Twins wait out rain, only to fall to Orioles in opener

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.

"I've faced these guys a lot," Jepsen said. "They're aggressive, and I'm aggressive as well."

This time, Wieters' aggressiveness paid off. One pitch, and what was left of a sellout crowd — perhaps a quarter of the 45,785 remained — could celebrate.

"It happened quickly, as it does sometimes in those games," Molitor said. "You get a walk, and two pitches later you're walking off the field."

With the starting pitchers negated, the game was a match-up of bullpens, and a fairly even one.

The Twins rallied from their 2-0 deficit in the seventh inning against Baltimore righthander Mychal Givens, when Eddie Rosario smacked a one-out double that hugged the left-field line. Byung Ho Park was hit with a pitch and Eduardo Escobar followed with a fly ball off the right-field fence, a double that scored Rosario with the Twins' first run of the season.

When Kurt Suzuki then hit a long foul ball to left field, rookie Joey Rickard might have made a tactical error by reaching into the stands and catching it. That enabled Park to tag up and score the tying run.

The Twins last won an Opening Day matchup in 2008, a 3-0 Metrodome victory over the Angels that was started by Livan Hernandez. The major league record is 10 Opening Day losses in a row, by the 2005-14 Athletics.

The game was scheduled to begin at 3:05 p.m. Eastern time, but with rain in the forecast, the Orioles chose to hold their pregame ceremonies, introduce both teams, have Rick Dempsey throw out the ceremonial first pitch — and then cover the field and wait. After an hour and 40 minutes passed without any rain, the teams finally took the field and played two scoreless innings.

That's when the rain actually arrived, and the game was delayed by another hour and 10 minutes. By the time the game resumed for good at 6:30 p.m., more than half of the sellout crowd had departed, and both starting pitchers were benched, for fear of risking injury.

"It's never a good scenario, and maybe even more so on Opening Day, to risk losing your starter," Twins manager Paul Molitor said about delaying the start of the game. "We try to protect the starting pitcher if we can."