Yankees slugger Aaron Judge finished off a historic 2022 season this week. His final act prior to the MLB postseason was hitting his 62nd homer to pass Roger Maris and set a new American League record. Being at the top of offensive leaderboards is a familiar feeling for the outfielder this year, but he didn’t get to the top of every single one.
Judge finished with a .311 batting average, which ultimately denied him a chance at securing the triple crown. The AL batting title belongs to Luis Arraez of the Minnesota Twins. He’s the first Twins hitter to accomplish the feat since Joe Mauer in 2009.
Minnesota was very excited about finally beating the Yankees at something, so they did a little trolling on the Twitter machine to celebrate:
ALL ARRAEZ!!! ? pic.twitter.com/byeCJ0XTFo
— Minnesota Twins (@Twins) October 5, 2022
There’s nothing wrong with celebrating the good things that happened during a disappointing season. The Twins are having to do that after finishing with a 78-84 record in 2022. The social media team also knew doing something like this would surely bring out some rage from Yankees fans.
That’d be correct, and they didn’t hold back. There are an endless number of responses that are pure gold, but I’ll just pick out three to limit myself:
Good luck in the playoffs against…er… good luck. pic.twitter.com/wLULCTSgzd
— Jabroni Jerry (@talkintrashlin) October 5, 2022
If there’s ever been an example in pro sports of a team being completely and totally owned by another team, it’s the New York Yankees ownership of the Minnesota Twins. So for you to use this rare Twins accomplishment to mock the Yankees and the soon-to-be AL MVP is so cringe ?
— . (@Yankees_Heat_) October 6, 2022
Congrats on finishing with the best batting average in the AL pic.twitter.com/wrglOMTfkQ
— Justin (@brackett_justin) October 6, 2022
Yikes. To reiterate what the kids would say, this is so cringe.
What just makes this worse is how much the Yankees have owned the Twins over the years, especially in the playoffs. Since 2003, Minnesota has reached the postseason eight times. They’ve failed to get past the Division Series on every occasion.
Six of these postseason appearances have included a matchup against the Yankees. They’ve obviously lost every single one. And it’s not that they just lost to the Bronx Bombers — they’ve been embarrassed. Minnesota is 2-19 in its last 21 October meetings with the Yankees, and the last victory came in the 2004 ALDS.
But hey, as we said before, it’s been a tough year for the Twins. Having a player win the batting title is a huge accomplishment and deserves to be recognized. But when said player just barely beats out a guy who has literally led the league in virtually every other offensive category, the trolling kind of falls short.
Matt Musico can be reached at matt.musico@xlmedia.com and you can follow him on Twitter: @mmusico8.