Minnesota Twins: J.R. Graham An Opening Day Bright Spot

There wasn’t a whole lot to cheer about after the season opener for the Minnesota Twins on Monday afternoon. If you ask Torii Hunter he might yell at you for calling it like you see it, but that’s another story. The Twins fell to the Detroit Tigers 4-0, but there was a bright spot.

The Twins only used two pitchers on Monday, one of those being Phil Hughes. Hughes, last year’s stud, was not the star of the day. Hughes gave up four runs on two home runs and didn’t have a Hughes-like performance that Twins fans are now used to. J.R. Graham shined in his major league debut.

The first pitch was a little sketchy as Graham almost killed a man:

Graham: “I guess I was little bit nervous at the beginning. I almost took Iglesias’ head off. But I think I settled in nicely after that.”
— Rhett Bollinger (@RhettBollinger) April 6, 2015

Graham came in to start the seventh inning and pitched two solid innings. A single and a walk to start off his career made the beginning stages look sketchy, but Graham quickly got Ian Kinsler to ground into a double play and get Miguel Cabrera to foul out. Not too shabby for the first major league inning.

The second inning of work saw a leadoff single from Victor Martinez, but Graham didn’t allow anything else to occur in his outing.

Graham finished the day pitching two shutout innings only allowing two hits and surrendering only a single walk. So our hats are off to the nice MLB debut for the former Atlanta Braves farmhand.

Hopefully the offense arrives from Fort Myers for the Twins before the team faces off against the Tigers again on Wednesday.

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