The Minnesota Twins agreed to a four-year extension with Pablo López this week, crossing off multiple goals on their checklist along the way. They secured a star-level player through his prime years, created cost certainty, and rewarded a player that is by all indications a very likable person. Not only did they accomplish these feats, but they provided themselves with options for the future.
Sure, three members of the rotation are impending free agents at year’s end, and there’s plenty of concern surrounding the offensive core of the team. But this transaction propels the organization’s plan to the next phase. This extension helps them in the near-term while they reap the incredible results of their newfound ace pitcher. It creates a roadmap for how they can acquire and control frontline pitching going forward. And it also helps them avoid a rather uncomfortable situation in 2024. All told, it’s a much-needed investment, the kind that this front office has been avoided for the last six years.
The January trade that brought López to Minnesota was bittersweet to many across Twins Territory. Yes, the team desperately needed an arm to lead their rotation, but the cost of Luis Arraez knocked the wind out of us faster than a snowstorm on April 21st. And while Arraez is off to another fantastic start to the 2023 campaign with the Miami Marlins, López has been worth the pretty penny that it cost to acquire him.
In four starts for the Twins, the righty has a sterling 1.73 ERA with a 33.7% strikeout rate and a 6.1% walk rate across 26 innings pitched. He has stranded a whopping 89% of runners on base, due in large part to his ability to dial in with runners in scoring position. In those cases, López has a 35% strikeout rate, good for fifth-best in baseball. López has been elite when it comes to average exit velocity allowed (91st percentile), expected ERA (89th percentile) and chase rate (97th percentile). These are great building blocks to have under the hood when deciding which pitchers to invest in. Therefore, it’s no surprise that Minnesota’s brass decided to swing a deal after only three weeks’ worth of starts.
The Twins now have their top dog in the rotation locked up through the 2027 season, and they can turn their focus to the three impending free agents at year’s end. Sonny Gray, Tyler Mahle and Kenta Maeda are currently playing for their next contract, and Minnesota will likely have varying amounts of interest to keep each in the fold beyond 2023. Gray and Mahle, especially, seem like prime candidates for either another in-season extension. The team could also tag them with a qualifying offer at season’s end, which would essentially be a one-year, $19 to $20 million contract.
However, the qualifying offer can be a stressful process as the team waits for the player to decide if they want the safe bet of this kind of contract. The Twins might want more certainty awaiting their rotation while the free agent(s) and their representation deliberate whether to take the deal or test the free agent market. It will surely be a huge relief to know their ace is locked in while they figure out the rest of the rotation picture.
On that note, López joins a corps of Twins starting pitchers that are under team control through 2026. This includes Joe Ryan, Chris Paddack, Bailey Ober, Louie Varland, Simeon Woods Richardson, and a slew of pitching prospects currently at Double-A or below. Who knows, perhaps Minnesota will find itself with too many quality arms in its rotation picture? In that case, they could use some as trade chips to address other needs. That’s quite the leap as things currently stand, but it’s anyone’s guess what the club’s depth chart is going to look like a few years from now. The idea is that the Twins will have the potential for options when the time comes.
The blueprint for how Minnesota can acquire frontline starting pitchers becomes more clear with this extension. Like with López, the club can trade from their depth to acquire an arm that is still in arbitration. Then they can extend them before they reach free agency. As much as fans beg for the Twins to pay market value for high-profile free agent pitchers in the off-season, this route is far more sustainable in the long run. It also has a better chance of bringing in pitchers just before or in the heart of their prime years rather than taking a chance on them into their mid-30s.
When all is said and done, the López extension locks in a highly-sought after pitcher with room to grow. While the deal only involves one player on the roster, it’s bound to have a trickle-down effect on the pitching pipeline as a whole, and the rotation for years to come.
