The Saints opened the season under sunny skies on Saturday before an announced crowd of 4,052 at CHS Field, but an 8-1 win over the Columbus Clippers was clouded by the absence of a handful of regulars due to injury.

Four players began the season on the seven-day injured list, including No. 1 prospect Brooks Lee. The 23-year-old shortstop is sidelined due to lower back pain.

Outfielder Trevor Larnach (turf toe), right-handed reliever Austin Schulfer (forearm strain) and  right-handed pitcher Matt Canterino (rotator cuff strain) also will miss at least the first week of the season.

Right-handed reliever Jovani Moran recently underwent Tommy John surgery and will miss the entire season.

“Coming out of spring training there were a lot of guys in the last week or so who went down,” Saints manager Toby Gardenhire said. “It’s just something you deal with.”

In some instances, the amount of time out of the lineup will be longer than seven days.

“They said a couple weeks for Brooks,” Gardenhire said. “We’re not sure on Larnach yet; we have to wait for a diagnosis. It’s definitely going to take a little time.”

Meanwhile, infielder Jose Miranda, on the rebound from injury, had a big game, collecting a double and a home run. Miranda, who was limited to 40 games with the Twins last season due to a right shoulder injury that eventually led to surgery, hit .320 in spring training (8 for 28).

“It feels pretty good,” Miranda said, “especially to be back on the field doing the things I love the most — playing baseball and hitting. So it’s fun to be back.”

Miranda, who played first base on Saturday, declared himself 100 percent physically, and said he’s ready to play third base without his shoulder being an issue. With Twins third baseman Royce Lewis sidelined for at least a month, Miranda could be back in a Twins uniform sooner than later, especially if his bat stays hot.

“We know what Jose can do,” Gardenhire said. “We’ve seen it. We’ve just got to keep him rolling like that, and he should be back up there helping the big-league team soon. That was a great swing he had up there tonight.

“And he just missed a couple of other ones. I thought he was on the ball all night, just like he was all spring.”

The Saints got three-run home runs from a pair of outfielders making their Saints debut, Alex Isola in the second inning and Yoyner Fajardo in the fourth.

The 25-year-old Isola, a 29th-round pick in the 2019 draft out of TCU, hit 29 home runs with 58 runs batted in last season for Wichita. Fajardo, 24, hit nine home runs and drove in 53 for Wichita in 2023.

“Fajardo had a great year last year,” Gardenhire said. “He put up good numbers in Double-A, and Isola did the same thing. You never know what they’re going to do once they get out there, but they both had great games,

“It’s always fun when the new guys contribute like that.”

Right-hander David Festa got the start for the Saints and pitched three shutout innings, allowing one hit, before giving way to Randy Dobnak, who pitched four innings to earn the win.

The 24-year-old Festa, the No. 5 prospect in the Twins organization, according to MLB Pipeline, spent the majority of last season at Double-A Wichita, where he went 3-3 in 19 starts, with an earned-run average of 4.39. He was 1-1 in three starts for the Saints last season.

Briefly

Left-hander Brent Headrick will start for the Saints on Sunday in the final game of the abbreviated series with Columbus. The Saints begin a six-game series in Nashville on Tuesday.

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The first time he was presented with an opportunity to break open Saturday’s game, Christian Vázquez was unable to come through.

Minnesota Twins shortstop Carlos Correa (4) catches a fly ball for the out on Kansas City Royals’ Salvador Perez during the second inning of a baseball game Saturday, March 30, 2024, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

But he more than made up for it in the later innings of Saturday’s game, both offensively and defensively, helping lift the Twins to a 5-1 win against the Kansas City Royals.

Vázquez, who bounced into a double play with the bases loaded to end the Twins’ seventh-inning threat, got some redemption an inning later. Locked in a 1-1 game, he received a pitch from Griffin Jax and threw a dart down to shortstop Carlos Correa. The throw led Correa into Royals star Bobby Witt Jr., allowing the shortstop to lay down a tag and neutralize the threat.

Correa, on his back, then repeatedly pounded his glove, applauding his teammate. It was a big moment, only upstaged by yet another one the next inning.

Up again with runners on base, Vázquez this time delivered, singling home Ryan Jeffers to give the Twins the lead for good.

