It's easy to be prone to overreactions after just one game, but this might be the best Triple-A team we've ever seen.
All kidding aside, the St. Paul Saints opened their 2025 season at chilly CHS Field with an 11-0 drubbing of the Indianapolis Indians (Pirates) on Friday evening, and it'd be hard to find too many negatives with their performance.
The game remained scoreless until the third inning, when the Saints broke through for two runs and followed with a single tally in the fourth, two in the fifth and three in the sixth for an 8-0 lead.
The Saints pushed across three more runs for good measure in the eighth, while David Festa and his bullpen friends combined on a four-hit shutout.
Here's what we saw:
This is a really, really impressive roster
It's really at every level, too. In the outfield, the Twins have top prospect Emmanuel Rodriguez, intriguing mammoth of a man Carson McCusker and Austin Martin, who has some big-league experience and versatility and is still at least somewhat interesting as a future big leaguer.
Luke Keaschall headlines the infielders, though he DH'd on Friday, and it's a bunch that includes former big leaguer Mike Ford and a bunch of uniquely interesting characters in Yunior Severino (who played right field Friday?), Anthony Prato, Will Holland and Payton Eeles.
Eeles and Holland opened the season on the injured list.
At catcher, the Saints have Jair Camargo and Diego Cartaya who are both on the MLB 40-man roster with Jeferson Morales and Patrick Winkel in the mix, as well. Cartaya is a former top prospect with the Dodgers looking to make his way back into that conversation after being traded to the Twins, while Camargo's biggest problem is that he's not Ryan Jeffers or Christian Vazquez, both of whom have hogged all the time behind the plate in the big leagues.
But the pitching staff? The pitching staff is where things get fun. Festa made the Opening Day start, but this bunch also includes Zebby Matthews off his red-hot stint in Spring Training, knuckleballer Cory Lewis, prospects Marco Raya, Andrew Morris and Travis Adams and a bevy of pitchers with big-league experience like Daniel Duarte, Scott Blewett, Kody Funderburk and others.
There's really no reason for this team not to contend for the postseason.
Emmanuel Rodriguez is the truth
Even with all the time he's missed, it seems like Rodriguez hasn't skipped a beat. He picked up the team's first hit of the season with a single into left, and was right in the thick of things when the Saints broke through in the third.
After Ryan Fitzgerald walked and Martin singled to open the inning, Keaschall struck out and Rodriguez stepped up. He stroked a double, scoring both runners to give the Saints a 2-0 lead.
Rodriguez also walked in the sixth, and scored when Camargo doubled to make it a 7-0 game.
And for good measure, Rodriguez added his third knock of the day in the bottom of the eighth, a single to left that resulted in Martin being thrown out at home.
That would have made for Rodriguez's third RBI of the day, but he'll have to settle for a 3-for-4 day with an extra-base hit and a walk.
Who wants to put the over/under on when he'll be with the Twins? Is it mid-May?
Jeferson Morales played....where?
He played second base! Morales is billed just about everywhere as a catcher/outfield combo pack — not quite the full Daulton Varsho but still interesting all the same — but he started at second for the first time as a member of the Saints on Friday.
Morales saw some time at second base with Wichita last season. In fact, his 22 games (.965 fielding percentage) were more than he caught at Wichita (five games) despite being billed as a "catcher."
Sure enough, the Saints are stocked at catcher (see above), but any added versatility Morales can show will hasten/improve his big-league chances.
I'm not sure a player has risen more in the organization recently than he has. Make no mistake; he's not one of their top prospects (he's not even ranked in their MLB Pipeline top 30), but he sure looks like he'll be a big leaguer.
Let's talk about this team with runners in scoring position
You can't score 11 runs without some timely hitting, but this was on another level as the Saints were 9-for-20 (.450) with runners in scoring position.
If that wasn't enough, the offense even left some meat on the bone! The Saints stranded 12 runners on the night, while the Indians stranded five and only had six baserunners total.
Gameday has a cool feature for the Saints that shows....
Hard-hit balls! Here's a sampling of the Saints' hard-hit balls from the win, courtesy of MiLB.com (the threshold appears to be 95-plus mph):
- First inning: Martin groundout (104.1 mph); Ford fly out (101.4 mph)
- Second inning: Camargo groundout (105.5 mph); Severino groundout (97.6 mph)
- Third inning: Rodriguez double (113.6 mph)
- Fourth inning: Morales single (95.4 mph); Fitzgerald single (95.9 mph)
- Fifth inning: Armando Alvarez single (105.6 mph); Camargo double (101.7 mph); Severino single (107.6 mph)
- Eighth inning: Camargo double (112.5 mph); Fitzgerald double (105.7 mph); Martin line out (107.5 mph)