HOUSTON -- How’s this for an analytic?

The hit that decided the game between the Yankees and Astros at Minute Maid Park Monday night traveled 22 feet with an exit velocity of 28.9 mph, and a launch angle of two degrees.

That’s all it took for the Yankees to lose to the Astros, 4-3, after they led for most of the game behind the strength of timely hits off Houston ace Justin Verlander, against whom they've had very little success.

The Yankees and Astros are two of the American League’s most powerful teams, but this time, all it took was a Carlos Correa dribbler to call it a night.

“That’s one of those, what are you going to do?” manager Aaron Boone said.

To categorize the eighth inning as ugly may be too harsh. The pitches weren’t terrible, and no one hit the ball particularly hard. Mark this one down as simply annoying.

“Certainly frustrating, especially when you make a pitch,” Boone said. “Credit them for creating traffic in that inning and making it tough on us.”

With the score tied at 3 in the eighth, Alex Bregman drew a one-out walk from Adam Ottavino and advanced to third on a base hit by Michael Brantley, setting the stage for Correa, who’s been averaging around 110 mph on most balls he’s hit so far this year.

Correa connected with a 92.2 mph fastball and sent it dribbling down the first-base line, where it took a funny spin and stopped somewhere between home plate and no man’s land.

Ottavino said he might have played it differently, but when pressed for details on how he’d carry out that plan, he said he wasn’t sure.

“But since we had no play the way I did do it, I would have tried something else,” Ottavino said. “Maybe gone and fielded it myself, see if I could tag the runner. You’re not going to get anybody at home.”

Ottavino and first baseman Greg Bird discussed the hit after the game and drew largely the same conclusion -- it was the result of an unfortunate circumstance rather than a bad play.

“[I] thought, 'Go home. Can’t go home,'” Bird said. “Thought, 'Tag him. Can’t tag him.' Thought, 'Flip it. Can’t flip it.' That’s about it. I told him, he couldn’t bunt it better than that.”

Even Correa shrugged at the play while he stood at first base.

“You got to take them,” Correa said. “This is a tough game. Sometimes you hit the ball hard right at people. Sometimes pitchers are lucky and you’re hitting the ball right at somebody. Sometimes that happens. That’s why we love this game so much. We never know what to expect.”

Earlier, two indisputable facts were front and center: The Yankees had been on a home run tear since the season began, and they’ve had almost no success against Verlander in the past three years.

The homer streak remained intact, but their string of bad luck -- or bad hitting -- against Verlander dissipated, enough that they were able to to jump to a 3-1 lead during the right-hander’s six innings.

“I thought we really made Verlander work,” Boone said. “We couldn’t quite break through and really break it open, but we did a good job of making it real hard on him. Obviously, getting him out of there with the lead … our plan was good.”

Since the start of 2016, Verlander had a 0.72 ERA over five starts vs. the Yankees, including two AL Championship Series starts in 2017. He'd allowed a whopping three earned runs over 37 1/3 innings, compiling 45 strikeouts while walking just three.

The Yankees needed him to be slightly less dominant on Monday, and he was, especially while facing Aaron Judge, who'd had about as much prior success against Verlander as his team.

Judge entered this contest hitless in 13 at-bats with seven strikeouts against Verlander, but this time he singled in the first and walked in the third before homering in the fifth to put the Yankees ahead, 2-1.

“The positive is just the quality at-bats we had against a guy like him, with his resume and what he’s done for so many years,” Judge said. “Just keep continuing to have quality at-bats and pass the baton.”