ST. LOUIS — There were an eerie number of similarities on Sunday to Bailey Ober’s first start of the 2024 season. Both starts came during the third game of the season, on a Sunday in the state of Missouri. And in each, Ober was rocked for eight runs.

If the rest of Ober’s upcoming turns out similar to last year’s campaign, it would lessen some of the sting of Sunday’s outing.

Ober was behind from the get-go, issuing a pair of walks and a wild pitch in the first inning. The second inning started with a single, double and three-run home run and things really blew up in the third inning of the Twins’ 9-2 loss to St. Louis on Sunday at Busch Stadium. The loss sent the Twins to 0-3 on the season, swept in their first series of the year.

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

After laboring through each of the first two innings, Ober allowed five straight hits to begin the third, the last of which was a Pedro Pagés three-run home run, the second of those he had given up in the game.

His day ended shortly after, when he made way for long reliever Randy Dobnak after just 2 2/3 innings pitched.

“If they’re not going to chase and you fall behind, you’re going to have to go in the zone,” Ober said. “When you go in the zone, you’ve still got to make a good pitch and some of those times I was still able to and they hit it and some of the times I missed and they still hit it. It was just one of those days.”

Though manager Rocco Baldelli said the Twins were not close to pushing back Ober’s outing, the starter was dealing with a virus earlier in the week that could have contributed to Sunday’s effort. Ober said he got an IV on Saturday after being “pretty much bedridden” all day during Friday’s off day.

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

Ober’s performance put the Twins in a hole from which they could not recover. The Twins got their first lead of the season in the first inning when Byron Buxton brought home Matt Wallner with a single to left, but it was short lived, lasting until just the bottom of the second.

Their only other run in the game came in the fourth inning when Willi Castro, off to a hot start at the plate, slugged a solo home run. The Twins finished with just five hits in the game, which was delayed by nearly an hour as a storm passed through the St. Louis area.

Dobnak, who came on in relief of Ober before the rain delay, continued on after, throwing 5 1/3 innings of one-run ball and helping preserve the Twins’ bullpen on a day where Ober was forced out early.

“He was working very hard out there just to give what he had and you could see that pretty early on,” Baldelli said of Ober. “The way he recovered last year after his first outing and went on to pitch the way he did, I’d expect some version of that from him.”

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