TWINS POSTCAST: Joe Ryan's Scoreless Magic Not Enough vs. Baltimore As Twins Drop Game One, 2-1

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1:02Twins, strap the season opener in Baltimore, despite Joe Ryan's best efforts. 2-1, that's your final in Camden Yards. What's going on? Back in the lab, back at it. First Twins Postcast of the 2026 season, all part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. Thanks for making us the number one sports podcast network. Look at this guy, Sweet Lou Hennessey, Twins expert, MLB expert. Give him a follow on X at Sweet Lou, M.N. Luke Inman, at Luke underscore, Spinman. Go follow our guy, CJ Baumgartner as well, host of the Lockdown Twins show. He's got your 30-minute daily dose breaking down everything, Twins related. Lots to get into here, Lou. Biggest second guest of this one, biggest turning point, plus what we'll be talking about tomorrow. But first, just off the top, Twins obviously coming into the year with some kind of... feared expectations, I guess, after blowing the whole thing up in last year's trade deadline. Obviously, some new faces in the mix, but also rolling with the same kind of core nucleus

2:02of guys there. They're clearly still trying to build around Bucston, Royce Lewis, Luke Keesholl, and company. Maybe no better pound-for-pound player on this roster right now than Joe Ryan, though. No brainer given him the opening day start, and he was pretty fantastic. Waking up right where he left off in 2025, a one-hitter through five and one-thirds in in in seven-kays, two walks on 85 pitches. We're scoreless in this one through six. That it's the bullpen's turn, Cody Funderberg, Justin Topa. They both allow one run. That makes it to nothing. Bucston triples the very next inning, and then he scores on a Luke Keesholl sack fly. That at least made things interesting, but down one in the ninth, they go one, two, three, ring them up, sit them down. Luke Twin start the year on that wretched O and 162 pace, despite Joe Ryan giving them five fantastic innings. What were your kind of big takeaways from this one, kind of big picture watch? Pack it in season, so we're done. We're done.

3:02We're done. No, it's unfortunate, but honestly, as unfortunate as the outcome was, this was a pretty competitive game. Like you said, scoreless through six. It's a fun little pitcher's duel. Trevor Rogers on the Baltimore Orioles. He's not a household name, but he's a very effective pitcher, and you saw exactly why. He mixed in that change up so well, and got so much weak contact to the infielders there. Twins grounded into three pretty brutal rally, killing double plays, and that's all she wrote. Like you said, Joe Ryan was fantastic. That should be a really big take away from this. He pitched into the six. He had seven strikeouts. His curveball was tight. It looked really good. He got some of the best hitters, and a pretty good lineup looking silly. He had Peter Lanzo striking out on a curveball on the inside there. That is encouraging. We'd like to see that. We don't like to see those double plays. We don't like to see the lack of hits. This was not necessarily their A lineup. They're facing a lefty, so a lot of guys, Austin Martin might not normally start, guys

4:05like that. So there's a lot to glean from this. I hope it's not a super big sign of things to come where the team goes one for twelve with runners in square position, but I guess it's a really tough pitcher like Trevor Rogers. It's going to happen. Yeah. Well said. They're good breakdown. Let's jump into the biggest turning point from this time to reveal where the game was once or most. It's the turning point. So again, we're all tied up through six, Lou, and then we've already been told, right? Hold our breath once we get to the bullpen, and they didn't disappoint today, right? Not a total collapse, but two runs in the six felt like even at the time, kind of a lot to overcome even with some of these heavy bats in the twins lineup. But you tell us, man, biggest turning point from your lens, when was it and why? For me, it had to be when they took Joe Ryan out of the game. I think that was a totally appropriate time to take Joe Ryan out of the game. You know, it's the first start of the year. He was up in the upper 80s of pitch count. I want to say somewhere up there, 85, you know, that's pretty typical for the first

5:07start of the year. Guys still coming out of spring. He had a little bit of a delayed start. It makes a ton of sense there. And Cody Funderberg came in and got out of that inning. That was pretty good. But it definitely was a vibe shift, you know what I mean? Especially when Justin Topa, who had a pretty rough second half last year, you know, it was his opportunity to claim a late inning spot in those last couple of months of last season after the big sell off. And he kind of faltered then and he faltered today. So that definitely seemed like the vibe shift to me, you know, he came in. And it's not like he totally imploded or anything, but he gave up a couple of hits, gave up a run that was charged to Funderberg and also one charged to himself. And that definitely seemed like the turning point for the game today. You know, last year, I should say the last few years, we've always had the Rocco report. This year though, I'm thinking we go with the Shelton scorecard. Okay. It's a work in progress. All right. That favorite or least favorite move or decision out there from the twins new manager.

