MINNEAPOLIS — Clarke Schmidt finally reached the promised land otherwise known as seven complete innings Thursday for the first time in his career.
Then he took a step into the unknown, the eighth inning, and breezed through it to check off that milestone while he was at it.
Schmidt tossed a career-high eight innings — eight scoreless innings at that — in a dominant start that finished off the Yankees’ sweep of the Twins with a 5-0 win at Target Field.
The 26-year-old right-hander struck out eight, walked none and allowed only three hits across a career-high 103 pitches as the Yankees (30-15) won for the 10th time in their last 12 games.
A road trip that began with Schmidt matching a career-high with 6 2/3 scoreless innings against the Rays last Friday ended with him being even better against the Twins (24-19), who had been the hottest team in the league entering the series.
He had not completed six innings in any of his first seven starts of the season but has now done so in back-to-back outings, continuing to take the next step in his development as a starting pitcher.
After last Friday’s start against the Rays, Schmidt promised he would earn Aaron Boone’s trust to let him pitch deeper into games and leave him no other choice.
That came to fruition quickly on Thursday
Coming into the game, seven of the 14 earned runs Schmidt had allowed this season came in the sixth inning.
But he had no such issues Thursday, allowing a two-out double to Carlos Correa in the sixth before getting Max Kepler to fly out.
Then the only base runners he allowed in the seventh and eighth innings were on a pair of errors that proved to be harmless.
The Yankees gave Schmidt a 3-0 lead to work with before he even stepped foot on the mound.
Anthony Volpe led off the game with a home run against Twins right-hander Joe Ryan, the second leadoff home run of his career.
Aaron Judge then walked and Alex Verdugo singled before Gleyber Torres roped a fly ball to left field that hit off of Alex Kirilloff’s glove on the warning track — adding to a brutal series defensively for the Twins’ outfield — for an RBI double. Anthony Rizzo followed with a groundout that made it 3-0.
Torres doubled again in the sixth inning and scored on Austin Wells’ single.
Then in the seventh Juan Soto walked, advanced to third on Judge’s second double of the day and scored on Verdugo’s sacrifice fly.