MINNEAPOLIS — Uh-oh, Minnesota. There's a new Verlander in Houston.
That's how it looked to the Twins anyway, a team that believed it had been freed from their most unhittable tormenter when the three-time Cy Young winner changed leagues last winter. But Sunday at Target Field, rookie righthander Hunter Brown channeled the spirit, the cool and especially the fastball of Justin Verlander, pitching the Astros to a two-hit, 5-1 victory over the Twins.
Tyler Mahle wasn't bad in his first Target Field start since Aug. 17, but he made a couple of mistakes to Astros leadoff man Chas McCormick. One wound up in the planters atop the right-field wall with a runner aboard, and one was a two-out ground ball into center field with runners at second and third, allowing McCormick to rack up four RBI on the afternoon.
That was more than enough offense for Brown, long regarded as one of the top pitching prospects in the game, to salvage the finale of a three-game series for the Astros. And he did it in Verlander style, stuffing the strike zone with high-90s fastballs and shoulder-slumping curveballs.
For instance, remember how Verlander pitched eight innings during his visit to Minnesota last summer, and allowed a hit in only one of them? Brown only went seven innings — it's April, after all — but yep, he held the Twins hitless in six of them.
Only in the fourth inning, when Byron Buxton beat out a grounder to third, then scored two outs later when Donovan Solano supplied the Twins' only moderately hard-hit ball of the day, a double into the right-field corner, did the Twins scratch Brown's masterpiece.
But just as the Twins never scored more than one run off Verlander in his six starts against them with Houston — that's an 0.64 ERA and a .102 batting average against the future Hall of Famer — Brown simply shrugged it off and retired the last nine hitters he faced in order.
Worst of all? The kid's only 24.
