Twins shut down by Astros as Hunter Brown — 'Baby Verlander' — yields only two hits

Uh-oh, Minnesota. There's a new Verlander in Houston.

That's how it looked Sunday to the Twins anyway, a team that believed it had been mostly freed from their most unhittable tormentor 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.

"They were calling him, what, Baby Verlander last year?" Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers wondered aloud.

If they weren't then, they may be someday soon. Brown has long been regarded as one of the top pitching prospects in the game, and with Verlander departed as a free agent, is getting his chance in the Astros rotation this season. He's only 24, so the Twins may have to deal with him for a long time.

"He's a good, young pitcher," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "Some of those balls we put in play, we weren't doing damage on those swings. When he got deeper into counts as the game went on, [when] he got to 2-2 or 3-2, he won a lot of those at-bats."

Tyler Mahle won some, too, but the Twins righthander also lost a couple to Chas McCormick that doomed the Twins' chances of sweeping the reigning World Series champions. One wound up in the planters atop the right-field wall with a runner aboard, an opposite-field homer by a player who specializes in them. 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.

"It's tough, when I feel like I had good command and threw some pretty good pitches, to get beat. But against a good team, you make mistakes, they're going to get you," Mahle said after his first start at Target Field since Aug. 17. "The homer, it was a bad pitch. The other one was a broken-bat single. Not much I can do about that."

Not much he can do about getting his teammates to provide some offense, either, especially when Brown is dominating Verlander-style, stuffing the strike zone with high-90s fastballs and grazing the corners with a late-breaking slider.

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 as an Astro — 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.

"That bodes well for his confidence. His [97-mph] fastball was great," Astros manager Dusty Baker said. "He pitched like a top-of-the-rotation guy."

Just like … wait, is there a better comparison?

"His fastball and slider and cutter were just like Walker Buelher's," Kyle Farmer said, invoking his former Dodger teammate, a two-time All-Star. "Me and Solano were talking about that — his stuff plays just like Buehler."

Still, after losing all six games against Houston a year ago, Baldelli was eager to declare the two-win weekend a success.

"I strongly liked what I saw from our team. I consider that a good series win for us," Baldelli said. "I'm not satisfied, but overall, our guys did a nice job. Competed very well against a good pitching staff and a good lineup."