Twins again have no answer for the Yankees

Maybe it’s the New York Yankees themselves. Maybe it’s the Minnesota Twins knowing it’s the Yankees.

And maybe it’s a lethal combination of both.

Whatever the reason, the postseason domination continued Thursday night with the Yankees producing their eighth consecutive American League division series victory over the Twins, 5-2 in Game 2 at Target Field.

Now within one game of advancing to the AL Championship Series, the Yankees have won four of those five games in the last two years in the sixth inning or later, including Thursday when Lance Berkman’s “second-chance” double led to a lead and an ejection for Twins Manager Ron Gardenhire.

“My job is to figure out how we can go to New York and beat the Yankees,” said Gardenhire, who wouldn’t get into specifics about his ejection.

The Twins’ next chance at avoiding a second consecutive October sweep comes Saturday night in Yankee Stadium, when left-hander Brian Duensing faces New York’s Phil Hughes, who couldn’t be any better than left-hander Andy Pettitte was in Game 2.

Pettitte, 38, defied age and injury to win his record 19th postseason game, pitching seven innings for the first time since July 8 and retiring 17 of his last 19 batters before turning the game over to Kerry Wood and Mariano Rivera, whose 41st postseason save is 25 more than anyone else.

Pettitte, Rivera and the rest of the Yankees seem to find a way to gear up their game in October, especially against the Twins, who have lost 11 in a row overall in the postseason dating to 2004. Pettitte hasn’t lost to Minnesota in his last 11 starts, including the regular season.

And Pettitte got his usual run support, with Berkman hitting a fifth-inning home run to give the Yankees a brief 2-1 lead and then the go-ahead double.

Gardenhire, who was incensed by the call on the previous pitch, went out to the mound “to calm down” starter Carl Pavano. It didn’t take long, though, for Gardenhire to turn and vehemently confront plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt, convinced that a bad call had been made, that Pavano’s pitch had been strike three on the inside corner.

Television replays showed Gardenhire was possibly right, although it was close.

“I felt like it was a ball,” Berkman said. “That’s a very borderline pitch. Sometimes it gets called, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve been punched out plenty on balls I didn’t think were strikes. If I had been called out, I wouldn’t have been shocked.”

Yankees Manager Joe Girardi may have put it best: “Umpires aren’t robots and don’t have X-ray vision. That’s part of the game. You have to overcome those things.”

“Balls and strikes,” was all that umpire crew chief and spokesman Jerry Crawford would say, meaning that managers cannot dispute ball-and-strike calls.

A similar situation occurred in the day’s earlier AL division series game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Texas Rangers when Rays Manager Joe Maddon was ejected for arguing a checked-swing call that resulted in a “second-chance” home run.

They were the 15th and 16th managers to be ejected from a postseason game and the first since the Cardinals’ Tony La Russa was run in Game 4 of the 2005 NL Championship Series.

dvandyck@tribune.com