All across Twins Territory, fans seem to be doing their best to contain their excitement. Their mantra has been it’s only April, it’s only the Orioles, we still don’t know much about this Twins team.



That all could change over the course of this week. A big performance against the Astros and the Yankees would make it difficult for even the most reserved Midwesterner to temper excitement. The Twins got things off to a great start Monday evening.

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: 7.0 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, 66.3% strikes: Adrianza (1): None: Odorizzi .473, Parker .170, Rogers .124, Adrianza .123: Rosario -.100(chart via FanGraphs There are certain things, even in the early going, that can give you certain vibes as a fan that your team may be on the verge of something special. Certain events just hit you and let those “this is our year” vibes to start flowing.Jake Odorizzi and the Twins bullpen shutting out the Houston Astros lineup would be one of those things. Ehire Adrianza hitting a home run off Justin Verlander for the only run of a game would be another one. Both those things happened tonight.It took Odorizzi just 86 pitches to get through seven innings. That’s a solid mark for any pitcher, but Odo isn’t exactly known for his efficiency. He got 13 swinging strikes on those 86 pitches, improving upon the career-high rate he carried into this outing. Odorizzi has gotten swinging strikes on 13% of his pitches this year. Last season, only nine qualified starters had a swinging strike rate above 13%, and Odorizzi was at 10.2%.Not surprisingly, the strikeout rates are also encouraging for Odorizzi in the early going of this season. He's now struck out exactly a quarter of the batters he's faced so far. That would represent a career high and a nice boost from his 22.8 K% from last year.Odorizzi needed a grand total of just 21 pitches to get through the third through fifth innings. He ran into trouble in the sixth, issuing a one-out walk followed by a single. We’ve seen him unravel in similar situations before, but he struck out both Carlos Correa and Yuli Gurriel to end the threat.While Odorizzi was cruising, Justin Verlander was also carving up the Twins. But there was a different look to the lineup tonight. They entered this game with a league-low 3.76 pitches per plate appearances. Tonight, they had a batter work an at-bat of six pitches or more in each of Verlander’s six innings. The longest of those was a 10-pitch walk for Max Kepler to lead off the first inning. Eddie Rosario had a nine-pitch at-bat that ended in a strikeout, and one of those longer plate appearances produced the game’s only run.In the third inning, Ehire Adrianza fell behind Verlander 1-2. He fouled off the fourth pitch to extend the at-bat, then watched two balls go by. Ehire deposited pitch No. 7 into the stands.Verlander was nasty, but all that work resulted in him needing 100 pitches to get through six innings. He turned things over to the bullpen at that point. Unfortunately, there’s not much of a drop off. The Houston bullpen held the Twins scoreless for two innings.Taylor Rogers looked incredibly nasty in a scoreless eighth inning before Blake Parker took care of business in the ninth. Parker gave up a leadoff single, but managed to induce a double play ball from the next batter.Here’s a quick look at the number of pitches thrown by the bullpen over the past five days:Tue vs. HOU, 6:40 pm CT (Pineda-Cole)Wed vs. HOU, 7:10 pm CT (Perez-McHugh)Thu vs. HOU, 12:10 pm CT (Berrios-Peacock)