López throws 2 simulated frames from mound as recovery ramps up

MINNEAPOLIS -- Pablo López was so happy to be back on the Target Field mound on Friday that he didn’t even mind getting squeezed by the umpire. Of course, the umpire was his own pitching coach, Pete Maki, so López wasn’t about to complain.

López threw two simulated innings -- a total of about 40 pitches -- while facing teammates Edouard Julien, Austin Martin and Ryan Fitzgerald, and by all accounts, the outing was a success.

“I hit all the marks while sustaining the velo I had today in the first and second inning; I was anywhere from 93 to 95 [mph]. The pitches were moving the way they were supposed to,” Lopez said. “Everything felt good with the delivery, the mechanics, the execution, the pounding the zone, that mentality. So, I think everything’s good. I wanted to check all those boxes.”

López hasn’t pitched since June 3, when he walked off the mound in West Sacramento with a sore right shoulder that was later diagnosed as a right teres major strain. The original timeline for his return was 8 to 12 weeks; he remains on schedule for the more conservative estimate.

“Initially when I went down, I was hopeful that it would be closer to the eight than the 12 weeks, but then we really got a hold of the information and the program and scheduling,” he said. “So, I’m happy to be on the mound, and the aim of this buildup is to come back and get a decent amount of starts in.”

The highlight of the outing was when Maki rang up Julien with a called third strike, and López said he induced a lot of weak contact, indicating his pitches were moving as he intended.

The importance of López fighting to return this year rather than packing it in and going home early is amplified by the number of young faces in the clubhouse and especially on the pitching staff, where López is a leader in every sense of the word.

“He understands his presence in this clubhouse and in the organization and what it means to everyone here,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “And just showing everyone that he's gonna work his butt off as he always does to come back just reinforces everything that we know about him. He's a guy that means a lot to everything that we do, and he has no interest in just comfortably rehabbing and then going home at the end of the season. He wants to pitch.”

López now enters the usual five-day cycle for starting pitchers, meaning he’ll follow his usual between-starts routine and should return to the mound in five days. Whether he’ll be facing teammates again is still to be determined.

“I hope not. I hope it’s other people, but we’ll see,” he said. “It feels like Spring Training in August, where you’re building up to 35 [pitches], and the next one will be 35 to 50, then 60 to 65. So, I think we’ll treat it like that with the five, six-day cycles.”

Budding rivalry
Twins starter Pierson Ohl wasn’t at his sharpest Friday in the Twins’ 7-0 loss to the Tigers, but he didn’t take the ready-made excuse of a 26-minute rain delay as the cause of Detroit’s five-run first inning.

“It's an underrated thing in the Minor Leagues -- we deal with it all the time, so it didn't catch me by surprise,” Ohl said. “It's not a perfect situation, but you just make what you can of it.”

The key at-bat in the inning might have been the 12-pitch battle between Ohl and Spencer Torkelson. The Tigers first baseman had already homered off Ohl on Aug. 6 in Detroit, and on Friday, he fouled off six two-strike pitches and eventually drew a walk.

Torkelson later added a single against Ohl, who so far is on the wrong end of a battle that dates back to college.

“He went to Arizona State, I went to Grand Canyon, so there's a bit of a rivalry there,” Ohl said. “So far he's got the edge, and it's getting under my skin a little bit, so I'll be excited for the next time we match up.”

He said it
“Oh yeah, I was like a Little Caesars pizza. I was hot and ready.” -- Ohl when asked if he was prepared to take the mound after the rain delay