After a rain delay of over an hour and the longest car parade in the Statcast era (probably), the Minnesota Twins got their season underway with a 5-3 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals on Thursday.
Obviously in a loss, it's easy enough to focus on the negatives. After all, the first article we posted after the game was a piece about possible overreactions.
But short of losing 15-0 or having to use a position player to pitch for you on Opening Day, it's still possible to find positives in a loss — and we're gonna do just that:
Harrison Bader looked good
How's this for a fun statistic: Bader is the first player to double and homer in their first game as a Twin since Larry Hisle did so when he joined the team in 1973.
We duked this out on the most recent Locked On Twins, but is it possible Bader is going to play more left field than we previously realized? To his credit, he perfectly played the carom in left field on Jordan Walker's single, thereby holding to said single despite the ball being the second hardest-hit ball Pablo Lopez had ever permitted.
But he played 143 games for the Mets last season. Is there a chance the Twins told him he'd be the regular, or at least fairly regular starter in left? It's not clear yet, of course, after just one game, but it's worth wondering how much the Twins want to lean into outfield defense with a fly ball-heavy pitching staff.
It's likely to be this way with so many Twins injured, thereby opening up the DH role on a daily basis for Trevor Larnach with Jose Miranda playing third base. To that end, we may not have an answer for this question soon, but it just has that sort of feel like he's going to play a ton of left field unless something surprising happens.
Outside of the top three batters, the offense actually looked pretty good
Yes, Matt Wallner, Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton went a combined 0-for-12 with a walk.
But that means the rest of the lineup did quite well, and while I'm not much of a "single-game-slash-line"-kinda guy, batters 4-9 in the lineup Thursday each picked up at least one hit and combined to slash .364/.417/.591.
It's not indicative of anything trend-wise, necessarily, but I think it's worth noting that it helps prove the point that the team has the depth to hang around in the Central and AL as a whole even if they don't always get A1 from Day 1 from their top guys.
Getting nuked by Ryan Helsley is hardly a unique phenomenon
It was more Hellfire and Brimstone with Helsley, who averaged (yes, averaged) 98.9 mph on his four-seam fastball and 91.6 on his slider.
He made multiple hitters look silly with three strikeouts in the inning (four swinging strikes on 19 pitches), with Bader's double down the left field line standing as the only blemish on his otherwise spotless ledger.
The Wallner strikeout to end the game was especially devious; after missing with a slider high to start the at-bat, Helsley came back with a four-seam fastball and back-to-back sliders, with a foul, another foul and a swinging strike three to end the game.
Few relievers throw as hard as Helsley does, and when his slider is working, he's unhittable.
Credit where due: Sonny Gray was very good
Gray was vintage Sonny in this one, front-dooring his two-seam fastball and mixing and matching effectively to keep hitters off balance all afternoon long. Outside of Bader's booming homer to left,
The Twins hit just .222/.300/.389 against Gray in their 20 plate appearances — note: in other words, he barely saw them a third time — and other than Bader's homer, the Twins were 3-for-16 with only singles (.188/.278/.188) against the veteran righty over the rest of the day.
A lot of people might call that coping or putting a positive spin on it, but I promise it's OK to have trouble hitting a good pitcher, or giving up big hits to good batters like Nolan Arenado and Lars Nootbaar.
Onto game two on Saturday.