Also, please don't compare López to Betancur, he is much better than that.
There have been several quarters which just seem to have crapped on the López signing from the start, and I can't really figure why. Comparing him to reclamation projects like Rujano and Betancur makes little sense. Yes, those guys were really good at one point; Rujano won the GPM and hit 3rd in the Giro, and Betancur was 5th in the Giro and won Paris-Nice, but they were 2-3 years removed from that when Abarcá signed them on a low-cost flyer.
Here's Bananito's CQ graph. Movistar signed him after the 2015 season.
And here's Rujano's. Caisse d'Épargne signed him for 2008 (and didn't re-sign him despite improving showings).
Now here's Supermán's. Yes, I know he's on a downward trajectory, but Supermán on a downward trajectory is still 655 points, more than Betancur managed even in the season he won Paris-Nice, and almost as much as Rujano got the year he podiumed the Giro. Plus of course another major factor is that López crashed out of the Giro on stage 1, which in such a time-compressed calendar cost him essentially any points post-Tour, so almost the entirety of that 655 points is from 3 races - Algarve, the Dauphiné and the Tour.
Obviously we can't put results that don't exist onto his palmarès, anything could happen in that Giro (and indeed did, eventually), but Supermán has never finished a GT outside the top 10. I counted 41 race days in 2020 for him. Over 2019 he scored 1092 CQ points across 73 race days, 1601 across 76 in 2018, 629 across 40 in 2017 and 763 across 54 in 2016. Points per race day for the last 5 years:
2016 - 14,13
2017 - 15,73
2018 - 21,07
2019 - 14,96
2020 - 15,98
Therefore while 2018 was particularly strong (doing Giro/Vuelta for GC and hitting the podium of both will do that), we can say that Miguel Ángel López has been a very consistent performer and therefore his CQ graph's trajectory does not paint an accurate picture of his performances, due to both the Giro crash and the unusual nature of 2020. Betancur's 2014 is propped up by Paris-Nice - of his 616 points in the season, 586 are achieved by the end of Paris-Nice, and every other point he receives is just for finishing a race - and there was therefore almost 2 seasons' worth of underperformance before Caisse signed him. With Rujano, after his breakout 2005, he scored next to no meaningful results for 2 years, and most of those were with the half-season in 2006 he did with Savio's mob before his Quick Step contract came into force. The only points he had achieved for 18 months in Europe were 5 points for finishing GP Plouay in 102nd.
While coming off an injury and only offering a one-year deal there is an element of taking a flyer on Supermán, the guy is a proven leader and a proven
winner who was 6th in a Grand Tour while winning the queen stage only six months ago, not somebody coming off a down year with high potential upside but low likelihood of reaching that upside. Yet there was a whole bunch of debate about whether he was good enough to be a leader when he signed, and comparisons to previous reclamation projects. That makes no sense. Supermán is clearly good enough to be a leader, and you can't reclaim a lost talent if that talent isn't lost, as it is demonstrably scoring results at the highest level right up to the present day.