6:08Maybe you just want to double down on the pulling Joe Ryan, maybe a little bit too early. Yeah. You know, I don't know if it was for a favorite necessarily, but I thought it was the most intriguing moment when he pinched Trevor Lernick for Rice Lewis in the late innings there. It makes sense. You know, you're going with a lefty batter against the righty Ryan Halsley, who also by the way was nasty. He was throwing gas 102 at the top of his own. And that's going to be really hard for any pinch hitter to come in coming cold to a game and face 102 with a really good change up. That's a tough, that is a tall order man, and I thought it was intriguing because you know, a lot of people still think of Royce Lewis as one of the centerpieces of this line up, you know, based on his 2023 season where he was fantastic, he's pretty good in 2024 until things kind of fell apart for him and his health degraded to a certain extent. He rough season last year and a really bad spring this year. And then to pull him, you know, he was batting eighth, he's sunk so far in that line up already and then to pinch hit for him when the lights were at their brightest.

7:10I thought that was the most intriguing moment. Maybe I'm reading a little too far into it, but that was the one that caught my eye the most. That's like me in like sixth grade at Grand Slam going from the 55 mile an hour cage, which was doable. Yeah. But then like just goofing around with that last token, the 85 mile an hour kid, no chance to. What do we have now? I'll see you soon. I'll see you soon. Don't go anywhere. Biggest second guest from today plus nerdy stat. That's all coming up right after this. Quick reminder. Today's episode brought to us by Fandall. The tournament is here and it's one of the best times of your bracket. It's buzzer beaters, upsets, it's nonstop action from tip off to the final countdown. Right now, Fandall given every new customer a way to stay in all the action, all tournament long. And here's the best part. You're getting $300 in bonus bets back every day for 10 days. That means 10 chances to stay involved throughout the entire tournament. And you can mix it up. However you want game picks, futures, even sane game parlays for bigger potential payouts.

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9:17locked on MLB right now support the show by saying you heard about indeed on this postcast terms and conditions apply. All right, Lou, let's get to the biggest second guest from this one. Since hindsight is always 2020, let's deliver today's second guest. Again tough one run lost to start the season, but what was the biggest second guest in this one as you kind of sit back and reflect a little bit? Sure, you know, this second guest isn't anything egregious, you know what I mean, there wasn't some back breaking bone headed move or anything like that. But a second guest for me, I guess, was maybe just a lineup construction in general. You know, we saw some things that maybe we weren't predicting Austin Martin leading off and that ended up paying off, you know, he had a he had a nice little hit moved around on the bases. If he's going well, that's that's exciting. That'd be really nice to have him as a lead off header there. The second guest I guess for me came in putting Josh Bell and Victor Caratini, two of their, you know, only offensive additions this off season near the back end of the lineup back

10:20to back. They're both switch hitters. I guess I thought it would be a little more traditional to maybe split those two up so that you could kind of line yourself up for better pinch hit opportunities or better split opportunities down the line. So I think we could have seen a little bit more, but now that we're looking in hindsight, at the end of the day, this two to one loss was more of just like a run of the mill loss and not like one of those big boneheaded somebody slipped on a banana peel made a huge mistake or anything like that. But if there's a second guest, I think that this is going to be something that maybe fans can watch throughout the season, how Derek Shelton likes to construct his lineup. I don't know if it's going to be one that he's sent it and forget it. I think there's going to be a lot of shifting around. Yeah, good point there going to be interesting when we get a little bit bigger sample size, right? Right now, obviously, such a small sample size tough to really glean one way or the other, but I totally agree. I thought there were some interesting choices in that lineup today for sure. Nerdy's stat of the day, you got any crazy stat or fun analytic twins related lay one on me,

11:21I guess, to start the 2026 campaign. What do you got? Sure. You know, this was a cute little note that I got from the twins radio booth. The twins have started their season in Baltimore, so they've had opening day in Baltimore five times. And after today, they're all in five in those matchups. They just cannot find the right in Charm City, baby. Yeah. Yeah, crazy. Interesting. I wonder, don't want to put you on the spot. I wonder when the last time was where are we talking? Some of these stats is like, yeah, but that was 35 years ago, obviously it wasn't 35 years ago. But when that last season opener in Baltimore was, I'll have to look that up. Yeah. Off the top of my head, I know there was one in kind of like the dark ages of the Minnesota twins in 2011 through 2014. There's one in those years and they were absolutely brutal. I think they lost nine to nothing or something in that matchup, but I don't, I think that was the last time, probably about 10, 12, 15 years ago, something like that. First Nerdy's stat of 2026, absolutely love it.

