In this league sometimes it’s not about how you start; it’s about how you finish. This may be the case for Minnesota Twins pitcher MLBbro Simeon Woods Richardson after his season-opening performance against the Kansas City Royals.
In only five innings of work, the slow start was evident from the first. Richardson immediately found himself in a battle with the first batter he faced falling behind 3-0 before getting bailed out by a pop fly. This continued through the inning where he produced a walk and a single before luckily escaping with the scoreboard intact at 0-0.
Richardson’s stuff wasn’t stuffing the way it needed to. His splitter fooled no one, his slider was often off location (which resulted in a homerun in the second inning giving the Royals an early 2-1 lead), and his fastball rarely blew past anyone without contact.
Richardson would last until the sixth inning, producing a stat line of 5.0 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, and 2 SO. Trust me, I know how this sounds. The description of what Richardson’s stuff was producing sounds like any pitcher’s nightmare.
There’s Two Sides To Every Story
You can look at his first start in two ways. On one hand you could say that Richardson had a bad day at the mound and it should have been worse if the Royals were more disciplined. On the contrary, you can point out that even while he didn’t have his best stuff in his opening start, he was able to minimize the damage by keeping a cool head, keeping the baseball in the ballpark and keeping the game close enough for the Twins bats to work themselves back in the game. Regardless of your viewpoint of either scenario, the fact remains this is one start that Richardson might be wishing he had back.
In all fairness, even the greats struggle on opening day sometimes. Star Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes didn’t even make it out of the first inning without leaving five runs on the board for his team to try and overcome. Opening day bad starts aren’t uncommon, unfortunately our MLBbro Simeon Woods Richardson had to add his 2026 opening start to his book of forget me nots.
Sometimes The Best Thing About Today Is Tomorrow Can Be Brighter
The great thing about sports is, there’s always a next game that comes with another opportunity to bounce back and show everybody what they’re made of. Richardson will get exactly that on Sunday April 5 against the Tampa Bay Rays who have been every bit as inconsistent as the Twins to start the season.
At the time of writing this article the Twins have won two straight and look to be rebounding from their slow start. Hopefully for Richardson this time his slider will be on location, his fastball will top out higher than 94 mph and his splitter won’t drop in the middle of the box for every batter to see. If there’s one thing we know about Richardson, he’s more than capable. If the Twins are to complete their bounce back to get to .500 and build on that momentum for the rest of April, MLBbro Simeon Woods Richardson will need to show that.
