The yellow jerseys, the waving flags, the noisy fans, the hat tip in salute — Pablo Days at Target Field are a blast, Pablo López says, when he pitches well.
But when a start goes south and his pitches are suddenly getting hit around the ballpark? Surely that’s different from an ordinary loss.
“Gosh, yeah,” López acknowledged. “It hurts so much more.”
Corey Seager inflicted that pain Sunday, refusing to play along with the Twins’ Pablo Day promotion. The Rangers’ slugging shortstop, runner-up in MVP balloting last season, bashed a pair of López’s pitches over the high wall in right field, powering Texas to a 6-2 victory and stopping the Twins’ four-game winning streak.
López, who has allowed 16 runs in his last 16 innings, gave up six of them Sunday, the first time since May 8 that the Rangers, who had lost six straight and 12 of 14 games, scored more than four runs.
“I feel like I disappointed, letting the people down in times where I should have stepped up and performed better,” López (4-5) said. “It makes me mad, more than anything. I know that something needs to change, and hopefully it happens quicker than later.”
This one was hardly all López’s fault, not when his position-player teammates combined for only three hits, none at all in the first three innings or the last four. Making it worse, they were facing Gerson Garabito, a 28-year-old minor league journeyman making his big league debut more than a decade after turning pro.
But Garabito looked like a bona fide major leaguer, walking a batter in each of the four innings he pitched but never allowing one to score.