The Twins followed that up by tacking on three more runs to help push the game out of reach, the first on an Alex Kirilloff sacrifice fly and the second two on Byron Buxton’s second double of the day.

The first double, a ball Buxton chopped over third baseman Maikel Garcia’s head, brought home Edouard Julien, to tie the game up in the eighth inning. Buxton then turned on the jets, getting an extra base on what looked like a routine single to left.

The late offense came in a game that the Twins were held quiet for much of. Royals starter Seth Lugo threw six scoreless frames against the Twins, limiting them to just two hits.

He was matched for much of the day by Twins starter Joe Ryan, who gave his team everything it could have asked for in his first start of the season.

Ryan breezed through three perfect innings to start the game, successfully extricating himself from a two-on, one-out situation an inning later and allowed just three hits in his 5 1/3-inning effort.

But the last one, which came after a pitch clock violation was called against him to move the count to 2-0, was the one that came around to score. Witt Jr. doubled on the very next pitch. He was the last batter Ryan faced in his start as the Twins then turned it over to lefty Steven Okert.

Okert retired the first batter he faced before the Twins opted to intentionally walk catcher Salvador Perez. The very next batter, MJ Melendez, gave the Royals a lead in the sixth inning that they held until the Twins broke through two innings later.

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Anthony DeSclafani’s season has come to an end before it even started.

The starting pitcher, who had to be shut down during spring training because of forearm pain, had surgery on Friday in Texas to repair his flexor tendon.

The Twins knew there was a chance he would need surgery when he went to visit Dr. Keith Meister, but a lot of the conversation beforehand, president of baseball operations Derek  Falvey said, was about whether the issue was the flexor tendon or the ulnar collateral ligament, which would have required Tommy John surgery.

The end result is the same: a surgery that meant the starter will not throw a pitch this season. Falvey said the recovery timeline for this surgery is around 13 months.

“(It’s) an unfortunate outcome for Anthony,” Falvey said.

DeSclafani, who was acquired as part of the trade for Jorge Polanco earlier this year, is a free agent at season’s end, which means he likely will never appear in a game as a Twin.

The Twins have slotted Louie Varland into DeSclafani’s rotation spot and will continue to monitor the market for starting pitching to add some depth to their group, Falvey said.

“I feel guys like Simeon  (Woods Richardson) down in Triple-A, and Brent Headrick and others, David Festa, these guys are going to have to find ways to help us in the way that Louie Varland did in the past and Bailey Ober did in the past and others that stepped up,” Falvey said. “I feel like we have a group down there that we’re going to count on, but we’ll always keep an eye open for new options, too.”

Austin Martin gets the call

Austin Martin was sitting on his couch at home in the Twin Cities, relaxing with a coffee before practice when his phone rang on Saturday morning. Saints manager Toby Gardenhire was on the other line, asking him how his morning was going.

“He pretty much told me, “Well (are) you ready for your morning to get a whole lot better?’” Martin said.

It was then that he realized what was going on, that he was receiving the call he had waited a lifetime for. The moment, he said, was “surreal.”

It’s the first trip to the majors for Martin, who was called up to replace the injured Royce Lewis on the roster. Martin, the No. 5 pick in the 2020 draft, was part of the return from Toronto, along with Woods Richardson, for starter José Berríos.

Manager Rocco Baldelli said he expected Martin to play some left field, center field and second base. He will also be called upon as a pinch runner, as he was on Saturday. Martin entered to run in the seventh inning, played defense for an inning and was pinch hit for by Manuel Margot before getting an at-bat.

“His ability to bounce around and play good defense in a lot of spots is key. But also on the offensive side, I think he really found his identity again,” Falvey said. “He has kind of gone back and forth as to what he is as a hitter. And you saw late in the season in St. Paul, just the ability to put the bat on the ball, move the ball. … I think now’s the right time for him to give us a boost.”

Briefly

Infielder Brooks Lee, one of the Twins’ top prospects, was not an option to replace Lewis on the roster because he is dealing with a back strain. … Jose Miranda’s defensive focus is at first base now. And though he has played third in the past, Falvey said they didn’t want to press him into action there at the big league level after he had offseason shoulder surgery. … Max Kepler, who fouled a ball off his knee on Thursday, was not in the starting lineup on Saturday, but Falvey said they were hopefully “in a good spot,” with him after a negative X-ray.

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