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In 2021 Jorge Lopez was not a good pitcher. To be fair, he really hadn’t been a good pitcher in the 102 games he’d thrown at the Major League level. Across three organizations Lopez tallied a 6.04 ERA while working 350 innings. That is why, after starting 25 games in 2021, the Baltimore Orioles moved him to the bullpen. Lopez was acquired on a waiver claim from the Kansas City Royals, and now was gifted an opportunity to work in relief at 29-years-old. The results couldn’t have been better. Across 44 games, Lopez racked up 19 saves and a cool 1.68 ERA. His strikeouts jumped to double-digits per nine for the first time in his career, and while the walk rate held steady, he stopped allowing home runs. It earned him his first trip to the All-Star Game, and Baltimore parlayed the success into a solid return featuring Cade Povich and Yennier Cano. Then Lopez got to Minnesota’s bullpen. In 23 games, he lost a hold of the closer role, recorded just three saves, and posted a 4.37 ERA. His strikeout rate tumbled while the walks ticked up and he allowed more than a hit per inning pitched. To say it was a complete reversal of what was expected to be acquired would be putting it lightly. As a whole, the chief change for Lopez was to stop throwing a four-seam fastball. He used the pitch less than 5% of the time last season, and instead funneled his energy into a sinker. The pitch has gained more than two miles per hour in velocity, averaging over 97 mph in 2022. It’s been an absolute weapon, but clearly things changed a bit with Minnesota. Looking at the numbers, it’s not clear that Lopez changed a whole lot with his pitch mix. The slider and changeup usage has risen since joining the Twins, but not by more than nominal percentage points. The key difference looks to be in pitch location. For whatever reason, Lopez utilized the lower portion of the strike zone with the Twins. Newly adapted thinking has suggested that fastballs up in the zone, depending on spin rates, can cause additional issues for hitters. With Lopez throwing a sinker, any amount of run could be manipulated to travel back within the zone as well. Any team acquiring a new talent is likely to make tweaks or suggest options, but caution would seem wise with an arm going so well. It’s also possible that Lopez made changes to his location, tunneling techniques, or sequencing on his own accord or the game calling from Minnesota catchers. No matter who is responsible for the changes having been made, it’s clearly imperative that both sides get together and figure out a better path forward. Due to his bouncing around early in his career, Lopez is under team control for two more seasons still. The Twins absolutely want him in their bullpen if he’s the Orioles version, but they can’t afford him to turn back into what he was as a starter, or be as hittable as he was down the stretch in 2022.

As a follow up to someone that writes about the game, it only seems natural to check with a woman that tells stories through a different medium. Having made her own trek through the minor leagues before debuting in The Show, Melanie Newman can now (or will as 2020 gets underway) call herself a big leaguer. Paving a Path Part 1: Britt Ghiroli The Georgia native has worked as a broadcaster at both the High-A and Double-A levels. She’s been a sideline reporter for Division 1 college athletics, and both MLB and ESPN have employed her directly. Now the long time Red Sox fan joins the Baltimore Orioles and calls a new team home. I caught up with her recently to talk about the journey: Twins Daily: You've been multi-talented and focused on a plethora of sports since breaking into the media scene. When did it become clear that baseball was your calling and that's where you wanted to focus? Melanie Newman: I always knew I wanted to specialize in baseball but also had learned in college that performing as a multi-sport journalist widened my chances of employment. Bob Rathbun sat down with me to review my work and chat soon after graduating and he affirmed to me I needed to give baseball a bigger piece of my attention. So, while I always stayed vigilant in studying other sports right down to cornhole, I've fought the hardest to have just about any role in baseball. TD: Everyone in baseball understands the ladder progression through a system. In your baseball career you've gone from minor league positions to now working with a big-league club. How has that helped to shape your drive, and what challenges does each new level present? MN: I will always adore my time in the minor leagues because it is so unique and a chance to really understand not just the game but the players. You see the sacrifices and the grind at a new level on those 12-hour bus rides. Broadcasters aren't exempt to those conditions. Sometimes the late hours and no days off catch up to you, but once you find your stride (usually the fifth week every season), things smooth out, you adjust to those 3-hour sleeps. If anything, it's proven to me that I DO want to be here and how much I appreciate this world. I also better understand what it takes for a game to even happen, from the sales staff to the groundskeepers, then multiply that immensely at the Major League level! I could not do an ounce of my job without the village of staff who make it happen, including PR, digital media, producers and editors. TD: Now working with a Major League club, do you feel like you need to re-establish yourself all over again, or is credibility built on your brand? As a female, is there an additional sense of responsibility being representative of opportunity beyond just yourself? MN: Breaking into the Majors feels two-fold: I absolutely am not changing who I am, because who I am is why I was hired. If I tried to be like another big league broadcaster, that just creates a duplicate in the industry and the beauty of every single broadcaster in any sport is while we might have similarities, we are each unique because we found certain aspects of how to do the job that speak to us on a personal level more than others. For example, I felt called to the humanizing niche of story telling, why humans are the way they are and how that shapes them into the athlete they are - what makes them laugh, the people in their life who got them here, etc. The second side is that while I am sure of who I am, that doesn't mean I can't develop and improve. I'm lucky to have a good team of peers and mentors to help me better my craft every day. According to the outside world, you are supposed to have more responsibility as a woman. While I am aware that my actions are more heavily scrutinized, I know how I was raised as a person and how I was trained to be a professional, I expect to behave at the same high caliber as every other respectable broadcaster, regardless of gender. TD: We're starting to see a female presence emerge in coaching and gameday operations for teams. You have been a pioneer on the broadcasting scene in multiple different stops. Do you feel like your success has helped contribute to that, and how can you continue using your platform so we can see talent no matter where it comes from? MN: I really would never take credit for