Baseball season is officially here! Two nights ago I made my first start of the season, which also happened to be opening day for the California League, against the Visalia Rawhide (Diamondbacks). I had never experienced an opening day as a starter in my minor league career and I was excited to get the 2010 season off to a good start for the team and for myself.

My focus going into the game was to establish my fastball and change up to both sides of the plate and try to force some early weak contact. The California League is a notorious for being a hitters league so my hope was that I could work down in the zone to to get ground balls.

In the end I felt like I executed my game plan well and was helped out by a few great plays by my defense so that I was able to go 4 1/3 innings with 0 runs, 3 hits, 3 walks and 5 strikeouts. I could do without the three walks but for the first start of the year I can't be too upset.