BALTIMORE — When he traded for Chris Sale on Dec. 30, Atlanta Braves general manager and president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos knew what he was getting: a seven-time former All-Star and perennial top-five Cy Young Award finisher when healthy.
Sale has stayed healthy and is 8-2 with a 3.01 ERA, making him a candidate to make his first All-Star team since 2018.
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But go back a little over a month before the Sale trade, to the signing of Reynaldo López to a three-year, $30 million free-agent contract in November. Anthopoulos acknowledges that when the Braves signed the hard-throwing former reliever and announced their intentions to let López compete for the fifth starter job at spring training, they weren’t sure he would win it.
Actually, it sounds as if his wife, Jhilaris, was the only person who believed López was capable of doing what he’s done in his first stint as a starter since the second half of the 2021 season. He’s been a resounding success, whittling his majors-leading ERA to 1.69 after six scoreless innings in a 6-3 win Thursday against the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards.
“He’s been amazing,” said Marcell Ozuna, whose two-run double in the first inning gave the Braves a lead they never relinquished as they snapped a five-game losing streak — their longest since a six-game skid in September 2017 — and ended a disappointing trip on a positive note.
Ozuna helped López, his friend and Dominican countryman, get his fourth win in six decisions, a modest win total that reflects the Braves’ poor offensive support and certainly not how good López has been. He’s been outstanding, beyond what anyone expected. Well, other than his wife.
“After the ’21 season, I looked at myself as a reliever,” López said through an interpreter, after his third start with six scoreless innings this season and his eighth start with one or no earned runs allowed. “I set expectations as a reliever. So, yeah, I think I’ve sort of surpassed the expectations I had for myself. Like I said, I thought of myself as a reliever. So to be able to come out here and do this as a starter, I definitely feel like it surpasses expectations.”
He smiled before adding: “And really, I just want to give my credit to my wife, who was the only one who believed in me, the only one who had faith in me to be a starter in the big leagues. She was constantly telling my agent to keep looking for opportunities where I could be a starter somewhere, so she was the one who kind of kept the faith.”
🔴 6 shutout frames
🔴 8 strikeouts (ties season high)
🔴 2 hits allowedAll-Star things from MLB ERA leader Reynaldo López. pic.twitter.com/rWnimQzZTA
— Bally Sports: Braves (@BravesOnBally) June 13, 2024
When the Braves signed López, 30, there seemed at least as good of a chance that he would end up back in the bullpen despite what Anthopoulos said at the time about getting him stretched out to be a rotation candidate.
Reliever was the role López served exclusively in the past two seasons with three American League teams, primarily the Chicago White Sox. It was the role in which he’d had his most success, armed with a 100 mph fastball that overpowered hitters in the late innings, including Ozuna and Ronald Acuña Jr. when he faced the Braves last season.
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If he wasn’t in Atlanta’s bullpen to begin the season, there was wide speculation he’d be there by early summer to make room for a young starter. Needless to say, all that speculation has been put to rest by his performance.
The Braves have in him a frontline starter — he was moved up from the fifth spot in a rotation reshuffling soon after Spencer Strider’s season-ending injury in April — who pitches like he’s been one for many years. He demonstrates a feel for pitching and a repertoire that includes increased usage of an improved curveball to complement the four-seam fastball and sliders he featured predominantly as a reliever.
He averaged 98.3 mph with his fastball and 87.9 mph with the slider when airing it out in one-inning stints as a reliever. Now his average velocity is about 3 mph lower with each of those pitches as a starter. But he reaches back for 98 mph when he needs it to put away a hitter. His pacing and presence are that of a veteran starter — a top-half-of-the-rotation one, not a No. 5.
“It’s been impressive,” said Braves first baseman Matt Olson, whose two-run double in the ninth inning made it a 6-3 margin, after the Orioles had pulled within a run on Kyle Stowers’ seventh-inning three-run homer off reliever Pierce Johnson.
“I faced (López) in my Oakland days,” Olson said. “His stuff was always there, but it seems like he’s pitching a lot better now, mixing it up. Everything seems calculated, with a purpose, and you’re seeing results because of it.”
López won that rotation spot at spring training and isn’t going anywhere for the foreseeable future — except perhaps to the All-Star Game next month.
“He’s been really good, I tell you that,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said. “For me, it’s exceeded expectations, really.”
Two of the Braves’ three wins on the trip came in López’s two starts, and three of their wins during a current 5-9 stretch came in the three games in which he pitched. López got two wins and a no-decision in those games, posting a 1.50 ERA and totaling 23 strikeouts with four walks in 18 innings.
He worked six efficient innings in each of those games, with pitch counts of 87, 86 and Thursday’s 91.
"Every outing I go out I feel more confident in myself, in my ability and in my pitches."
Reynaldo López keeps padding his All-Star resume 🌟 pic.twitter.com/X0fFPYEsKW
— Bally Sports: Braves (@BravesOnBally) June 13, 2024
“Again, not to put undue expectations or pressure on them,” Anthopoulos said Wednesday when asked if Sale and López had exceeded expectations in their first months with the Braves, “but in terms of Sale, we expected him to be good. When we acquired him, he had a club option for 2025. It was no reason for us to need to extend him. But we went ahead and guaranteed him that season ahead of time, plus get the option for year three.”
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The Braves signed Sale to a two-year, $38 million extension with a third-year option five days after trading for him, superseding his previous deal that had one year plus an option remaining.
“We had that much belief in him, what he could be. Health was the only thing; our staff felt good about it,” Anthopoulos said. “And I know we’re still 2 1/2 months of the way in, but we expected when he’s on the mound to be a really good starter, a playoff-caliber guy, frontline guy. So as good as he’s been, I cannot, in all honesty, tell you I’m surprised.”
But López?
“In terms of Reynaldo López, he definitely has exceeded expectations,” Anthopoulos said. “We thought there was upside. We thought he definitely could start. It was a big part of the appeal of signing him. But to think he’d have an ERA below 2.00, everybody would be lying if they (said they) expected that. And look, I don’t think it’s fair to expect that going forward, either. If that was the case, there wouldn’t have been a (fifth starter) competition; we would have announced him as a starter right out of the gates. But we thought there was upside.
“We thought he certainly could be an ERA in the mid-to-high 3.00s with upside. And he’s pitched even better than that.”
Man, has he ever.
“Like I previously said, (my wife) was the only one who believed in me as a starter,” López said. “Not even myself. When she would start talking to us about, ‘Hey, let’s look for a team that would give us this (starting) opportunity,’ I told her to forget about that, let’s just make the best of what opportunity is given to us.”
López is glad he and his agent listened to her. And so are the Braves.
(Photo: Mitchell Layton / Getty Images)
