The Yankees have been in this place before, in an early playoff hole against a team that seems younger, stronger, fresher, and hungrier than they are. In fact, they were in this spot a year ago, down a game to the Minnesota Twins and seemingly staring down the barrel of the worst possible Yankee fate, a first-round October KO.

So much was the same last year – Johan Santana started for the Twins, Mike Mussina started for the Yankees. And yet so much was different. The Yankees still had Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, and David Wells in reserve. The Twins had four more days before they could get Santana, their only formidable starter, up to speed again.

To the surprise of no one, the Yankees rebounded from that first-game loss to sweep the Twins out in four, finishing the job against the same Santana, who left the game with what were described as leg cramps.

The Yankees would get their comeuppance when the Florida Marlins, an even younger, stronger, hungrier team than the Twins, committed the ultimate New York baseball indignity, celebrating their World Series victory on the field of Ruth and Gehrig, Mantle and Maris, Jeter and O’Neill.

This year, so much is different. Clemens, Pettitte, and Wells no longer loom on the horizon to bail the Yankees out. Instead, Jon Lieber, a year removed from Tommy John surgery, will start Game 2 tonight, and that is as good as it gets until Mussina’s turn comes up again.

Soon after last night’s game, Yankees manager Joe Torre acknowledged that Orlando Hernandez, the sore-shouldered pitcher formerly known as El Duque, had cancelled a scheduled bullpen session and was doubtful to be ready for Game 3 on Friday.

“No change,” Torre said. “It’s still a fingers-crossed situation for the end of the week.”

Last night, it was the Twins who got the pitching, the Twins who made the heads-up plays, and the Twins who brought the drama. The moment in the sixth inning when Twins’ right-fielder Jacque Jones, who had flown all night to rejoin his teammates after returning home to San Diego after his father’s death last week, homered into the left field seats, was the kind of stuff usually reserved for “Yankeeography.”

Whatever solace the Yankees could take in the performance of Mussina, who pitched seven strong innings, has to be tempered by the realization that they caught Santana, the Cy Young favorite, on an off-night, and still could not beat him.

This had as much to do with the Twins defense as Santana’s pitching. In each of Santana’s seven innings of work, the Yankees had at least one runner on base. But every one of those threats went nowhere, four of them erased by double plays.

The first came in the first inning, when Santana, who amassed a league leading 265 strikeouts in the regular season, chose a most opportune time to post number 266. With the count full and the runners breaking, Santana froze Williams with a curveball that cut the plate. Meanwhile, Alex Rodriguez, breaking from third, found himself staring at the ball in the glove of Twins’ third baseman Corey Koskie a good 30 feet before he arrived. Inning over.

If that wasn’t disheartening enough, what happened in the second was positively crushing. With Jorge Posada on third and Hideki Matsui on first, John Olerud cued a shot that the Twins’ centerfielder, Torii Hunter, charged in under. Posada tagged and broke for home. Hunter’s throw was handled expertly by catcher Henry Blanco, who slapped the tag on Posada to end the inning.

“That’s the way we are,” Santana said. “We play defense, we do pitching, and sometimes, you just have to be lucky. We showed tonight what the Minnesota Twins are all about.”

Indeed, the closest the Yankees came to scoring was on an umpire’s blunder, when Sierra hit reliever Juan Rincon’s first pitch of the eighth inning into the upper left-field seats. At first, the blast was ruled a home run by leftfield umpire Jerry Crawford, but the call was quickly overruled, and replays showed the ball was clearly foul.

In years gone by, that call would have stood, or a fan would have stuck a glove out there, or something equally bizarre would have happened that would have turned the game, and the series, in the Yankees’ favor.

But this is not any of those years gone by. This is 2004, the only reliable Yankee starter has pitched well and been beaten, and there is no Clemens, no Pettitte, no Wells waiting in the wings.

The Yankees have been in this kind of hole before. This year, they may not climb out of it.