BALTIMORE – The Twins' eighth consecutive Opening Day loss started later than it should have. Then it ended more quickly than they wanted.
Kevin Jepsen's first pitch to Matt Wieters in the ninth inning rifled past him and into center field, scoring Chris Davis with the winning run and dropping the Twins to 0-1 yet again after a 3-2 loss to the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards.
"It was way off-script," Twins manager Paul Molitor said of a game that the Orioles chose to delay by 1 hour and 40 minutes despite dry weather, then unfortunately started just before the actual precipitation hit. "[There was] some miscalculation on how we were going to be affected by weather, obviously … but part of your challenge each and every day is being able to adjust to whatever is thrown at you."
He means, asking the bullpen to hold a power-laden Baltimore offense for seven innings after the starter is shut down by a second rain delay, something the Twins hated to do but managed quite well. Ryan Pressly, Fernando Abad and Trevor May each pitched multiple shutout innings in relief of starter Ervin Santana, who pitched two rainy and difficult but scoreless innings, and even Casey Fien's rough inning — four hits in the fifth — amounted to only two runs, which the Twins were able to match.
And Jepsen appeared ready to send the game to extra innings when he retired Manny Machado and Adam Jones in the ninth. But then a walk to Chris Davis set up Jepsen for disaster.
"Two-out walks. It happens. You look up across baseball, [when] you give up two-out walks, they tend to score," Jepsen said. "My mindset all spring was not walking guys, and you see it there — that's why."
Actually, it could be argued that walking the lefthanded Davis, who led the majors in home runs twice in the past three years, was good strategy at a moment when a home runs beats you. But Jepsen said he wasn't pitching around the Orioles slugger. "Sometimes when you try to be smart, pitch around guys, you kind of get away from your mentality. [Retiring] Machado and Jones, two of the best hitters in the league, your mentality has to be going right after them," he said. "Once you change your mentality, things tend to spiral."
Actually, the walk didn't hurt as much as Mark Trumbo's fourth hit of the day in his Orioles debut, a single that moved Davis to third. That brought up Wieters, 0-for-4 to that point but looking for a first-pitch fastball.