12:24This is what you'll be talking about. All right. Well, I guess the good news is here, you're ace in number one, right, Joe Ryan. He looked great today. Bad news is you don't get to see him now for four more games. I guess. And now they turn to, you know, the new gun, Taj Bradley in game number two in Baltimore. That's Saturday, 305 first pitch. What do you think just from your lens after what transpired today? That's the biggest atopic now heading into that Saturday matchup again, just kind of after the way this one unfolded the way it did. Yeah. To me, Taj Bradley has to be that storyline going into Saturday. He had a pretty encouraging spring. They committed to him in the rotation pretty early on. I know, I don't know if they made the official call until the last couple of weeks, but behind closed doors, he was pretty locked into a rotation spot. They really liked the offseason that he had. They liked the velocity and some of the raw stuff that they saw right when he showed up to camp. Taj Bradley was very encouraging and they have high hopes for him.

13:26You don't start the second game of the season like that just because. They have faith that he can really turn into kind of a figurehead or kind of a cornerstone of this starting rotation. And he's got the raw stuff to make it work. But then again, he had the raw stuff in Tampa Bay. He had the raw stuff when they traded for him last year and it didn't necessarily go in a straight line. But you know what? That kind of stuff is really linear. That sort of progression in a player's career is rarely linear. He's still pretty young. He's 24 or 25 years old. He's still one of the younger guys in this rotation, even though he has 300 plus innings already in the big league in the big league level. Don't want to put you on the spot. Last one though. Real quick, rapid fire. Give me one guy. So many new faces on this roster, both obviously, you know, in professional level, but also AAA and even below. Give me one guy you were just really encouraged about as far as spring training goes and just maybe a guy that you just kind of low key excited about whenever we get to see him at some point, whatever that is. I think you have to go with Mick Abel. You know, we saw him a little bit after the trade deadline last year.

14:28But going, you know, in the off season, I told my podcast partners. I told them that hey, if at the end of the year, Mick Abel is in the starting notation. It's because he earned a spot by having a really stellar spring and his stuff was looking really good. So I think you have to talk about Mick Abel. I want to say he's starting game four on Monday, either Monday or Tuesday. He's in one of the back end slots of the starting rotation. Keep an eye on this young Mick Abel because I think he's in for a very exciting season hopefully. Yeah. It looks like game four. That's Monday at KC. They start with six road games to start out. You think he almost made the starting five. Was he close or you think they wanted to pump the brakes on that for Mick Abel? Yeah, Mick Abel. Yeah. I don't think it was a lock right off the, you know, right out the gate in spring training. But I think that his performance opened some eyes. I think they're like, oh, he's looking really good. He's looking like that kind of, you know, one of the big pieces that they got at the trade deadline. And, you know, I don't think that they'd be scared to send a back to triple A by any means.

15:29But he earned his shot. And I think he's going to have an extended run in the rotation here. Some encouraging stuff there for sure in the kind of young layers of this twins roster. Like it feels like there always is in this roster. Well done, man, Joe Ryan works as magic with those five shut out innings. Didn't get the run support needed as the twins dropped game one in Baltimore. Final score two one. Go check out all the sweet loose work on X at sweet Lou MN plus all the work. He's always putting up over at zone coverage MN.com as well. Anything new as of late, we can go check out. You've been working on twins related. I don't. I was hoping to get some kind of questions that remain unanswered after this opening day. But we'll see if when that trickles through the pipeline here. Love it. Also go check out our guy CJ bomb garner all the daily twins content. You can handle over on the lock down twins podcasts each and every day as well. Luke and at Luke underscore Spam and again, we're day off tomorrow. Then we're back Saturday in Baltimore game number two. Again, first pitch 305. Taj Bradley on the mound for that one.

16:31We'll catch you right here and tell them. Thanks for joining. We'll see you next time. Until then, say.