The Thunder won tonight, 4-0, snapping a five-year skid of Opening Day losses. The most important news of the night, however, was obviously Christian Garcia leaving the game in the sixth with what appears to be just another in an ever-lengthening string of serious injuries.

Garcia said the feeling was "like a pinch." Tony Franklin told us that when he met with Garcia on the mound, the pitcher described his elbow as feeling "like it was going to pop." Pinch or pop, the situation is not good for Garcia or the Thunder.

Garcia will have an MRI tomorrow. At best, it may just be scar tissue acting up within the elbow. At worst, it means there's another surgery and another long recovery in his future.

Afterward, he was courteous enough to talk to reporters candidly. He even smiled a bit. On the inside, though, everyone in the room knew that Garcia, a man who, at just 24 years old, has had three major surgeries, must have been crushed.

Here he was, just 69 pitches into his season, already staring down the possibility of another major operation and another long time to wait and think about what went wrong. The most frustrating part of all this, at least to me, is: His stuff remains unchanged.

Those 5 2/3 innings tonight were pure mastery. Nobody made solid contact off of him. When he needed a strikeout, he got one. When he needed a ground ball, there it was. He was cruising through hitters like they weren't there.

And then, just like that, it was over.