The first game of the 2006 baseball season was a bit disappointing for this Twins fan. Twins batters were only able to come up with 5 hits in the game. Two of these hits were homeruns, a good sign, but they were only solo shots, which doesn’t help a whole lot when you’re down by 3 or 4 runs. In these situations I would rather see a double, to get a rally started, oh well. Having said this they were only able to string hits together in the first inning, this was aided by a couple of errors on the part of the Toronto infield. We probably had to hit HR to score in this one. The only bright spot hitting wise was Shannon Stewart who went 3 for 4 and had one of those homeruns.

It is important to remember the fact that the pitcher on the mound for Toronto (Halladay) was a CY Young winner in 2003. But with the lack of run support the Twins had last year it is hard to just accept 5 hits from this team.

Santana was also not at his best; however I was impressed by Rincon’s pitching. He was only in for an inning and a third but he calmly worked himself out of a bases loaded jam. I was much happier to see this than I was nervous about Santana’s first game performance. I know that Santana will turn things around he has proven himself many times over. He still has the great fastball and can still slip in one of the most devastating change-ups in the game (when he’s hitting his spots). In his 3 strikeouts he did manage to make a few Toronto batters look real silly for swinging. Hopefully Rincon can keep his game up to the standards he set in this game for the remainder of the year. (This doesn’t mean he can’t get better).

Add all of this together with the strike zone that seemed to change every inning if not half inning and it is really not surprising what the outcome of the game was. The Twins announcer’s Bert Blyleven and Dick Bremer complained about the inconsistent strike zone more than I have ever heard them before. Being a Twins fan watching a Twins broadcast I probably didn’t get the most objective view of the umpires, but they did seem to be consistently leaning towards Toronto’s CY Young pitcher and away from ours.

And of course having said all of that it was only game 1 of 162. We have plenty of time to get better and everyone else has plenty of time to get worse, which is obviously the way it will end up. Remember Reuben Sierra is injured and did not play, man, no wonder we lost.