females enterprising in the various roles of any sport. I will say it's so awesome that it's becoming more frequent to run into a female counterpart whether in the offices or at the facilities and getting to further pick their brains on how their particular role is unique and why they've pursued it. Going out every day and doing my job at a high level, that's what speaks and engages others to know that no matter their orientation or background, your dreams don't discriminate. It's also important to go out into the community, to engage with younger kids and just be a friendly person, there's no need to have a wall up around children. TD: Knowing that you have Red Sox fandom in your blood, it has to be different working for an organization in a division you grew up getting to know. How exciting is it to learn the Orioles organization from the inside, and what are you most looking forward to when we get back on the field? MN: I am very appreciative of my time in the Boston organization, especially to have grown up with New England family roots. I have had the pleasure of working for multiple organization's and I'm fortunate that a professor taught us to set aside fandoms in job hunting because the wealth of amazing people I've come to know across the entire country fills my heart. Baltimore's enthusiasm and the immediate synergy was hard to ignore. I felt like family within an hour of meeting the staff and hoped they felt the same (which I would argue now, they did). I just can't wait to step into Orioles Park at Camden Yards, knowing I am a part of this amazing organization and to see the incredible memories we will get to build together. TD: Baltimore has struggled at the big-league level of late, but have some really talented prospects. As someone who's worked on the minor league scene, how excited are you to be able to cover those stories and monitor that progress? MN: The minor leagues will always hold a special place in my heart and there is a deeper appreciation when you've been in the bottom levels to work your way up. I was fortunate to call games against two of Baltimore's affiliates last year so oddly enough when I was hired, it felt like I was more familiar with more of their minor leaguers than their major leaguers. The work Mike Elias and his team have done to select the best talent out there in building the future is absolutely exciting, the way they are training and honing each player's talents is a multi-level process that is developing both the athlete and the human being. TD: Let's end it with a surviving quarantine question. We all want baseball back and living through this sports-less time for the country has certainly been suboptimal. What have you been doing to keep busy? On off days, how do you give yourself a reset? MN: My days are pretty consistent between Spanish lessons, reading baseball articles and listening to other broadcasts/broadcasters, going for runs and spending family time. It's not flashy or exciting but the consistency of routine has been key! Follow Melanie and check out her work here. Check back in next week for entry number three in this four-part series. 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After being acquired from the Baltimore Orioles, Schoop went completely in the tank. Through his first 85 games last year he posted just a .720 OPS which was already a significant step back from his 2017 All-Star year. Across 46 games with the Brew Crew he posted just a .577 OPS and tallied a grand total of eight extra-base hits. For a team with postseason aspirations, he became unplayable and then was non-tendered this winter. The hope is that Milwaukee’s loss will be Minnesota’s gain. Obviously with this type of dip in production, we need to explore where things went wrong. Looking at the plate discipline and batted ball profile for Schoop, there are two glaring issues that jump out. First and foremost, the hard-hit rate dropped off the table. After a 36.1% mark in 2017, Schoop fell all the way down to 27.8% last year. The near 10% dip in quality contact is certainly going to show up in other areas, and that can help to paint a better picture. On the surface production faltered with inputs being measurably worse. Schoop’s .261 BABIP was nearly 100 points lower than the .330 mark he put up with the Orioles in 2017. Although the was a slight decline in HR/FB rate (roughly 2%), the greater factor here is roughly a 4% gain in ground ball rate that pulled from both fly balls and line drives. While hitting the ball more softly last season, he was also doing so with more grounders rather than fly balls. Common sense tells us that those instances are much more likely to be adequately fielded by defenders. Knowing what we do about his batted ball profile, it’s also worth looking into plate discipline and deciding what impact that had on the equation. It doesn’t take long to see that there’s a suboptimal shift here as well. After posting a career best swinging strike rate (13.8%) in 2017, that number rose to 15.1% last year. On top of swinging through more pitches, Jonathan also chased 6% more often, ballooning that number all the way up to 43.1%. Given his consistent contact percentages, these two numbers suggest he was being fooled more often at the dish and therefore suffering from offering at less than ideal moments. While not the drastic 50-60% pull hitter than Dozier was for the Twins, Schoop has a heavy pull-side profile as well. His career mark is 45.3% and he wears out the left side of the diamond. This is notable given the way in which he’s been attacked each of the past two seasons. As we can see in the images, his 2017 strike zone saw pitchers coming in on him plenty. The Curacao native was able to turn on those pitches and yank them to the part of the park he felt most comfortable aiming at. Last year though, pitchers seemed to make a concerted effort to stay away from his bat. Targeting the middle and outside half of the strike zone they were forcing Schoop to attempt to pull pitches best sent the opposite way. While betting lines aren’t any sort of indicator when it comes to future production, Schoop’s home run over/under from Bovada got me thinking. He’s set at 22.5 for 2018, and I think that’s indicative about how I feel toward his return to form. I don’t believe he’s the .293 hitter he was in 2017, but a healthy .800 OPS and 25 home runs appears plenty realistic with his profile. Miller Park didn’t help to solve his offensive woes, and while Target Field isn’t Camden Yards, the left field line should treat him well. Settling back in to more of a picky approach at the plate should help the Twins second baseman land somewhere in the middle of his last two seasons. Replicating Brian Dozier’s 42 ding dong campaign of 2016 isn’t something that Rocco Baldelli will ever need from a second basemen. Minnesota’s new manager does need a more consistent level of production though, and betting on Schoop to bounce back could be a great way to achieve that. Homing in on pitches he can handle and/or developing a stronger ability to barrel balls the other way should be some key areas of focus. We’ll see soon enough if adjustments have been made this offseason, but there’s certainly a blueprint here for success.