Twins manager Rocco Baldelli warned us during spring training that he could bat Byron Buxton leadoff and Carlos Correa second at times this season. He didn't wait; he trotted out the alignment on Friday against reigning Cy Young winner Robbie Ray.
We are going to learn a lot about this Twins team in April
Pitching produced some pleasant surprises, and the big hitters in the lineup have yet to heat up.
April 9, 2022 at 3:16AM
With Jorge Polanco batting third, the Twins had their three best hitters stacked against the dominant southpaw. They promptly combined to go 1-for-11 with a walk and two strikeouts in front of an Opening Day announced crowd of 35,462 at Target Field.
Instead of tabbing veteran newcomer Sonny Gray to start Opening Day, Baldelli picked rookie Joe Ryan, who made his sixth career start Friday. Career! Not Gray, who has made three Opening Day starts. Or Chris Archer, who has made four.
Ryan survived, but the first of his four walks on Friday came around to score on Mitch Haniger's two-run homer in the first inning, which fueled Seattle's 2-1 win. It came against a Twins team with a fortified lineup and new-look pitching.
But the same could be concluded about the Mariners as they come off a 90-win season. They traded for Jesse Winker and Eugenio Suarez — although Suarez is a strikeout machine and below-average defender at third — and signed Ray as a free agent to fortify their lineup and give their rotation a different look.
"Yeah, the team obviously got better this offseason," said Twins shortstop Carlos Correa, once a rival of Seattle with Houston. "They made a lot of acquisitions. They got the Cy Young winner, they made a couple trades; Jesse Winker, Suarez. Their bullpen has always been great. That's something we battled with last year. The bullpen is solid. So, just got to go out there tomorrow, bounce back, get that win."
One team is coming off a winning season and desires to take the next step. The other team is picking itself off the mat following an 89-loss campaign and is out to prove it's for real.
My thought: This is awesome.
We are going to find out what this team is all about just from the first month of the regular season, during which they will navigate a gantlet of winning teams from last season.
If the Twins think they should be taken seriously, they need to carve wins out of games like Friday. Instead, Baldelli's lineup faltered.
Gio Urshela introduced himself to Twins fans by blasting a Ray breaking ball into the left field seats in the fourth. Now one swing away from tying the game, the Twins offense mustered one hit and two walks over the next four innings. Ray is the defending AL Cy Young award winner, but this Twins lineup is built to beat good pitching.
Baldelli's top three hitters got another at-bat in the eighth and went down 1-2-3, with Correa, ahead 3-1 in the count, chasing a pitch out of the zone before tapping out to third.
Baldelli can be encouraged that Ryan didn't implode, that Luis Arraez delivered a pinch hit single in the ninth and that Gary Sanchez's drive brought fans to their feet before dying at the wall for the final out of the game.
"We just couldn't push the runs across," Baldelli said.
He also saw Jhoan Duran allow the first two batters he faced to reach base before striking out the next three hitters while hitting 100 miles per hour on the radar gun three times. Jorge Alcala got through the seventh before lefthander Danny Coulombe - who will be needed following the trade of Taylor Rogers to San Diego - added two scoreless innings.
These efforts need to add up to wins against good teams.
It didn't on Friday.
Now pack a lunch, Twins. Because it's not stopping with Seattle.
The Dodgers — the 106-56 Dodgers from last season - come calling for two games. Then it's off to Boston for four. The Red Sox went 92-70 last season and added slugging shortstop Trevor Story to their lineup.
April also includes three games against the defending AL Central champion White Sox and concludes with a series at Tampa Bay, a 100-win team last season.
In all, 15 of the Twins' 21 games in April come against 90-win teams from a year ago. Yup, we're going to learn a lot about this bunch pretty quick.
Talk of competing for the best players or of a potential new owner wielding big bucks doesn’t change this: They are last in popularity among the four major men’s pro sports.
