Spring training, summer fastball: Twins' Pablo Lopez has two-inning shutout debut

FORT MYERS, FLA. – The calendar says it's February. Pablo Lopez's fastball seems to disagree.

Lopez frequently hit 95 miles per hour with that fastball, mixed in a changeup to strike out the first batter he faced, and impressed his manager with two scoreless innings in his Twins debut Monday.

"Some of the guys, stuff-wise, they're in June form," Rocco Baldelli said after watching the righthander acquired last month throw 31 pitches, 23 of them strikes. "Some of them may be as good as they've ever been with velocity."

In Lopez's case, that might be a stretch, but not by much. The 26-year-old Venezuelan averaged 93.6 mph with his fastball last season with the Marlins, but he certainly seemed to be comfortable throwing hard a month before the 2023 season begins.

"Yeah, it's a good sign. I took my preparation very seriously during the offseason," Lopez said after striking out three of the eight hitters he faced. "It's a good sign that you're in shape, that you're able to maintain it. I think 95 is a good starting point."

Lopez, who gave up two singles but retired the final four hitters he faced, has a good reason for being in shape so early. Like several of his teammates, the pitcher will leave camp in a week in order to take part in the World Baseball Classic.

"The WBC guys, we asked them to prepare earlier, to prepare better," Baldelli said. "It looks like they did."

Lopez also enjoyed his first experience being governed by a the pitch clock, and never came close to a violation. It was on his mind, he admitted.

"Sometimes you tell yourself that you want to have a good rhythm, you're not going to have many issues with it. But I did find myself, after coming set and taking a peek at the clock that's right there, to see that I had a decent amount of seconds left," he said. "The more I get used to it, the more I'll be able to play around with it, just to see how low I can push it."

Twins' pitching was almost uniformly strong Monday, but their hitters went 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position and fell to 1-3 in Grapefruit League play with a 4-1 loss to the Red Sox at JetBlue Park.

Boston outfielder Jarren Duran doubled and homered, the latter a top-of-the-wall shot off Twins reliever Oliver Ortega. Rookie pitcher Simeon Woods Richardson got in trouble with back-to-back walks to load the bases in the sixth inning, then gave up a tiebreaking single to Ceddanne Rafaela and a sacrifice fly to Greg Allen.

The Twins' lone run came in the sixth, when Kyle Farmer scored on Trevor Larnach's groundout. Larnach then moved to second base due to the new MLB rules: After pitcher Joe Jacques tried two unsuccessful pick-off throws, he stepped off the rubber, an illegal third "disengagement" that constitutes an automatic balk. But the inning ended when Austin Martin grounded out.

The Twins' next two games are in Hammond Stadium, starting with Tuesday's first meeting with the Braves.

Nick Gordon smacked a fly ball to the warning track in center field in his first at-bat Monday, and lined a single to right in his second. But more intriguing than his at-bats was his position: For the second time in three days, Gordon served as the starting shortstop.

That's notable mostly because the Twins have only infrequently used the second-year utility player at the position he played in the minors. Though he started 79 games last season, only five came at shortstop.

With Carlos Correa under contract for five years and Kyle Farmer on the roster, Gordon isn't likely to see much action there in regular season, either. But the Twins this week have had Gordon getting some individual training on his footwork with coach Tony Diaz and instructor Paul Molitor at the position.

The reason? Keeping him versatile, just in case.

"He's going to play all over. He's going to move around, like a bunch of guys that fall into that category," Baldelli said. "Nick is absolutely still a shortstop."