The Twins acquired Pablo Lopez in the offseason before the 2023 campaign hoping he could help to anchor the rotation. It’s safe to say that trade was the right call.
Lopez was a first-time All-Star and pitched to a 3.66 ERA and posted career-bests in strikeouts (234) and innings (194). On Tuesday, he will start for Minnesota in Game 1 of the team’s wild-card series against the Blue Jays as the Twins look to snap an 18-game playoff losing streak.
Lopez has excelled with his control, walking only 6 percent of opposing hitters, getting batters to chase in the 95th percentile of all MLB pitchers and limiting hard contact (78th percentile in hard-hit rate). He does all of this while wielding a fastball that is only in the 64th percentile in velocity. One might go so far as to call his pitching style surgical.
It’s safe to say baseball has worked out for Lopez, who inked a four-year, $73.5 million extension with the Twins to keep him in Minnesota through the 2027 campaign. But if baseball hadn’t, it certainly appears Lopez had everything all figured out.
While the backup plan for many MLB players might be to go into coaching, commentary or some other related field, Lopez’s was to become a doctor. And that’s a career path he might still return to when his playing days are over.
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How close was Lopez to becoming Dr. Lopez? Here’s what you need to know.
How Pablo Lopez nearly became a doctor
Lopez grew up in an insanely smart household. Both his parents were doctors, according to the Miami Herald. His sister is a lawyer and his brother focused on becoming an engineer.
Per the Herald, he would read his father’s anatomy books around the house growing up in Venezuela. He often spent his free time going with his dad to the hospital and to the clinic with his mom.
“I was always in that environment,” Lopez said. “They used to keep lots of [medical] books on the bookshelves, and I was always intrigued with them. And I would read about it.”
His parents put Lopez on an accelerated trajectory, putting the 5-year-old Lopez into first grade with 6-year-olds, and he graduated from high school at 16, at which point he was accepted into the same medical school both his parents attended, per MLB.com. He earned a score of 19.8 out of 20 on the standardized test to be accepted to the school.
But he also never took his mind off baseball. As a teenager, Lopez grew into his frame and started to draw the attention of MLB teams. And so it was that when he was offered to attend medical school, he was also offered a contract by the Mariners.
“As a 16-year-old, it was a tough decision to make,” Lopez said, per MLB.com.
Lopez said he “always wanted to be like my dad,” Danny, who was a general practitioner, per MLB.com. His mom, Agnedis Serra, was a medical pathologist. When he received the offers, he consulted his dad.
“He said it’s 100 percent your decision,” Lopez said, per MLB.com. “Whichever way you go, I know you’re going to do great things. But the best way I can tell you to look at it right now is, if you choose to play baseball and it doesn’t work out as well as you think it could and you don’t like it, college is still going to be there. If you choose college and you don’t like it, I think the baseball opportunity might be a little harder to get.”
According to the Miami Herald, Lopez said he wanted to keep going through high school and finish it since there had often been players in Latin American countries who abandoned school if baseball called. But he did not want to do that.
Not everyone in his family agreed with his decision to choose baseball over medical school. MLB.com reported Lopez’s grandmother was particularly nonplussed by the decision — “when I chose to play baseball, my grandma was not on the happy side,” he said.
The decision to pursue baseball does not mean his academic pursuits have been entirely put in the past. He has said to honor his dad’s advice, he will return to school after he ends his MLB career, something perhaps that overlaps between health and sports, per MLB.com. His mother died when he was 11 and his father passed away in 2020, according to MLB.com.
“As of now, that’s my plan,” Lopez told the Miami Herald of pursuing a degree post-baseball. “That’s one of my goals, to get a degree in something.”
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Lopez has never been behind in his baseball studies. He began pitching in Seattle’s organization as a 17-year-old in 2013 and began to ascend through the minors rapidly, reaching High-A by 2017 as a 21-year-old. He was then traded to the Marlins as part of a package for David Phelps. He wound up debuting the next season, and pitching to a 4.14 ERA.
He has seemingly gotten better each season. He was a breakout star in 2020 and was one of Miami’s most reliable arms between 2021 and 2022 before he was traded to the Twins for Luis Arraez in January 2023.
Lopez’s teammates have learned quickly just how smart the right-hander is. Former Marlins teammate Miguel Rojas told the Herald they call him “Wikipedia” because “when we don’t know something, we say, ‘Ask Pablo. He definitely will know.'”
That hasn’t changed since he arrived in Minnesota. When Twins teammate Kyle Farmer was struck in the face, he was diagnosed with a laceration. Minnesota players asked the doctor in the house what that meant for him.
“Some of the guys were asking me what a laceration is,” Lopez told MLB.com. “I had to tell them it was not a fracture.”