Twins Visit Both Texas Teams (Astros and Rangers)

The Minnesota Twins surged into first place in our Milwaukee Statis-Pro league with dominant pitching in back-to-back 5-run wins.

Not many teams have the luxury of a No. 3 starter who is a PB 2-8 (top 15% of all pitchers and keeps action on his card on rolls of 2-8, so only on batters card for 9-12) and a No. 4 starter with a PB 2-7 (top 35% of all pitchers). 

But that's what the Minnesota Twins have with Chris Paddack and Bailey Ober, and they delivered in back-to-back starts in Texas to beat both the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros 6-1.

The wins were very significant because in our fun league rules, a 5-run win counts as a 3-games-to-none sweep while a closer win counts as a 2-games-to-1 sweep, so the two wins boost the Twins to 9-3 AND our fun league rules also give an extra "win" for beating a power team (Houston, NY Yankees or Baltimore), so the record is treated as 10-3 for an adjusted winning percentage of 0.769 to surge to first place at the 12-game mark.

Most teams have only played one series (2 actual games, 6 games with the "3-for-1" format).

The only other team teams calculating as having an early winning record are the New York Mets (4-2 for a series over Kansas City) and Cleveland (3-3 but received a bonus win as well). 

	W	L	SOS	AdjW%	To get to 12 games
Min	9	3	1	0.769
NYM	4	2		0.667	StL2
Cle	3	3	1	0.571	KC 2
Balt	3	3		0.500	Bos 2
Bos	3	3		0.500	Balt 2
NYY	4	5	1	0.500	Sea 1
Sea	5	4	-1	0.500	NY1
StL	3	3		0.500	NYM2
Hou	5	7	1	0.462
TB	3	3	-1	0.400	Tex2
Tex	2	4		0.333	TB2
KC	2	4		0.333	Cle 2

Here are the pitchers and how our sheet was marked prior to the game. Due to a 1st game series 14-12 win over Houston, the Twins five top pitchers had all thrown and thus could not play in this game. The Xs indicated that against Texas the top 3 relievers were not available, but despite the tired bullpen and 3rd and 4th starters, it was the pitching that delivered.

 

The following are the two scoresheets.