Braves Pitcher Joins Elite Company After Monday Start

The Atlanta Braves have to be thrilled with the start to the season they're getting from their marquee free agent addition of the offseason

Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Reynaldo López is off to one of the greatest starts to a season in Atlanta-era franchise history / John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

The Atlanta Braves don’t often go out into the free agent market.  

So when they do, it feels like a big deal. And it’s safe to say that last season’s marquee free agent signing ended up being one of the most impactful so far of the 2024 season. 

Reynaldo López signed a three-year, $30M deal this offseason, but with a twist: To be a starter. 

That was a surprise when the team announced it - López had experience starting in his career, but it hadn’t gone well. Across 2018 and 2019 for the Chicago White Sox, he made 65 starts (pitching 372.2 innings) to a 17-25 record and a 4.64 ERA. His 110 earned runs allowed in 2019 led all of baseball. 

So by 2021, he was working in relief. And as the team stopped using him as a spot starter or an opener and let him focus exclusively in the bullpen, he actually got pretty good as a reliever. Across his final two seasons in the bullpen (2022 & 2023), he put up a 3.02 ERA and struck out 146 batters in 131.1 innings. Transitioning into a flamethrower, he featured a 98-mph curveball and a hard 88-mph slider that helped him rack up one of baseball’s highest strikeout rates, 29.9%.  

But Atlanta was adamant that he would have a legitimate chance to win the 5th starter’s job, and not only did López do that, he excelled: 

Through his first seven starts of the season, López has a 1.34 ERA, striking out 40 batters in 40.1 innings. 

Here’s a list of Atlanta-era Braves starers to post a lower ERA through their first seven starts of a season. Tell me what you notice about these names: 

Michael Soroka (2019): 1.01
Greg Maddux (1994): 0.94
Tom Glavine (2002): 0.93

If the answer is “two of the three greatest Atlanta-era pitchers in franchise history and someone who looked to be generational before devastating injuries took that away”, then you understand how impressive the start to the season has been for López. 

Per the team's research department, the franchise's only starts to a season better than this mostly predate the glory days of the 90s: Dana Fillingim (0.29 in 1918), Buzz Capra (1.17 in 1974), and Hall of Famer Phil Niekro (1.27 in 1965-67)

If it helps, López is a bit surprised, too. “I expected a little longer of an adjustment period, but I just feel very grateful for the way things have been going,” he told the media last night after his start against the Chicago Cubs.

We’ve talked at length about how to manage the workload for López in his first full season back in a rotation since 2019. And while the consensus was that he’d inevitably need to move to the bullpen at some point in the season, it looks like Atlanta’s doing everything in their power to delay that. 

Per Baseball Reference, López has made every single start of the season on extra rest, getting five days before two of them, six days before three of them, and seven days before one start. Starting on average once a week means that Atlanta can theoretically keep him in the rotation for almost two more months before he hits the 80-inning mark. If we’re going with the old rule of thumb of limiting year-over-year innings increases to around 50 (and it’s unknown if Atlanta subscribes to that figure), he’s looking at potentially around eleven more starts before he would reach 110 innings on the season. Assuming six innings a start, López appears to be able through most of the schedule before the workload becomes a concern. 

Now, does that plan survive the grueling Atlanta summer, one in which other players (Sean Murphy and Max Fried) have admitted struggling to deal with at times? That remains to be seen. 

But the team obviously has a plan for getting López not only through the long season in the rotation, but at maximum effectiveness. And that’s a good thing, because he’s shown us his maximum is pretty darn good.