Opening Day brings with it a lot of promise, and for some players, a chance to do something they've never done before. Whether it's their first Opening Day with the team, their big-league debut or something else altogether, it's hard to compare the unbridled enthusiam and energy a new season brings.
But at the same time, it's sort of funny how quickly we collective forget some aspects of Opening Day.
In this instance, we're going to take a look at some of the more forgotten/forgettable aspects of recent Opening Days in Twins lore.
Let's dive right in:
Andrelton Simmons — batting 8th, playing shortstop on April 1, 2021 at Brewers
Simmons' 2021 season was about as forgettable as one could imagine for a player who made $10.5 million and played more than 130 games. In fact, Simmons is more easily remembered for things he said off the field than how he performed on it.
Simmons was his typically solid defensive self that season. Fangraphs had him worth 18.3 defensive runs, but his offense was so bad it still held him under a win for the year (0.9 fWAR).
The 31-year-old shortstop hit just .223/.283/.274, good (or bad) for a 58 wRC+ that was the worst of his career...at least until the next season when he had a 35-game cameo with th Cubs and posted a ghastly 29 wRC+.
Even if Simmons is just a proxy for our feelings about the 2021 Twins, who finished 73-89 and in last place in the Central, it's still probably fair. The only good thing that came out of 2021 was trading Nelson Cruz for Joe Ryan.
Jake Cave — batting 7th, playing center field on July 24, 2020 at White Sox
Byron Buxton didn't suit up for the Twins to start the COVID-shortened 2020 season until the fourth game of the season, when he batted ninth in a 6-3 win over the St. Louis Cardinals on July 28. This meant that Cave drew the first start of the season, with Max Kepler (gasp!) starting in center the next day.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't remember much about Cave in center field that season. Or maybe I'm just memory-holed the entire year of 2020 that I don't ever want to think about it again. Yeah, that's it.
For what it's worth, here's how center field starts were parceled out that season:
- Buxton - 35
- Cave - 19
- LaMonte Wade Jr. - 4
- Kepler - 2
Eduardo Escobar — batting 6th, playing shortstop on March 29, 2018 at Orioles
I've lived through some really, really frustrating Twins seasons, but I think 2018 might take the cake. A team that snuck into the postseason in 2017 added Marwin Gonzalez, Lance Lynn and Logan Morrison....and got worse.
There's nothing fun about winning 78 games in an MLB season. It's not enough wins, or particularly close to it, to contend for a playoff spot. It's maybe even further away in the other direction from getting a top pick in the draft (especially in the pre-lottery days).
And the start of that year was wild. Inclement weather, including a massive snowstorm, messed up a large portion of the early schedule — including the team not playing a single game from April 13-16 — and it just seemed like that season was doomed from that point on.
And what a shame, as it was Joe Mauer's swan song in the majors.
But anyway, I can't say I have much recollection of Escobar playing shortstop on Opening Day. Especially not since it was near the end of his Twins tenure — he was traded at the deadline that year to the Diamondbacks — but as you may recall, the team had to fill in at the position until midseason because Jorge Polanco was serving a suspension for PEDs and was not eligible to return until July 2 in Milwaukee (a game I covered in person, ironically enough).
Miguel Sano — batting 3rd, playing right field on April 4, 2016 at Orioles
Byungho Park — batting 6th, playing designated hitter
It's kind of incredible how quickly the Park-Bang phenomenon burnt out.
You can be forgiven if you don't recall, but that was what Park home runs were called. And if we're frank, that's about all he did to provide value to the Twins in his lone MLB season, as he hit just .191/.275/.409 in 244 plate appearances.
Park spent part of the 2016 season in Rochester and all of 2017 there, as well, before the Twins released him halfway into his four-year deal.
In Sano's case, it was just an entirely forgettable season with him shoehorned into right field at the expense of Trevor Plouffe at third base.
That team started 0-9 that season and finished 59-103.
Total system failure indeed.
Danny Santana — batting 1st, playing shortstop on April 6, 2015 at Tigers
Jordan Schafer — batting 9th, playing center field on April6, 2015 at Tigers
A lot of people remember Santana's first year in the big leagues, where he played mostly center field and finished seventh in the AL Rookie of the Year balloting because he hit a BABIP-fueled .319/.353/.472 in 430 plate appearances.
However, the Twins decided to give him a long look at shortstop and in the leadoff spot the next year, and....it did not go well. It wasn't long before he was hitting ninth, and by the end of the year he'd hit just .215/.241/.291 and seen his OPS drop by nearly 300 points. After post a 3.8 bWAR in 2014, Santana went on to be worth MINUS-3.2 bWAR over the rest of his career with the Twins, and just 2.0 bWAR over his career total.
That's right — nearly 200 percent of Santana's career bWAR came in his first season.
As for Schafer, he got the time in center field as Buxton was still a ways off at Double-A Chattanooga and the Twins were not particularly pleased with what they'd gotten out of the first two seasons of Aaron Hicks, who'd be traded for catcher John Ryan Murphy the next offseason.
Schafer hit a respectable .285/.345/.362 in 147 plate appearances after the Twins claimed him off waivers from the Braves in 2014, but his 2015 was ugly (.511 OPS) for 27 games before he injured his knee and was released just as he was ready to come back.
Chris Colabello — batting 5th, playing designated hitter on March 31, 2014 at White Sox
Almost everything that applied to Park above applies to Colabello, who fortunately got his career on track after leaving the Twins for a brief spell with Toronto. The Twins signed Colabello out of independent ball in 2012, and he made his big-league debut in 2013, hitting .194/.287/.344 in 181 plate appearances.
Still, the Twins handed him the Opening Day job at DH batting fifth, and he responded with two hits and actually had a really nice start. Such a nice start, in fact, that the Twins held a Colabello cowbell giveaway on May 1 of that season.
Colabello's run didn't last long, and in fact by May 1 his OPS was at .813. And from that point forward, until his big-league season — and Twins tenure — ended on Aug. 7, the big man hit just .173/.229/.291 with just seven extra-base hits.
Some things are just too beautiful for this Earth.
Vance Worley — Opening Day starting pitcher on April 1, 2013 vs. Tigers
This is the granddaddy of them all, and I remember it vividly because it was the first game I covered for the then-named 1500 ESPN. It was freezing cold, and we shot a video on the field that....oh hey, I found it.
Oh Brandon...you were so young. Were.
Anyway, it was Worley against Justin Verlander, and it was about as much of a mismatch as it sounds.
Worley, who had come over with Trevor May in the Ben Revere trade, actually went six innings and allowed just three earned runs — but that was pretty much the highlight of his Twins tenure. He wound up pitching in 10 games, picking up just one win and posted a 7.59 ERA in his nine appearances after this one.
How badly did his Twins tenure go? The short answer is that he now crosses out all Twins insignias when he does signings of items from that era.
So that seems good.