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.