It's nice that the Twins get to start the season at all these warm weather destinations.
Maybe Joe Ryan can keep Boston off the bases and the Twins can circle them a bunch of times. That feels better than the Dodgers scoring 7+ runs.
And if the Twins lose, well... it's Good Friday and Passover, so I guess we can appreciate that they're taking on that seriousness?
Clayton Kershaw
vs
Chris Paddack
Paddack makes his Twins debut tonight. He has a 7.07 ERA against the Dodgers in his career so hopefully that comes way down after tonight's game.
Dodgers should be good again this year. How will the Twins fare?
This is written 4 days before the game, please feel free to add anything.
Game time: 6:40
The crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd. That’s right, baseball’s back!
Hello, Nation, I’m hungry joe. Join us today live from the internets for all the action. The boys of summer and the WGOM, a winning team!
Remember how awesome this was?
Losing the first two games by one run each sure makes it easy to look for the little things that could have maybe gone the other way to flip the result. This was not a little thing, Buxton turned around that fastball and earned that flip of the bat and should have earned a flip of the outcome.
Just watch it again. He's so good.
Today's pitchers:
Ober vs. Marco Gonzalez
I'm very interested in what Bailey Ober's season will look like. Repeating the good parts of a rookie year is sometimes a challenge. On the other hand, there were good parts about a Twins pitcher last year!
Baseball is back, folks. For yesterday, that was enough. A couple of months ago, it seemed basically impossible for them to be playing baseball anywhere but across the ocean in early April, but he we are.
Today's tilt features the other big Twins offseason acquisition in Sonny Gray. "Sonny" is actually his given name, which....I didn't really know that was a name people game their kids anymore. Either way, the Twins just need him to go out and put in fine or six solid innings and get to the bullpen.
Speaking of the bullpen, Duran was pretty fun yesterday, huh? Here's a retrospective of the Mariners batters trying to hit Duran's offerings once he settled in.
Kid's gonna be fun to watch.
Hopefully today, the offense is fun to watch.
Go twins!
Rookie Joe Ryan gets the ball on opening day for the Twins, the first rookie to start opening day for the team since 1969 apparently. Robbie Ray goes for the Mariners, who are supposed to be much improved. If Joe Ryan can be the pitcher the Twins hope, he could be very exciting to watch.
Locked-in-to-a-long-term-deal Byron Buxton will lead off for the hometown 9, to be followed by newly signed Carlos Correa. Beyond being cool that they're the top two picks from the 2012 draft, I simply can't think of a more exciting 1-2 punch in baseball. Plus, I have a feeling Correa is going to be an improvement from Adrelton Simmons.
The grass is green, hope springs eternal, and 162-0 is still a possibility. Let's go Twins!
