Pablo L\u00f3pez<\/b> will show up to the ballpark Friday and work through his usual pre-start routine.<\/p>\n
He will play catch and throw long toss with a catcher before moving into the bullpen. He will sit down and take some sips of water until it\u2019s time for him to run out to the Target Field mound and stare down a hitter in the batter\u2019s box.<\/p>\n
The only difference this time is L\u00f3pez will do it four hours before Friday\u2019s actual first pitch.<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez is scheduled to throw two \u201cinnings\u201d in a simulated game, a big step for a pitcher who hopes to rejoin the Twins\u2019 rotation as early as the first week of September.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, whoever wants to hit, they go to swing the bat,\u201d L\u00f3pez said. \u201cI don\u2019t want statues up there. I don\u2019t want someone to look like a candle. I want someone to actually swing the bat, so I can get the feedback and see how [pitches] are moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez has been out since early June with a strained muscle in his right shoulder. The initial recovery timeline was 8-12 weeks, so he\u2019s remained on schedule.<\/p>\n
Despite the Twins falling well out of the playoff picture, along with a massive fire sale at the trade deadline that shipped off 10 major league players, it\u2019s important for L\u00f3pez\u2019s offseason if he can return to pitch in a handful of big league games.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe time allows me to squeeze in four or five, maybe six starts,\u201d said L\u00f3pez, who is in the second season of his four-year, $73.5 million contract extension. \u201cBecause time allows, I want to do it. Also, peace of mind. I want to be able to tell myself I was able to come back from this injury and pitch and perform at the level I know I can perform.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pablo L\u00f3pez will show up to the ballpark Friday and work through his usual pre-start routine. He will…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":146825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[1266,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-146824","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115030764226644892","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}