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Pablo López eluded the Scalpel of Damocles last fall. He hurt his arm on an awkward dive in September, and he admitted afterward that he feared the worst. At the time, he escaped serious damage to his elbow, but spring is the reaping season for this kind of thing, and López was part of Jobe’s Harvest. He left the team’s first full-squad workout Monday with elbow soreness and underwent an MRI. On Tuesday, the team announced the bad news: López has a "significant tear" in his elbow and is likely to need season-ending (or, rather, season-thwarting) surgery.
General manager Jeremy Zoll stressed that López, who will seek a second opinion before proceeding with the operation, suffered a new injury this spring. His MRIs from early 2023 and late 2025 looked identical; the damage to his ligament is new. López will get that second opinion from noted surgeon Dr. Keith Meister, but given the "significant tearing to his UCL in his elbow," even the best-case scenario would see him sidelined for a long time.
"When it first happened, I was taken back to a bullpen session I threw in October 2013, where I threw a pitch and it felt like my elbow was right behind the ball," said a disappointed López, demonstrating his exceptional recall and attunement to his own body. "And it's, like, a raw way to put it, but that's kind of what it felt like, just something sharp happening by where I have a scar already."
López, who will turn 30 early next month, also missed time with strains of his hamstring and shoulder in 2025. He made just 14 starts, but posted a 2.74 ERA and continued to be the co-ace of a strong starting rotation. If he elects surgery, he’ll miss the third season of a four-year contract extension worth a total of $73.5 million, which he signed in April 2023. He’s owed $21.5 million this season, and the same amount in 2027, after which he’ll become a free agent.
Without him, Minnesota will struggle to maintain the rotation depth needed to compete even in the weak AL Central. Last year, starting pitching was a strength, but not a strong enough one to keep the team afloat. That was partially due to the prolonged absence of López for the middle stretch of the season, but also to Bailey Ober having a season marred by high home-run rates and a massive decrease in strikeout rate. Perhaps foreseeing this possibility, the team attempted to bolster their starting rotation in the final stages of free agency, pursuing Framber Valdez. Instead, though, Valdez signed with the Tigers, and now, there’s no strong candidate to replace what the Twins had hoped they would get from López this year.
The loss of López does create more room in the rotation for the team’s young hurlers. In addition to Ober and Joe Ryan, the team has Simeon Woods Richardson, Zebby Matthews, Mick Abel, Taj Bradley and David Festa in position to push for starting roles. That’s hollow consolation, though, since none of that group is likely to be as good as López, even if one or more stays healthy and pitches to the best of their ability all year.
"We spent a lot of the offseason talking about the strength of our roster being in the rotation depth, and [you can] view it as a real opportunity, as a 'next man up'," Zoll said, listing the aforementioned pitchers as candidates to thrive in expanded roles. "But, you know, we'll pick up the pieces once we have a better handle on things and catch our breath from where everything has shaken out here."
The Twins acquired López from the Marlins in exchange for Luis Arraez. Almost immediately, both López and the Twins made it clear that he was more than a short-term boost for the starting rotation. The aforementioned extension cemented López as a pillar of the organization’s pitching plans. Now, the final guaranteed year of that contract looms as both a financial commitment and a target date for the club’s hopes of a full return.
On the field, López largely delivered on that investment in his first two seasons in Minnesota. In 2023, he posted a 3.66 ERA across 194 innings with 234 strikeouts, immediately pitching like a staff leader and earning All-Star recognition. In 2024, he again took the ball 32 times, going 15–10 with a 4.08 ERA, striking out 198 in 185 1/3 innings. The raw ERA uptick didn’t change the larger picture: Minnesota had the kind of dependable, high-end starter the franchise has long prized.
But the path to Tuesday was paved by a frustrating, stop-and-start 2025 season—one that offered both a reminder of López’s ceiling and a warning about his health. Even in his limited, interrupted workload, López was effective. He was the biggest source of the hopeful “what could have been” feeling around a season defined by missed opportunities and disappointment. That was supposed to carry him into a bounce-back 2026 season. Alas, those hopes are now scuttled.
Zoll acknowledged that López, who first had Tommy John surgery as a teenager in the Marlins system, had exceeded the window of protection from reinjury that the operation typically affords.
"It's an unfortunate reality with, you know, him originally having Tommy John surgery 12 years ago, and the reality of those, the shelf life of those ligaments, you just never know when these things could happen," Zoll said. The new top baseball executive said the team will explore the possibility of external additions to the rotation via free agency.
All of that, however, undersells the irreplaceability of López. In addition to his excellence on the mound, he's been the team's most consistent leader and a pillar of the community for the last three baseball seasons. It would surprise no one in or around the Twins if he makes extraordinary efforts to be present with the team throughout the season, but players sidelined by injury have a hard time exercising the same influence in the clubhouse and the dugout, especially when they have to be away for significant stretches to complete major rehab processes. López's thoughtfulness, amiability and leadership will be missed just as much as his kick-change and his curveball. Characteristically, he went out of his way to express appreciation for how quickly the Twins and their medical team got him set up for an MRI on the Presidents Day holiday afternoon.
López will cling to some hope while he awaits the second opinion, but was very realistic about it.
"I think the second opinion is more just to shed a light or, you know, just one last hope that something can be interpreted in a different way," he said, acknowledging that the torn ligament "won't regenerate itself."
Reader @rdehring raised a fair and good question in the comments on this piece, asking whether López's faster ramp-up to prepare for the World Baseball Classic could have contributed to this injury. Unfortunately, it's an impossible question to answer, but the theory is reasonable. For what it's worth, Zoll praised López's preparation in every particular and believed there was no red flag of any kind en route to this unhappy turn of events.
"I guess to some extent, [this] feels like more of an inevitability than something he specifically did," Zoll said. "He had hit all his checkpoints throughout his build-up here in the offseason, and hadn't had any issues or soreness. And this was the first issue he had."
In general, the WBC has been found to slightly increase the risk of pitcher injuries late in the season in which they take place, or the following spring. No systematic effect seems to produce more injuries to pitchers preparing for the Classic, but it's certainly one variable in the equation that bears further study.
Twins Daily's John Bonnes is on site in Ft. Myers and provided reporting on this news.
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