2020 MLB Season: Simulating AL games, April 10-12
By Bill Felber
As baseball remains in hiatus due to the coronavirus, we continue simulating games for the 2020 MLB season. Here are the results for April 10-12.
When the AL West co-leading Texas Rangers and Houston Astros met for three-weekend games in Arlington, the schedule ensured a sole leader by Sunday. It isn’t the Astros.
Further west in Oakland, the New York Yankees, trying to build momentum following a slow first two weeks, challenged a wounded Athletics team on its home turf. The Yanks ran into even more trouble in Oakland than the Astros found in Arlington.
More from Call to the Pen
- Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
- Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
- Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
- Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
- 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals
As a result, by Sunday night, the Minnesota Twins enjoyed the American League’s best record in our 2020 simulation. The Twins found themselves off to a 12-4 start following their three-game sojourn to Chicago’s South Side, where they took the measure of the White Sox twice.
Because they were swept in Oakland, the Yankees fell to fourth place in the AL East at 7-9, although only two games behind the co-leading Tampa Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays.
The Texas series win left the Rangers one game ahead of the Astros in the AL West. In the Central, the Twins emerged two games better than the Cleveland Indians, with the White Sox another half-game back in third place.
Through two full weeks of simulated play, Tampa Bay’s Brandon Lowe clung to a surprising lead in the batting race. As the Rays dropped two of three-weekend games in Cleveland, Lowe managed just three hits in 11 at-bats, and saw his average tumble by 23 points. But that still left him at .422, 15 points ahead of Detroit’s revitalized mega-star, Miguel Cabrera.
Minnesota’s Josh Donaldson, who entered the weekend with 21 RBIs, added just one to his league-leading total in Chicago. Gleyber Torres homered on Sunday in Oakland, his seventh, to move one up on the field in that category.