Bailey Ober doesn’t sound too worried about his awful start against Royals

As the first weekend of a new season comes to a close, Minnesota Twins fans are stuck dealing with a mixture of emotions. While baseball is back — good! — the first series of the year was bookended by varying degrees of terrible things.

Opening Day was quickly marred by the loss of Royce Lewis, who will miss at least a month with a severe quad strain. This came just a few innings after he started his season by hitting a home run in his first at-bat, which ended up being the cruelest of teases.

Similarly, the two game winning streak the Twins started the season out on came crashing down on Sunday in the form of an 11-0 blowout by Kansas City. Two great pitching performances were chased by Bailey Ober lasting less than two innings while getting lit up by the Royals lineup.

Ober gave up three home runs, a triple, and a double while nearly setting Bobby Witt Jr. up to hit for the cycle. That didn’t happen, as he fell a double short, but Ober didn’t stick around nearly long enough to see how it would play out.

It was a brutal way for him to start his season, especially given how much he’s being relied on to help make up for the loss of Sonny Gray. Rocco Baldelli was at a loss when trying to explain what happened, but Ober doesn’t sound too worried about one bad start.

Bailey Ober comments on his eight run start against Royals

After the game Ober didn’t totally brush off his horrendous start but he also didn’t sound like someone who was about to dwell on how things went.

“Just one of those days, I guess, I don’t know,” Ober said. “Obviously, you don’t plan for it, but I’ll go back, look at it and see if anything was going weird. But executed some, they hit them. Didn’t execute some, they hit them.”

Ober certainly wasn’t good on Sunday, but the last thing the Twins need is for him to break before he has a chance to truly settle in. His comments seem to suggest it will take more than a shellacking by the Royals to throw him off his game, although the pressure is on for him to deliver in his next start.

The good news is Ober has built up some credit when it comes to smoothing things out. He has a 3.44 ERA in starts that don’t involve facing the Royals and is still expected to be a big part of the rotation this season. His next start is slated to be against Cleveland on April 7th, which is the perfect stage for some redemption.

It wasn’t pretty, but Ober shaking off the rust and having the sort of start he had now is preferable to it coming later in the year. Based on his comments after the loss, it seems he seems to be thinking the same way.

More Minnesota Twins news and rumors