career-high-tying five walks. “Terrible outing.”

Saturday afternoon's outing was anything but that. He retired the first 16 batters he faced and struck out a career-best 11 batters in 6 1/3 brilliant innings as the Yankees beat the Twins, 6-1, in front of 38,363 at the Stadium.

Kyle Higashioka and Anthony Rizzo homered for the Yankees (9-6), who also received a two-run double from Giancarlo Stanton.

But the offense served as a sidenote to German’s afternoon, which included the pitcher twice being told he had excessive rosin on his hand, an odd sequence that led to Twins manager Rocco Baldelli getting ejected from the game before his team came to bat in the fourth.

Rosin is a substance pitchers are allowed to use for a better grip, but first base umpire and crew chief James Hoye felt German had a bit too much on his pitching hand.

Hoye checked German as he came off the field after striking out two in the third inning and essentially told him to wash his hands between innings.

When Hoye rechecked German before he took the mound for the fourth, he still detected stickiness on his pinkie. After Hoye had a conference with the other three umpires, German stayed in the game.

“I was able to explain it and tell them I have a rosin bag that's in the area of the dugout where I sit all the time,” German, who typically doesn’t use the rosin bag that is behind the mound but uses one in the dugout (also legal), said through his interpreter. “He [Hoye] was able to listen to what I was saying and discussed with the rest of the umpires and they said, ‘OK, fine. Go back out there and pitch.’ ”

That didn’t sit well with Baldelli, who wondered why German, even while using a legal substance, was able to stay in the game despite failing to  adequately follow the umpires’ instructions.

“All I know is the pitcher didn't comply with what he was asked to do,” Baldelli said. “And that upset me and I think upset everyone in our dugout.”

Hoye told a pool reporter that Baldelli wasn’t necessarily saying German was cheating with an illegal substance.

“He [Baldelli] said, ‘Well, you told him to clean it and he didn't clean it,' and I was like, ‘But it's not a foreign substance ejection,’ ” Hoye said. “And that was the argument from Rocco. I think he blended in the foreign substance argument with the argument of me telling him to clean it and he didn’t.”

Second base umpire DJ Reyburn, who also checked German’s hand before he started pitching in the fourth, added: “I think the most important part of the reason he wasn't ejected was because it wasn't determined to be a foreign substance. It did not rise to that level of stickiness on his hand.”

German, who did not allow a hit until Christian Vazquez’s one-out single in the sixth, struck out the first four batters he faced and had eight strikeouts through four innings. Higashioka’s two-run homer into the Yankees' bullpen  made it 2-0 in the second and Rizzo’s fourth homer, a line drive into the short porch in rightfield, gave the Yankees a 3-0 lead in the third.

Anthony Volpe worked his second walk of the day leading off the bottom of the fifth and stole the first of his three bases on the day. DJ LeMahieu then lined an RBI single to right for a 4-0 lead.

Jose Miranda’s RBI double against King in the seventh made it 4-1 — the run was charged to German, who allowed three hits and no walks — and Stanton’s two-run double off the wall of the Twins' bullpen in the bottom half made it 6-1.

“I thought his curveball was really good for him today, but he had some power in the fastball and he used it,” Aaron Boone said of German. “I think he locked them up sometimes. They were expecting some secondary [pitches] and he’d sneak a four-seamer or the sinker in there. I just thought he and Higgy did a really good job of mixing pitches.”