López outduels Gray to spoil former Twin's return

MINNEAPOLIS -- It’s likely that there will always be well-deserved affection throughout Twins Territory for both pitchers who opposed each other from the mound in Saturday’s matchup -- because Pablo López and Sonny Gray will always be the ironclad top of the rotation that brought this state a playoff series win and ended almost two decades of record-setting postseason disappointment.

But only one of them remains in a Twins uniform -- and Saturday’s showdown between the old teammates who pushed each other to greater heights last season proved triumphant for the man the Twins will still count on moving forward.

López looked dominant as he pounded the strike zone against the Cardinals for seven scoreless innings while Trevor Larnach also got the best of Gray, crushing a pair of cutters for two homers and four RBIs to together lead the Twins to a 6-0 victory at Target Field. With the win, Minnesota moved into a tie with Kansas City for second place in the AL Central, residing two games back.

“It's always fun when you're pitching against someone you know, against a friend,” López said. “There's always that competitive edge, like, ‘I want to outdo my friend. I want to outdo my former teammate.’ For the most part, I blocked that out. I know we're going up against a good pitcher, so in a way, I do have to lock in.”

Boy, did he ever.

It wasn’t just that López blanked the Cardinals in a continuation of a resurgent second half that has seen him post a 2.25 ERA in seven starts since the All-Star break; it’s also that he found lots of extra zip on the fastball that touched 97.9 mph -- tying the hardest pitch of his career -- and had 21 total swinging strikes, his most in any start this season.

Armed with that fastball, López, already an extreme strike-thrower, was freed up to attack with even more impunity. Not only did he throw first-pitch strikes to 22 of the 26 Cardinals he faced, but he also reached an 0-2 count against every batter to see more than two pitches until Victor Scott II reached a 1-1 count in the fifth inning.

“When we have a little extra life on it, it can make your life a little more fun when you're on the mound,” López said. “You give yourself a little more wiggle room, and it just gives you that confidence to just challenge people.”

Larnach took advantage of a more homer-prone season from Gray for the first multi-homer game of his career. His three-run, 384-foot blast amid a stretch of five consecutive Twins to reach base in the third inning provided the thump for the four-run frame, and he later added a 419-foot blast to straightaway center in the fifth.

Not that he had any idea of that first homer in the moment. Larnach said he couldn’t see the ball because of the sun in his first at-bat, and only had a bit more of a clue what he was swinging at on his homer.

“Because I was not feeling good and I couldn’t see the first at-bat, I straight up said a prayer,” Larnach said. “I was like, ‘Lord, help me, please.’ I swear to God on that. I just saw the shape up and in.”

As López continues to put the struggles of a first-half 5.11 ERA behind him, it’s perhaps for the better that he’s hitting this peak down the stretch, with the Twins’ rotation as injury-depleted as it is.

López noted how the Twins’ internal body movement measurements show him as being in a great place, with manager Rocco Baldelli giving the credit to López’s intense work ethic and training regimen to prepare himself for these full seasons -- and that’s something Gray knows all too well from their time together.

“I have nothing but the utmost respect for Pablo,” Gray said. “I thoroughly, thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed working with him last year. We both brought so much out of each other, I would say. Having another guy like him on the staff that was as dominant, it made me better. I’d like to hope that I was able to help him and make him better.”

López got some help on a pickoff play at third base by Christian Vázquez in the third inning, but he’d also struck out a pair in the second to escape a second-and-third, one-out jam -- and with that, he set the tone for one of his best outings yet.

“His stuff today was probably the best that he’s had all year,” Baldelli said.