UPDATE (March 4): Jose Berrios has been named the Twins 2019 Opening Day starter

The “Opening Day starter” distinction means more than it matters.

It is an honor given to a team’s best or longest-tenured starting pitcher, and it is treated by players and managers as just that: an honor.

Whether a pitcher starts on Opening Day or in the second game of the season doesn't matter much when it comes to the team's record over a 162-game season, and yet we see a barrage of press releases and quotes during spring training announcing who will take the mound first for each team.

At this point, the Twins haven’t announced their Opening Day starter for 2019, but the proclamation will likely come in the next few weeks. That said, there seems to be two front-runners for the job: Jose Berrios and Kyle Gibson.

While Jake Odorizzi was the Opening Day starter in 2018, he only pitched 164 1/3 innings and posted a 4.49 ERA on the season. Berrios and Gibson, on the other hand (or "on same hand" since they're all righties), both threw 190+ innings and had an ERA in the 3.00s.

Of the two, Gibson had the better ERA at 3.62, threw a few more innings, and is projected by Steamer to lead the team in ERA again in 2019. He is the longest-tenured player on the Twins roster as he enters his seventh season pitching for Minnesota, and was also ahead of Berrios in the rotation last year, pitching in second game of the season after Odorizzi’s opening start.

Berrios had the edge in the peripheral stats with mores strikeouts and fewer walks than Gibson. His 3.84 ERA was not far behind his teammate, and he was the only Twins player selected to the All-Star game last year. He is projected by PECOTA to be the best pitcher on the Twins’ staff in 2019 and has the edge in “stuff” and future upside. If there's a true ace on this staff, it will likely be him.

Michael Pineda and Martin Perez round out the rotation. They have yet to throw a pitch for the Twins and have been either hurt or bad in recent years. They don’t expect to be in the conversation for Opening Day starter.

Adding a wrinkle into the discussion is Rocco Baldelli and the Twins late-season experiment using an Opener in 2018. The decision to implement this strategy last September was agreed upon by the front office and former manager Paul Molitor. However, with Molitor’s depature and the addition of Baldelli—who hails from the Tampa Bay Rays organization which introduced and heavily used the Opener last year—there are reasons to believe that the Twins will more aggressive with this strategy in 2019.

That said, the Twins continued to allow Berrios, Gibson, and Odorizzi to start without being preceded by an Opener last fall. Likewise, the Rays allowed their better starter pitchers Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow to start their games without an opening act. Beginning the season with an Opener seems unlikely unless this coaching staff really wants to make a splash right out of the gate.

Time (and probably the Twins in the next weeks) will tell who will be taking the mound at Target Field on March 28 to face the Cleveland Indians, and their name will be jotted down in Twins history. Even if it doesn’t really matter who gets the start, it certainly means something.

Here are some tidbits about Opening Day starters in Minnesota Twins’ history:

• Since officially becoming the Minnesota Twins in 1961 (after moving from the District of Columbia), there have been 58 Opening Days. A total of 31 different pitchers made Opening Day starts for the Twins.
  ---
  
• Brad Radke leads the pack with nine Opening Day starts followed by Bert Blyleven’s six starts and four for Frank Viola. Dave Goltz tallied three starts on Opening Day while nine other pitchers had two starts apiece.
  ---
  
• The best Twins Opening Day start, using Bill James’ Game Score, was Dean Chance. He threw a complete game shutout in 1968 against the Washington Senators (the team that filled in the void after the Twins moved to Minnesota). Chance struck out eight batters, walked none, and allowed four hits in the contest.
  ---
  
• The worst performance by the same metric came in Brad Havens’ lone Opening Day start for the Twins which took place in the Metrodome in 1983. Havens was ousted after recording just four outs. He gave up eight runs, all earned, against an impressive Detroit Tigers team that went on to win 92 games that season. His brutal outing began: single, single, home run, walk, wild pitch, walk. The Tigers went on to score six runs in the first inning.
  ---
  
• Kevin Tapani, however, proved to be the worst Opening Day starter in the aggregate, as he posted a 19.29 ERA over two starts in 1993 and 1994. In the two games, he totaled seven innings, recorded just three strikeouts, and gave up a massive 15 earned runs on 18 hits. Those starts were the second- and third-worst Opening Day starts in Twins history by Game Score.
  ---
  
• There were only five Opening Days hosted at Metropolitan Stadium. Mudcat Grant had the best start of the bunch allowing one run in a complete game against the Kansas City Athletics. The worst Opening Day performance at the Met belongs to Jim Perry in which he allowed three earned runs in 4 2/3 innings of work in his 1971 start.
  ---
  
• Radke started five of the 15 Opening Day games played in the Metrodome and had the best start under the inflated roof by Game Score. In 1996, Radke struck out eight Detroit Tigers in six innings while allowing just one earned run as the Twins (with newly-signed Paul Molitor) beat the Tigers 8-6.
  ---
  
• Target Field has hosted just two Opening Days since it’s inaugural season. In 2013, Vance Worley braved the 35º weather and limited the then-very-good Tigers to three runs over six innings. He held Miguel Cabrera hitless, but took the loss as the Twins fell 4-2. In 2017, the Twins defeated the Royals behind seven strong innings of one-run ball from Ervin Santana.
  

The Twins will host their third ever Opening Day at Target Field as they take on the Cleveland Indians on March 28th.