Adding One Pitch Made All the Difference For Pablo Lopez

At age 16, Pablo López had to decide whether to be a doctor or a professional baseball player. By the time the Seattle Mariners offered him a contract in July 2012, the college his parents attended in Venezuela had accepted him into medical school. López grew up in Cabimas, Venezuela, a lakeside city. He came from an academically driven family. His grandmother wanted him to attend medical school. His father, Danny, was a general practitioner, and his mother, Agnedis Serra, was a medical pathologist.

“I always wanted to be like my dad,” López told MLB.com. But his father encouraged López to make his own decision. López was a great student. He skipped grades, learned Spanish, English, Portuguese, and Italian, and graduated high school at 16. He says he’d like to attend college after his baseball career ends. But his father felt that if López pursued baseball, he could always return to school if it didn’t work out. “If you choose college and you don’t like it,” López’s father told him, “the baseball opportunity might be a little harder to get.”

López chose baseball. “Every Venezuelan kid grew up a Johan Santana fan,” he said. “I have vivid memories of watching him, as a youngster, in a Twins uniform.” López signed with the Mariners on July 4, 2012. Seattle traded him to the Miami Marlins in a package for David Phelps in 2017, and López broke into the majors a year later. López owned a 3.94 ERA (106 ERA+) in five seasons with Miami when the Minnesota Twins traded for him. He was an above-average pitcher but hardly an ace.

After pitching a career-high 194.0 innings and 234 strikeouts, López will start Game 1 for the Twins. He hasn’t been significantly better in Minnesota than Miami. López’s 117 ERA+ trails his 2021 (138 ERA+) and 2020 (126 ERA+) seasons. But he’s been more durable and struck out more batters this year. Adding a sweeper in the offseason made all the difference for him.

“Until last year, I figured the moment I developed some kind of consistent breaking ball, that’s going to open up doors to more options,” López said after his final regular-season start. “I was always playing the north-south game with the heater and the changeup, to my arm side with the changeup. I didn’t really have anything to move this way or to expose that low and away to a righty, down and in to a lefty.”

In the offseason, López went to Driveline, a data-driven pitcher development facility in Washington. They introduced him to the sweeper and told him how to throw it. But the Twins pitching coach Pete Maki and his staff honed it in spring training. After years of tinkering with a cutter, he found a pitch that worked for him.

“I’m extremely grateful for all the resources the Twins made available for me when it came to pitch development and understanding the benefits behind why a pitch moving in that direction could give the options that we’re looking for,” López said. He throws a four-seam fastball 34.5% of the time, a changeup (21.1%), a curveball (12.5%), and a sinker (10.6%) in addition to the sweeper (21.4%). Not only does he regularly throw five different pitches, but they go in different directions.

• The four-seamer is relatively straight.
• The sweeper moves east to west away from right-handed batters.
• His changeup dives down and to the right, making it effective against lefties.
• The curveball moves north to south.
• And the sinker dives hard to the right.

Equipped with five pitches he trusts, López can keep batters off-balance and generate strikeouts against lefties and righties. However, it takes time for pitchers to learn the sweeper, and the analytically-minded López needed the numbers to give him the conviction to learn and use the pitch.

“I like statistics. I like facts,” said López. “The moment they brought me all kinds of numbers and information, I was already sold on the idea. Then, it was about practice, practice, developing, and working on that consistency. The Twins were not only good at giving me the idea but also making sure we’re taking the right steps in the right direction.”

López knows the importance of Game 1 against the Toronto Blue Jays. The Twins have the pitching and enough hitting to advance in the playoffs. But winning a playoff game will be historic for the franchise, let alone winning a series.

“Regardless of postseason or not, Game 1 is really what sets the tone,” López said.

It could be a series in August, it could be the first series of the playoffs. You always want to make sure that you start the season setting the tone of how you want it to play out. But yeah, you mentioned the history, and I’ve mentioned in the last couple media sessions that I’ve had because it is a big deal for Twins Territory, Twins fans, and ourselves as players. So it’s going to be very important to show up to the field knowing what we want to accomplish.

López will try to do something that Minnesota hasn’t done since 2004. Win a playoff game. The winning pitcher that year? Johan Santana in Game 1 against the New York Yankees. It feels appropriate that the Twins are handing López the ball to break the 18-game postseason losing streak. He has the opportunity to break Minnesota’s playoff curse and be an inspiration for the next generation of pitchers.