spoke on Inside Twins<\/a> about how excited he was to represent Venezuela on an international stage. He reflected on his youth and the disappointment of being left off All-Star teams earlier in his career and noted how meaningful it would be to pitch for his country alongside a strong roster and coaching staff.\n<\/p>\n\n\tOn that episode, L\u00f3pez was asked about how he felt entering the season. He reiterated that many of the tests he was doing this winter proved that he was \u201cin the best shape of his life.\u201d That can become a cliche during early spring workouts, but it was clear that he felt better than he had in a long time, especially after injuries limited him to 14 starts last season.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n\tShelton recently emphasized just how vital he is to the Twins’ pitching puzzle this spring as the club works through multiple moving pieces on the staff.\n<\/p>\n
\n\t“I don’t know if anybody in that room takes care of himself as well as Pablo does, not only during the season, but in the offseason,” Shelton said. “The fact he has awareness of his body, and he and Pete have a strong relationship, and they were able to have a conversation that was like, ‘Let’s hold off, and take a look here.’ ”\n<\/p>\n
\n\tSpring training injuries always feel amplified, especially when they involve the arm of a frontline starter. For now, the Twins will wait on imaging results and hope that an early February scare does not turn into a March setback.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tThe organization built its rotation around L\u00f3pez\u2019s reliability and presence atop the staff, and any missed time would create a ripple effect throughout camp. The best-case scenario is that Monday becomes a reminder of why caution matters in February rather than the first chapter of a much larger concern for Minnesota\u2019s pitching plans in 2026.\n<\/p>\n
\n\tCheck back at Twins Daily for more updates as they become available.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monday is supposed to be a day of excitement and hope across Twins Territory. Pitchers and catchers reported…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,822,60,3190,4,1997,151,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-576169","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-twins","11":"tag-minnesotatwins","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-pablo-lopez","14":"tag-spring-training","15":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116082310259784672","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}