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First Pitch: 6:40pm CT
TV: Fox Sports North
Radio: WCCO/Tresure Island Baseball Network
Know Thine Enemy: The Crawfish Boxes
The pitching matchup for tonight’s game will be Justin Verlander vs Jake Odorizzi. Seems like a pretty even matchup, right? Odorizzi was actually pretty solid in his last outing against the Astros, going 5.2 innings and giving up just two runs. Verlander was excellent in his last start against the Twins, pitching eight innings and allowing just one run while striking out eight.
As you might imagine, almost none of the Twins hitters have had much success against Verlander. Their best hitters with more than five at-bats against the former Tiger has been Nelson Cruz, who will not be in the lineup tonight. The rest of the active Twins batters have a career average of .222 or lower against the former Cy Young winner. Let’s hope they can roll over their momentum from their series against the Orioles to buck that trend.
One of my favorite things to look at during the game is the Statcast Gamefeed provided by Baseball Savant. It gives you exit velocities and the expected batting averages for each ball hit in play, among other cool metrics. Check out the feed for tonight’s game here!