Twins have Opening Day excitement as season begins in Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The calendar says Thursday is Opening Day, but it sure sounded more like Thanksgiving in the Twins’ clubhouse.

“I’m very blessed to be here,” Matt Wallner said on the eve of his first major-league season-opener. “It’s exciting to look around and see this team I’m a part of.”

That team includes Daniel Duarte, or will when the move becomes official a few hours before first pitch against the Royals. As a non-roster invitee, Duarte knew he was a long shot to start the season in the majors, and the Twins even told him last weekend that he would fly to St. Paul with the rest of the Triple-A Saints. On Monday, the righthander was told to board the Twins’ charter to Kansas City instead.

“I said, ‘Are you sure?’” Duarte, a native of Mexico who has 34 career big-league games with the Reds, said with a laugh. “It means so much that this team believes in me. All the hard work and preparation paid off.”

In some cases, years and years of it. The Twins will be the 26th professional team Jay Jackson has pitched for in the 17 summers since he was drafted in 2008 — but this will be the first time he’s been on a major-league roster on Opening Day.

“Rocco [Baldelli] gave me a big hug and told me congratulations. I went to dinner with Buck [Byron Buxton] last night and kind of enjoyed taking it in for a minute,” said Jackson, 35, another bullpen righthander. “I’m happy, grateful and honored.”

Yes, Opening Day is always somewhat emotional, and the pregame ceremonies only add to the effect.

“In the Farmer house, Opening Day was always a big thing when I was growing up, the return of baseball. So now that I’m playing, and I’ve never taken it for granted,” infielder Kyle Farmer said. “To line up on the field, to hear your name called, it’s pretty cool. Cheesy as it sounds, it’s every kid’s dream, so I know how lucky I am to live it.”

But Baldelli, about to begin his sixth season as the Twins’ manager, emphasized to his players in a clubhouse meeting Wednesday the task at hand: winning.

The Twins did enough of it last year to capture an AL Central championship and reach the playoffs, then did something they had tried to do for almost two decades: Win a playoff game. An entire series, even (albeit a best-of-three).

Perhaps, Baldelli suggested, that was a bigger achievement than they realized.

“It was a very important thing for the guys on this team. You’re not going to win a World Series until you go out there and prove you can win a playoff series,” the manager said. “The antes are upped now. We’re always after the same goal, but now we look at it and go, ‘This is something attainable.’ This team has the talent to get there. That’s the way I look at it — we expect even more now.”

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They’ll start, as they did last year, with Pablo López on the mound against the Royals, whom they swept to open the 2023 season.

“This is when you flip the switch. Everything that [I] worked on in spring training, now I get to put it in practice. It’s about preventing runs and getting results,” said López, who earned an All-Star berth for his strong start last year. “We trust the process. We focus on the things we can control, and we’re expecting to get positive results.”

“We’ve all got the same goal: Win a World Series,” said Royce Lewis, healthy and ready to play in his first Opening Day game. “Look around the field, and you see a lot of reasons to believe we can get there.”

One of them will be patrolling center field, perhaps the biggest reason for Twins’ optimism: Buxton, healthy once more after six consecutive injury-damaged seasons.

“Every Opening Day is exciting, but I guess going back to center field is a little bit more exciting than running out there knowing you’re DH-ing,” Buxton said. “I feel good, able to do what I want to do. It’s just about being present and available every day.”