To put things gently, the Thunder's EL title defense didn't exactly open on the right foot Thursday night at Arm & Hammer. After being presented with a nice trophy, New Hampshire's Aaron Sanchez did just about everything you'd want your No.1 prospect to do on opening night if you were a Blue Jays fan. Here he is recording one of his 5 Ks against Rob Refsnyder, who went 0-for-4 in his Double-A debut (I am aware the video is not fantastic...working on an upgrade):




Sanchez's final line was 5IP, 1H, 0R, 2BB, 5K. On the gun, he touched 98 and sat around 96. Perhaps the best news of the night was that the one hit belonged to none other than Mason Williams, who poked this little single into left:




For the Thunder, Bryan Mitchell didn't leave with a great line (4IP, 4H, 4R, 4ER, 4K, 2BB), but  almost all of the damage against him was done in a tough second inning. After the game, he said that he really had his cutter going in the 1st inning, but then got too "fastball heavy" in the second and that's what caused some problems. He did recover to post scoreless frames in the 3rd and 4th. Here he is striking out Ryan Schrimpf:





Before the game, I also wrote about Cole Kimball who gave up a run on 2 hits in the 9th.