Pablo López on Twins leadership: ‘Willing to help, but willing to accept help’

Pablo López returned to a ballpark that was once home to him last month and accomplished a longstanding goal, one that had gnawed at him while unfinished but brought joy to a community when complete.

Not a bad ambition for the coming season at Target Field, too, the Twins pitcher said Friday.

Under a hot Venezuelan sun at the Little League park in Cabimas where he learned to pitch nearly two decades ago — there’s now a mural of López on a wall, depicting him on a big-league mound — the hometown kid handed out hundreds of pieces of baseball equipment to young ballplayers who hope to follow him to the majors.

“We had everything — bats, baseballs, batting gloves, uniform pants, shoes, all kind of equipment. There were over 100 kids there,” López said Friday of his offseason visit home. “It was amazing. It was something I really wanted to do for a long time, and when [his shoe sponsor] Mizuno heard about it, they sent me boxes and boxes of donations for it. It was a beautiful moment.”

Now back in Minnesota for this weekend’s TwinsFest, López said he would like to bring a few beautiful moments to Twins fans, too.

“Everyone was so happy and excited during the playoffs. Me, too. I felt strong. We were winning games, holding our own against the World Series champions,” López said of the Twins’ two-game sweep of Toronto and ALDS loss to Houston, 3 games to 1. “Obviously we came up short, but I really felt like we could do it, could keep on winning.”

Which brings the righthander to 2024, and another set of goals. López, who turns 28 in March, wants to pitch 200 innings for the Twins this season, after amassing a career-high 194 in 2023 — plus 12⅓ more during his two playoff victories.

“I don’t set goals for my statistics, because I don’t want to be thinking about that on the mound,” he said. “But if you pitch 200 innings, it means you’re pitching well and helping the team.”

He’d like to help the team off the field, too, and López said he has a role model for that: His former Twins teammate, Sonny Gray.

“Sonny inspired me more than any teammate has ever inspired me. The toughest competitor I’ve seen. The way he worked during every single bullpen, I was like, ‘This guy is a machine,’ " López said of the AL Cy Young runner-up, who signed with the Cardinals in November. “Sonny’s gone, but I think a part of him will live with us for awhile.”

López, in other words, hopes to be the leader that Gray was, a resource for the Twins’ young starting staff.

“I’m going to try to be the guy who, if you need something, I want you [to] know you can come to me. If you need to be held accountable, I’m going to be a guy that will hold you accountable, but also open and willing to be held accountable myself,” said López, who like many of his teammates is at TwinsFest on Saturday at Target Field. “A leader is good at both. Willing to help, but willing to accept help.”

That sentiment sounds like great news to Twins manager Rocco Baldelli.

“That’s how good players learn. Coaching comes in a lot of different forms, and it doesn’t always come from us,” said Baldelli, who already has named the righthander as his Opening Day starter for a second straight season. “The great thing about Pablo is, he has a strong desire to work like that, to get better. That’s him. A lot of people say things like that, but it’s a completely different thing to live like that, to function like that. He’s a very motivated human being, and I would anticipate Pablo being a different pitcher this year.”

So would he. After developing, with the Twins’ help, a new pitch last season, a sweeper with sharp horizontal break, López turned in a season so strong, he was selected to the AL All-Star team alongside Gray. He improved as the season went along, posting ERAs above 4.00 in each of the first three months of his Twins career, then 3.71, 2.00 and 3.68 in the final three months.

The sweeper was a big reason why — yet López wasn’t completely satisfied. He threw the pitch 646 times, more than any pitch but his fastball, but wasn’t comfortable throwing it in every situation, especially to left-handed hitters.

That became his offseason project: Tweak the pitch, figure out how to locate it more precisely, and get used to springing it on hitters at less-predictable times.

“It’s the first offseason with the pitch in my arsenal. I need to keep from falling into any tendencies or patterns that make certain situations a little more difficult to get out of,” he said. “I’m just experimenting with that pitch. I want to be able to use it with the same aggressiveness, whether I’m ahead in the count, behind in the count, or first pitch.”

And if he’s successful?

“I’ve got one other goal in mind,” López said. “I was grateful to make the playoffs last year. Now we want to win them.”