Washington tags Twins starter Pablo López for five earned runs, wins second in a row at Target Field

Venezuelan-born and major league-raised by way of Miami, newly signed Pablo López lasted four innings in the Minnesota cold during the Twins' 10-4 loss to Washington at Target Field on Saturday.

López started by plunking the first batter he faced with a pitch, then hit another in the second inning. Throw in a wild pitch, two walks and a passed ball and the Twins trailed all afternoon, 2-0 after one inning and 4-0 after two.

López left the game trailing 5-1 after four, giving up eight hits and taking his first loss with his new team — to a last-place Nationals team that won a series for the first time all season and won back-to-back games for only the second time in 2023. The Twins, having lost 3-2 in Friday's series opener, have lost six of seven games with their second three-game losing streak of the week.

All of it came on a cold, blustery day when the temperature at game time was 35 degrees, two degrees colder than Friday night's first pitch.

An announced audience of 23,045 spectators came through it on Byron Buxton jersey giveaway day.

"I'm not going to sit here and say it didn't feel cold," said López, who fell to 4-3 with a 4.98 ERA in 13 career starts against Washington, his second-most against any team. "But at the same time, it's my job to make an adjustment, adapt and go out there and make pitches. Same temperature the Nationals hitters were dealing with and they had a plan. They executed their plan. They capitalized on mistakes I made. They made me work."

All of it also came one day after the Twins formally announced López's four-year, $73.5 million contract extension.

The best the Twins could do was Buxton's third-inning solo homer, a Carlos Correa RBI single in the fifth and a two-run double by Trevor Larnach in the seventh. Correa had three hits to break out of a 2-for-22 slump.

"The game didn't come too easily to us today, from the very start," Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. "We were working extraordinarily hard for every out. ... Overall, that game, not really the recipe for success. It was a tough one."

López threw 80 pitches, 63 of them strikes. He was relieved by just-recalled Simeon Woods Richardson, who gave up three runs in the seventh inning on shortstop C.J. Abrams' first home run of the season, then two more in the ninth before the righthander was pulled after 97 pitches over 4⅔ innings.

López (1-2) had his shortest of five starts this season and took his second loss in a row.

"How much of it had to do with the cold, I'm not sure," Baldelli said. "Pablo battled through all of it and, as usual, he wanted to just keep pitching. But if there was a day for him to probably not go out there and max everything out to the very end, today was probably the day."

López called Saturday's start a "pretty forgettable outing," especially after his team lost Friday night, too.

"It's not ideal when I'm putting men on base with a couple of walks, two hit by pitches. You're not giving yourself a chance," he said. "You're putting runners on base. You're giving yourself traffic and you're making yourself work hard. The team was counting on me to even the series out. Well, I did the opposite of that."