Sinker is key in this pitcher's success

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When Jorge López unleashes his devastating sinker, he looks up from his follow-through and watches it travel the 60 feet, 6 inches to home plate.

“Some guys don't do it,” López said. “But I'm a guy where I throw the pitch and I watch it go. I watch everything.”

Truthfully, he doesn’t always know exactly how that sinker is going to move on any given day. He’ll maybe get an idea when he goes to the bullpen. Sometimes, when it’s a little harder, at 99 mph or approaching 100, it won’t move as much. But he’s particularly thrilled with how it’s been diving in the cold April air so far – and the results have been showing.

That sinker has helped López be ruthlessly efficient in his domination of opposing hitters as one of the Twins’ primary setup men alongside Griffin Jax, with the combination of depth and velocity causing hitter after hitter to swing over the top and hit it into the ground – making for quick, painless, effective outings exactly when the Twins need them.

“I feel like where I'm at right now, 96, 98 mph, it's, like, really good depth and it helps me to keep moving my defense so that they're not cold on the field,” López said with a laugh.

Just about every Twins pitcher jokes openly about how Carlos Correa cajoles them to get him more ground balls at shortstop, and López has been as cooperative as any pitcher in baseball, with his 74.1% ground ball rate entering Thursday ranking second among all qualified MLB relievers, behind only Jason Foley of the Tigers.

López just got away from his game last year, when he was brought over from the Orioles at the Trade Deadline but saw his 1.68 ERA with Baltimore balloon to a 4.37 ERA with Minnesota as his walk rate spiked. This year, he’s aggressively attacking hitters in the zone again -- and that sinker movement is doing all the work.

Through 11 outings, López has yet to allow an earned run – and the one unearned run that scored was an automatic runner in extra innings. He has allowed three hits and has yet to issue a walk.

And the kicker: Here are his pitch counts, by outing: 5, 8, 11, 8, 14, 12, 15, 10, 16, 7, 10. That’s an absurdly efficient average of 10.5 pitches per one-inning appearance.

“He’s been devastatingly good this year,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He goes out there and he’s been maybe the most efficient reliever in baseball. And he goes out there and every one of his pitches in his outings have been as tight and as sharp as they can be. He’s gone out there and it’s really the definition of mowing them down.”

That’s quite a 1-2-3 punch with Jax and Jhoan Duran at the back of the ‘pen.

“The quality we are as a family, it's huge,” López said. “That's one thing I've been really fascinated with on this team. You can see everybody hug each other, help each other, and try to get it together every single day. That's good. It's good to be on these types of teams.”