Twins swept by Cardinals to begin season as Bailey Ober stumbles in opener again

ST. LOUIS — Baseball is full of annual traditions. Bailey Ober has created one of the worst.

One day short of the anniversary of Ober’s disastrous 2024 debut, an eight-run, four-out debacle at Kansas City, the tall righthander did a nearly identical — and unexpected — reprisal of that day’s helplessness.

This time, Ober recorded eight outs before being mercifully pulled after surrendering an equal number of runs, including a pair of three-run homers. Ober faced 19 Cardinals batters, allowed 11 of them to reach base, and absorbed the Twins’ third consecutive loss to open the 2025 season, 9-2 to St. Louis in Busch Stadium.

It’s only the sixth time in their 65-year history that the Twins have opened a season at 0-3 or worse, and the first since their 0-9 start in 2016, when they lost 103 games.

“It’s obviously not the way you want to start the year — just like last year,” said Ober, who starts the year with an ERA of 27.00. “But it’s done with, over. You move on and get ready for the next one.”

And history shows he can do it. Last year, Ober responded to his Sunday thrashing by winning his next four decisions and holding hitters to a .136 batting average in April.

Ober deflected any attempt to blame his rough start on his health, but he did note that he came down with a virus upon his arrival in St. Louis.

“I got an IV yesterday,” Ober said, “and I was pretty much bedridden all day on [Friday]. ... But I felt good” by Sunday.

Still, if he was weakened at all by that virus, Ober wasn’t helped by walking two batters in the first inning. He emerged unscathed but needed 28 pitches just to get through the inning.

He got plenty scathed from that point on.

BOXSCORE: St. Louis 9, Twins 2

A single and a double to open the second inning set the stage for Victor Scott II’s 396-foot blast into the St. Louis bullpen. Ober retired the side after that but experienced déjà vu an inning later, opening the inning with a single and double once more. Alec Burleson appeared to follow the pattern with the requisite home run, but his deep fly ball hit the top of the fence.

Still, his double scored two Cardinals runs, Nolan Gorman followed with another single and Pedro Pagés completed Ober’s meltdown with a three-run homer that landed in the Twins bullpen.

“Mentally, just going out there knowing you’re not 100 percent and trying to give everything you got is not an easy task,” Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “Yeah, the stuff looked fine, but it just felt like he was not able to be as crisp as he would like to be, as he normally is.”

The bizarre thing, much like last season, is that Ober was perhaps the Twins’ most effective pitcher during Grapefruit League play this spring. The eight runs he gave up Sunday were twice his total during the spring — four runs in 20⅓ innings.

But instead of salvaging the finale of the opening series, the Twins are saddled with, counting the end of the 2024 season, a seven-game losing streak.

“We’ve just got to play quality baseball as a team. We’re going to do that, but there’s not one thing that’s going to turn things around,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “You’re only able to play one game a day, you know. Play good tomorrow and a lot is forgotten very quickly.”

There’s a lot to forget lately. Not only did Ober face-plant, but the Twins’ bats were mostly quiet once again, with St. Louis righthander Andre Pallante giving up four hits over five innings and reliever Steven Matz only one hit over the final four to earn a save. A bloop single by Byron Buxton in the first inning drove in Matt Wallner, giving the Twins their first lead of the season, and Willi Castro blasted a solo homer in the fourth.

“There’s not anything in particular to worry about. It’s a long year. We played three games,” Baldelli said. “It wasn’t a good three games, but we got some good baseball ahead, and hopefully it starts tomorrow.”

Perhaps it will, given the Twins headed to Chicago after the game and will play the White Sox, who finished with the worst record in modern baseball history (41-121) last season, for the next three days.