These are always trying times in my home as my wife is a Mariners fan. Well, at least she wants the Mariners to win more than any other sports team. Of course, she has zero interest in any sports team, so that's not saying much.

The main "conflict" in the home as such comes from our boys. Junior is staunchly a Twins fan and makes sure it is well known when the Twins and M's play each other. (It was he who called the Twins the "T's" after my wife loudly announced "Go, M's.")

Trey, being the younger brother, of course, cannot support anything his older brother supports and "feels sorry for Mommy" because no one else cheers for the Mariners when they play the Twins, so he cheers for the Mariners. I'm sure he'll eventually realize he's a full-time Twins fan as he gets older (his favorite players or Joe Mauer and Glen Perkins), but it's still disappointing when he cheers against the Twins.

Which is why it always nice to win against the Mariners. The Twins needed a rare series-opening victory (although it is starting to become more common now) since King Felix is looming on Sunday.

Kyle Gibson pitched how he needs to pitch to be successful. Limited walks (2, 1 of which scored the only run against him) a handful of strikeouts and a bunch of groundball outs.

The Twins hit the ball much better than the 5 runs would indicate. At one point, they had line-drive outs to infielders in 3 out of  4 batters and a number of well-hit outs to OFs as well.

The one concern was the bullpen, which nearly coughed up another lead. The bullpen's K rate, even when including Perkins' rate, is perilously close to the starting staff's. I was hoping to make that gap smaller this year, but I didn't expect a bullpen that was pretty much the same as last year's to have a big drop. Hopefully, it is just SSS since a number of relievers are well below their career K rates (Thielbar is one who is well down and was hit hard in this game).

At least the Twins are back to .500, and they finally have more victories as the Twins than they did as the Senators, which is really sad to happen so soon from the Senators' perspective.