Twins Shell Verlander, Hold on for 14-12 Win Despite 2 Alvarez HRs

We updated the Yankees and Astros Statis-Pro baseball rosters with just some slight updates, in order to play them both for the first time since the debuted in a 2-game series in February after we produced the 2024 projected cards for the first time. The Astros played first, traveling to Minnesota, and it turned out to be the wildest game we’ve played yet.

The Twins jumped on Justin Verlander for seven runs in 2 1/3 innings and eventually took a 10-0 lead that gave them a chance to claim a sweep if they could hold a 5-run lead through six innings and win. However, whatever the slow start this year for the real Astros, in Statis-Pro their first four hitters have cards that project an average OPS of 0.877, second only to Atlanta in our game.

1.            Atlanta                .890

2.            Houston              .877

3.            LA Dodgers        .876

4.            NY Yankees       .855

5.            Philadelphia     .825

5.            Texas                    .825

The Astros slugged their way all the way back to a 10-9 score before eventually losing 14-12 in by far our highest scoring game of the season so far.

We play 2-game series in which each reliever can only pitch one of two games, so the second game of this series could see a lot of PB 2-4 pitching (worst rating, pitcher only keeps the action on his card while a 5-12 goes to the batters’ card and thus can result in an extra base hit.

Hunter Brown will start for the Astros and if they can get to the 9th will have PB2-9 (highest rating) Josh Hader available, but with Brown only able to go a max of 6 innings they will have trouble bridging as the only other relievers have the lowest rating (PB 2-4).

Chris Paddock will start the second game and can only go a maximum of 5 innings and have PB2-6 (below average but decent) Simeon Woods Richardson (who can go 2 innings) and Jay Jackson, as well as PB2-5 Jay Jackson, before they would need to go to PB2-4 (the lowest rated pitcher in relief).

Minnesota 14-12	1	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	Final
Houston	1	0	0	0	0	7	2	2	0	12
Minnesota	0	4	4	2	0	0	4	0	x	14
Houston	Cht	Pos	OPS	SP	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	EB
Kyle Tucker	LP	RF	0.877	A/AA	5	2	1	0	1
Jose Altuve	RP	2b	0.819	B/B	6	1	1	2	0	HR
Yordan Alvarez	LP	DH	0.988	E/D	5	3	3	3	0	2-HR
Alex Bregman	RP	3b	0.823	D/D	4	2	2	0	1
Yainer Diaz	RP	C	0.776	E/D	4	2	3	1	0	hpb
Chas McCormick	RP	CF	0.760	B/B	5	0	0	0	0	E
Jon Singleton	LN	1b	0.754	E/D	5	1	2	0	0
Jeremy Peña	RN	SS	0.714	B/B	5	1	2	3	0	HR
Jake Meyers	RN	LF	0.699	B/C	4	0	1	0	0
Totals	0.349				43	12	15	9	2
Astros	Th	PB	IP	H	R	ER	W	K	Dec
Justin Verlander	R	2'-7	2.3	6	7	5	3	3	L
Spencer Arrighetti	R	2'-6	0.7	1	2	2	0	1
Rafael Montero	R	2'-6	0.7	2	2	2	2	1
J.P. France	R	4'-7	1.1	0	0	0	1	0
Bennett Sousa	L	2'-5	1	1	0	0	0	1
Bryan Abreu	R	2'-7	0	0	2	2	2	0
Ryan Pressly	R	2'-8	1	1	1	1	0	1
Brandon Bielak	R	2'-4	1	0	0	0	0	0
			8	11	14	12	8	7
Minnesota	Cht	Pos	OPS	SP	AB	R	H	RBI	BB	EB
Byron Buxton	RP	DH	0.796	A/A	4	2	1	0	1	2b
Carlos Correa	RP	SS	0.784	E/E	4	1	1	0	1	E
Max Kepler	LP	RF	0.77	C/C	5	1	2	2	0	HR
Edouard Julien	LN	2b	0.755	C/C	4	2	1	2	0	E,HR
Ryan Jeffers	RP	C	0.741	D/D	4	1	0	0	1
Carlos Santana	SN	1b	0.721	E/C	3	1	1	0	2
Trevor Larnach	LN	LF	0.709	D/D	5	1	2	2	0	2b
Kyle Farmer	RN	3B	0.682	D/D	4	3	3	2	0	HR
Willi Castro	SN	CF	0.697	A/AA	2	2	1	3	2
Totals	0.343				35	14	12	11	7
Twins	Th	PB	IP	H	R	ER	W	K	Dec
Joe Ryan	R	2'-8	5.3	7	5	4	0	6	W
Caleb Thielbar	L	4'-7	0.7	1	2	2	0	0
Louie Varland	R	4'-7	0.3	2	3	3	1	1
Brock Stewart	R	2'-8	1	2	2	2	1	0
Griffin Jax	R	4'-7	0.7	0	0	0	0	0
Jhoan Duran	R	2'-9	1	1	0	0	0	2	S
			9	13	12	11	2	9