Pablo Lopez Has a New Weapon

It was never going to be well received when the Twins front office decided to ship Luis Arraez down to Miami. What could soften the blow was a level of production from the incoming Pablo Lopez. Arraez is off to a hot start for the Marlins, but Lopez who started on Opening Day, has equally been on fire.

Lopez came to the Twins with two years left under team control. Since 2022, the former Miami righty owned a 3.52 ERA and was as consistent as you could hope on a nightly basis. Although he has never garnered Cy Young attention like former teammate Sandy Alcantara, Lopez has flashed elite stuff with an ERA just above 3.00 in 2021.

Looking to push him towards an even higher level, Minnesota saw some opportunity to introduce another weapon into his repertoire. Having never before thrown any iteration of a slider, the Twins worked with Lopez on the new sweeper offering. He has thrown it just over one-quarter of the time across his 173 pitches in two starts. There is no denying that the usage has been significant, but that is not at all surprising given the results.

Of the 48 sweepers he has flipped this season, 17 of them have resulted in a whiff. For a pitcher that got just over 12% swinging strikes last year, his 35.4% whiff rate on the sweeper offering alone is otherworldly. Thanks to the dominance of that pitch, other offerings have paired wonderfully resulting in a 16.8% overall whiff rate.

Although Wes Johnson is no longer in the Minnesota organization, it’s hard not to be impressed with the velocity explosion that Pete Maki and the pitching staff has continued to exploit. That rings true with Lopez as well, and it’s even more impressive given the early juncture we are at during the regular season. Lopez sat 93.5 mph with his fastball last year, and has never averaged more than 94.1 mph on the pitch. This season, Lopez has jumped the fastball velocity to 95.3 mph, nearly two mph faster than his career average.

The totality of the results has given Minnesota a starter that looks the part of an ace. Rocco Baldelli doesn’t have one of the ten best arms in baseball, but he has an entire rotation filled with guys capable of pitching as a number three or better. Given how well Sonny Gray, Joe Ryan, Tyler Mahle, and Kenta Maeda each looked out of the gate, you could overlook any one single performance to the credit of the group. If each of the arms continues to one-up the last, the Twins should have every opportunity to be there in the end.

Any time the Twins struggle to score runs or look lost without a leadoff man, Arraez will be considered. Max Kepler has tried to fill in atop the lineup, and while not healthy now, needed a breakout game to get going. There is nothing wrong with Arraez doing well for Miami, and there isn’t a reason for anyone in Minnesota to have sour grapes when Lopez is shoving like he has.

We are still very early in the season and Lopez will continue to fine-tune his repertoire as the year goes on. The velocity could jump even to another level as the weather continues to warm up, but so far it’s the sweeper that has gotten and deserved the attention. Generating whiffs on one-third of a pitch usage is probably unsustainable, but it could wind up being among the best offerings across MLB this season.

When Statcast sought to classify the sweeper they wanted to find a way to describe a pitch more horizontal than the verticality of the slurve. Should things continue along this path maybe Pablo can petition for a name change to the Lopez by year's end.