This Twins ace 'doesn’t really have weaknesses'

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Every spring, the media and Twins manager Rocco Baldelli engage in playful (to the media, at least) banter in which the skipper is coaxed to reveal his Opening Day starter at the earliest possible convenience. So he got way out ahead of things and revealed the obvious a few days after the Twins were eliminated from the postseason last October:

It’ll be Pablo López on the mound for Opening Day 2024. Duh.

Not that there would ever have been any mystery -- that’s the treatment you get when you pitch a team to its first playoff win since 2004 -- but there’s also no pressure at all this spring, aside from the considerable pressure López always puts on himself to keep getting better.

Considering López finished 2023 with the AL’s second-most strikeouts (234) and a 3.66 ERA in 194 innings -- the most innings by a Twin since 2019 -- the act of getting better didn’t involve any wholesale changes like it did last year, when he added an entirely new pitch (the sweeper) but didn’t have time to more fully experiment before needing to get lots of outs.

This spring, it’s all about that experimentation.

“Look at what Pablo did last year,” Baldelli said. “He did so many things exceptionally well that even the things that were not in that category, he still did them pretty good. He’s got some things where, most guys, you look at it and you say, ‘What are his weaknesses?’ He doesn’t really have weaknesses. It’s more, as you say, refinement.”

Refinement sometimes looks like the homers allowed by López in each of his spring starts -- one by Baltimore’s Ramón Urías last Wednesday and another by Matt Olson in Monday’s 4-3 win over the Braves.

He went to Driveline at the start of the offseason to see if there were any inefficiencies to address in his mechanics. But a large chunk of his work has revolved around being able to land all five pitches in or out of the zone, in any count, against hitters from either side.

“It's about not platooning your pitches,” López said. “I want to make sure that if I can throw five pitches, I can throw them to both lefties and righties and they all come from the same spot.”

López already did a better job of that than most, but he did use his curveball primarily to lefties and his sinker mostly to righties -- and over the offseason, he spoke of using his sweeper with the same aggression both in and out of the zone. This spring, it’s the curveball that López is trying to land more consistently and aggressively.

“Every time I threw [the breaking ball] in an 0-2 count, the pitch was more aggressive. Every time I tried to throw it for a strike, I would lose some of my aggressiveness to try and get a strike,” López said.

With all that in mind, López is pitching in ways that he wouldn’t in the regular season, testing his limits and seeing what more he can get away with.

Case in point: the 1-0 curveball he threw to Urías last week. Bad result, but the fact that it was in the strike zone was more important.

“Maybe the result wasn't it, but it's just like, ‘I know I can throw it for a strike. Ideally, that won't happen, but now I know I can do it,’” López said.

Same thing with the 0-2 sinker that Olson took deep on Monday. López knew he hadn’t thrown any 0-2 sinkers to lefties last season, so he challenged himself to try it and see if it could factor in at points this season.

“It didn't work out; he hit it like 600 feet,” López said. “But it's like, maybe that's not the right guy to do it if you're going to attempt a pitch like that.”

It’s more about seeing where and how he missed, then setting his sights differently next time, refining his location and continuing the push and pull of experiential learning. Nothing matters until Opening Day -- and López is largely treating it that way until his final few starts of spring.

“Pitching is an art; pitching is science,” López said. “It's about having the tools, having an idea of what you want to work on, to make sure that's what you're working on that day, stick to that thing. Next bullpen, it's going to be something else and something else, and then it's going to be a big final product.”