Minnesota Twins Announce Starter For Game 1 of Playoffs

The Minnesota Twins will go with Pablo Lopez in Game 1 of the playoffs against an opponent that's to be determined.

The Minnesota Twins will go with starting pitcher Pablo Lopez in Game 1 of their upcoming playoff series.

It was known that Lopez and Sonny Gray would throw the first two games of the playoffs but it's now known what the order will be.

Per Do-Hyoung Park of MLB.com on social media:

And Rocco has at last clarified the Twins' postseason rotation order, which should be no surprise: 

Game 1: Pablo López 

Game 2: Sonny Gray

And Rocco has at last clarified the Twins' postseason rotation order, which should be no surprise:

Game 1: Pablo López
Game 2: Sonny Gray

— Do-Hyoung Park (@dohyoungpark) September 28, 2023

The Twins don't know who they'll be playing yet but they are all but certain to end up playing a Round 1 matchup in the wild card.

The American League East winner (Baltimore or Tampa Bay) will get the No. 1 seed while it looks like Texas or Houston will get the No. 2 seed (and the other first-round bye).

That would leave the Twins as the No. 3 seed to go up against the No. 3 wild card team in the first round. At this point, that could be Houston, Toronto or Seattle. That would be a best-of-three series played at Target Field.

In his first year in Minnesota after being traded from the Marlins last offseason, Lopez is 11-8 this year with a 3.66 ERA. He's struck out 234 batters in 194.0 innings. He just threw 4.1 innings on Wednesday against the Athletics.

The Twins are in action again on Thursday afternoon and currently trail the Athletics in the ninth inning - at the time of this posting.

They'll close out the regular season this weekend on the road in Colorado.

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