Lopez hopes to return before season’s end
ATLANTA
There are about three weeks left in the Miami Marlins’ season. Starting pitcher Pablo Lopez, sidelined since July 17 with a right rotator cuff strain, just recently began ramping up his throwing regiment since being returned from his rehab assignment on Aug. 28.
This raises the question: Is there enough time to get Lopez built up enough to get back on a bigleague mound before the Oct. 3 season finale?
That’s still the goal, Marlins manager Don Mattingly said Saturday. How big of a role Lopez will have if he does return remains to be seen.
“There’s a plan,” Mattingly said, “but to even be able to come back and pitch a couple innings, there still has to be a pretty good progression to get him back where he’s comfortable and able to compete and go out there. Guys don’t want to go out there like in a rehab start. You don’t do rehab starts at the big league level. I hate to put a timetable on it, but I don’t think we’re necessarily trying to get him back to the point where we think he’s gonna make two or three starts. Could he open a game and throw a few innings? I think that’s the biggest thing with Pablo with the organization, to be able to go through this build up. To get him back to the mound would be the top priority for everyone.”
The main reason for that: Lopez dealt with shoulder injuries in the second half of both the 2018 and 2019 seasons, MLB’s last two full seasons. The goal is for Lopez to end the season healthy and have “a normal winter,” as Mattingly put it.
“Mentally,” Mattingly said, “he wants to be able to go into the winter not as a rehab guy coming into spring training that we have to be careful with but as a guy getting ready for a season. That’s what we’re trying to accomplish with the rest of this year for Pablo. If that happens, great. That’d be the No. 1 thing that everybody would like, but I still don’t think you push anything just to accomplish that. That’s not a real accomplishment, other than for everybody’s mentality.”
Lopez started 19 games before the All-Star break, posting a 3.03 ERA with a career-high 111 strikeouts and career-best marks in batting average against (.227), WHIP (1.09), quality starts (10), strikeouts per nine innings (9.89) and strikeouts per walk (4.44) through 101 innings.
THIS AND THAT
A Eddy Alvarez on Saturday made his second start since being called up on Tuesday, starting at third base and batting eighth. Alvarez went 1 for 4 with an RBI double, a walk and a run scored in his first start Tuesday and also scored as a pinch-runner Thursday.
Count Marlins shortstop Miguel Rojas among those excited for Alvarez, a Miami native and two-time Olympic medalist, to get another chance at the MLB level.
“I got the opportunity to work out with him this offseason a lot,” Rojas said. “Getting to know him more, I know he cares about the game of baseball. He cares about the people who are next to him and he always tries to make the people next to him better. I kind of see myself a little in Eddy. ... I’m so happy for him and to get to experience all this stuff with him. This couldn’t happen to a better guy.”
A The Marlins have 99 stolen bases this year. Should they swipe one more bag before the end of the season, it would mark the 12th time in franchise history they stole at least 100 bases in a season.