{"id":280414,"date":"2024-03-05T08:43:56","date_gmt":"2024-03-05T14:43:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=280414"},"modified":"2024-03-05T08:43:56","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T14:43:56","slug":"pablo-lopez-on-the-mound-opening-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=280414","title":{"rendered":"Pablo L\u00f3pez\u00a0On The Mound Opening Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019ll be Pablo L\u00f3pez<\/a> on the mound for Opening Day 2024. Duh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not that there would ever have been any mystery — that\u2019s the treatment you get when you pitch a team to its first playoff win since 2004 — but there\u2019s also no pressure at all this spring, aside from the considerable pressure L\u00f3pez always puts on himself to keep getting better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering L\u00f3pez finished 2023 with the AL\u2019s 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\u2019t involve any wholesale changes like it did last year, when he added an entirely new pitch (the sweeper) but didn\u2019t have time to more fully experiment before needing to get lots of outs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This spring, it\u2019s all about that experimentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLook at what Pablo did last year,\u201d Baldelli said. \u201cHe did so many things exceptionally well that even the things that were not in that category, he still did them pretty good. He\u2019s got some things where, most guys, you look at it and you say, \u2018What are his weaknesses?\u2019 He doesn\u2019t really have weaknesses. It\u2019s more, as you say, refinement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Refinement sometimes looks like the homers allowed by L\u00f3pez in each of his spring starts — one by Baltimore\u2019s Ram\u00f3n Ur\u00edas last Wednesday and another by Matt Olson in Monday\u2019s\u00a04-3 win<\/a>\u00a0over the Braves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s about not platooning your pitches,\u201d L\u00f3pez said. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

L\u00f3pez 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\u2019s the curveball that L\u00f3pez is trying to land more consistently and aggressively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":273604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=280414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280416,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280414\/revisions\/280416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/273604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}