On Jan. 20, ESPN gave the Minnesota Twins an A- for trading Luis Arraez to the Miami Marlins for Pablo López and two prospects. Bradford Doolittle liked López’s upside as a potential No. 1 starter and gave the Marlins a B- because he thought they might have been able to get a better package for him. He highlighted that López had a 3.52 ERA (119 ERA+) and 188 strikeouts per 162 innings since 2020 and believed he had upside. Conversely, Arraez was a reliable leadoff hitter with limited power and defense.
“The Twins’ rotation comprises an interesting mix of right-handers and no clear pecking order,” he wrote. “The assumption here is that the Twins hope that Lopez can rise to No. 1 starter status. Even if that doesn’t happen, he gives Minnesota five rock-solid veteran starters.”
That isn’t to say that Doolittle was out on Arraez. But he felt the Twins could replace him in their lineup, especially after they re-signed Carlos Correa.
“The loss of Arraez is significant,” he wrote, “if only because while you might be able to account for his bottom-line value, his contact-driven offensive skill set is hard to find, and the absence of it might unbalance the lineup. But the Twins have plenty of candidates to fill his spot, especially with Carlos Correa back in the fold.”
Six months later, the trade doesn’t feel like an A-. ESPN is tracking Arraez’s quest to hit .400 daily. Miami is second in the NL East, ahead of the big-spending Philadelphia Phillies and New York Mets. Conversely, the Twins are mired in a .500 record, treading water atop the worst division in baseball. Correa is hitting around .200, and the lineup didn’t have a leadoff hitter until rookie Edouard Julien stepped up. Furthermore, López has a 96 ERA+, his worst since his second season in the league.
But we have to evaluate the trade when the Twins made it to understand the process. From there, we can look at if there are flaws in how Minnesota executes trades and if there’s reason to believe things will look better with time. Consider the Eduardo Escobar trade. Nobody liked trading him at the time. But knowing what we know now, everyone would trade him for Jhoan Durán. Conversely, ESPN gave the Twins an A for the Tyler Mahle and Jorge López trades. Sometimes good process yields poor results. Sometimes teams just have flawed methods. It’s important to discern the difference.
One concern Doolittle had with the trade is that Sonny Gray and Kenta Maeda improved under Wes Johnson, the former Twins pitching coach who left for LSU in the middle of last season.
The Twins have had good luck with veteran starters acquired from other teams in recent seasons, but a lot of that occurred under the tutelage of ex-pitching coach Wes Johnson, who left the team last season to become LSU’s pitching coach. That’s not to say that the processes put into place under Johnson won’t hold up under a staff led by new pitching coach Pete Maki. It’s more that until we see it happen once or twice, we can’t really view that as a likely reason for López to make a leap with his new team.
Still, Minnesota’s pitching rotation is one of the MLB’s best under Maki, Johnson’s bullpen coach before he left. Furthermore, some underlying stats indicate that López is capable of pitching better.
His Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) is 3.29, identical to his 2021 season, where he had a career-low 3.07 ERA in 102.2 innings pitched. It’s also lower than the 3.71 FIP he had last year when he pitched 180.0 innings. FIP measures a pitcher’s effectiveness at preventing home runs, walks, and hit-by-pitches while causing strikeouts. It measures what a pitcher can control, isolating his pitching from the defense behind him. If a pitcher’s FIP is lower than his ERA, it indicates that his ERA will eventually drop if he continues to pitch the way he has.
López also has a lower WHIP (1.156) than every season except in 2021. WHIP is walks and hits divided by innings pitched. Colloquially, it measures a pitcher’s heart rate. How often are they operating with men on base? With the bases empty, López has limited hitters to a .622 OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging), meaningfully lower than the league average. However, batters have a .747 OPS against him with men on, which is worse than the league average.
Furthermore, López often blames leadoff walks for the innings that get away from him. He has a 5.56 ERA in the first inning, 6.19 in the third, and a 7.30 in the sixth. Conversely, he has a 3.94 ERA in the second, 2.81 in the fourth, and 0.00 in the fifth. To oversimplify, table-setting batters are getting on base against him, allowing the middle of the order to hit against López early. He settles in, only to face the best hitters again in the third. Then, he’s getting beaten in the sixth either because he’s fatigued, facing the same batters a third time, or both.
Watch any of López’s postgame interviews, and you’ll see him calmly explain what went wrong in the innings that got away from him. He knows that leadoff walks are haunting him. Still, he’s almost always poised, even after frustrating starts. López said he identified his serenity as a positive trait early on and has worked to turn it into a strength. It’s an intangible, something that’s not easily measured, but it’s an essential trait for a pitcher. The action starts when he throws the ball; he sets the tone for an at-bat, inning, and game.
A poised pitcher is also less likely to let bad luck spiral, creating a vicious cycle. Conversely, a serene hurler with a low FIP is typically more capable of reducing their ERA over time because they focus on process over results. If López pitches at the level he’s capable of, he can balance the scales on the Arraez trade. Arraez is an exceptional batter but limited defensively. Jorge Polanco is Minnesota’s everyday second baseman so long as he’s healthy. And like Arraez, Julien is a patient contact hitter who also has issues defensively, but he has more power.
The Twins traded away from a position of strength to address a weakness, which is what front offices are supposed to do. The Marlins had ample pitching and needed hitting. Therefore, they moved López, an established starter, for Arraez. The trade made sense for both teams at the time. However, most experts didn’t see Arraez hitting .400 in Miami, and López hasn’t pitched as well as he’s capable of in Minnesota. If he were, the Arraez trade would matter less. The Twins can find a leadoff hitter; it’s harder to develop a front-of-the-rotation starter immediately. However, López needs to be one of Minnesota’s best pitchers for the trade to work out.
