ST. LOUIS—Nolan Arenado and Lars Nootbaar homered and Sonny Gray pitched five innings Thursday to lead the St. Louis Cardinals to a 5-3 win over the Minnesota Twins on opening day of the 2025 season in front of a sellout crowd of 47,395 fans at Busch Stadium.

Pablo Lopez took the loss for Twins, who were paced by former Cardinals outfielder Harrison Bader, who had a two-run home run in a losing effort.

Gray, who had some struggles in spring training and most recently has been dealing with an illness that led him to travel back to St. Louis on Monday while the rest of the team played an exhibition game in Memphis that night, struck out six and walked two while giving of four hits before handing the game over to the bullpen.

“You’re talking about a guy that wasn’t feeling real well and had battled through the illness. We didn’t know if he was gonna energy wise tap out after 2, 3, 4 and he kept going strong,” said manager Oli Marmol.

“I felt very confident and strong going out to start the game, it was a weird day obviously it’s opening day, so there’s always extra excitement, adrenaline and everything with that. But then to get the delay like we had it was different, weird, you got to be able to adapt,” Gray said.

The game was delayed for more than an hour and a half by rain in the area along with the extended pre-game festivities that are a Busch Stadium staple, with Hall of Famers, players and coaches arriving in the back of Ford trucks driven around the warning track.

Gray, along with first baseman Willson Contreras, chose to remain with the Cardinals in the offseason while the franchise looks to transition to a younger generation of players and rebuild the infrastructure of its player development system. The development of young talent was going to trump where the team necessarily is in the standings this season.

But the offseason featured months of wondering about whether Arenado would be on the opening day roster, as the team openly admitted it was working with him to find a new home on a team that was serious about contending for a championship.

Arenado rejected a trade to Houston, and there has been no traction on another potential move.

On Thursday, he crushed an eighth-inning home run to left field to provide the final margin. The crowd, which had enthusiastically welcomed him during pregame festivities, gave him a curtain call.

He wasn’t expecting to get booed in light of the offseason uncertainty, but admitted afterward he wasn’t quite sure of what to expect.

“It meant a lot to me today. I took it all in. Usually, I don’t but today I did and the way they cheered for me meant a lot to me,” Arenado said after the game.

“I wasn’t expecting a curtain call, I was actually surprised I got it. I don’t think I got one all last year. It felt good to get one this year so it started off good.”

The team has an off-day Friday. On Saturday, Erick Fedde takes the mound for the Cardinals against Minnesota’s Joe Ryan. First pitch is at 1:15 p.m.