Reynaldo López Wants To Be a Starter Next Year

The Atlanta Braves might already have a full rotation before they ever get to the offseason

There’s a common belief in Major League Baseball that you can never have enough pitching.

The Atlanta Braves appear poised to test that assertion.

Reynaldo López, who has made only one start in 2025 due to a recurring shoulder issue that required arthroscopic surgery, is throwing flat grounds and intends to pinch in the rotation, not the bullpen, next season.

Can his body hold up, and what does this do for Atlanta’s rotation depth next year? Let’s talk about it.

Starting isn’t unfamiliar to him

The conversation when Atlanta first signed López in the fall of 2023 was that, despite some excellent seasons in the back end of a bullpen, like a 22-hold and six-save campaign in 2023, López was moving back into the rotation full-time for the first time since the shortened 2020 season.

From 2017 to 2020, López started 81 games for the Chicago White Sox, and while he put up impressive innings totals, breaking 180 innings in both full-length seasons, he wasn’t particularly good. He finished that stretch with a 4.76 ERA and 1.375 WHIP, including the ignominy of leading all of baseball in earned runs in 2019 with 110.

Explains why they moved him to the bullpen, right?

Working in shorter stints immediately did a few things for him. The first was taking his 94-95 mph starter fastball and ramping up the velocity to an average of 98.2 in 2023. The results against it immediately improved, with the pitch’s batting average and slugging allowed falling from .292/.455 (2019) to .189/.322 (2023) while the whiff rate rose from 19.5% to 26.9%.

The improvement in the fastball, consequently, juiced the results in his slider. Comparing 2019 to 2023, the slider went from a good whiff rate of 33.9% to a great rate of 38.7% and opposing batters went from a .500 slug to a .395 off the pitch.¹

The thing about López as a reliever, though, was a matter of how much he got used. He pitched between 57.2 and 66 innings each of his three seasons as a reliever. But all but the best relievers aren’t nearly as valuable to the average team as even a mid-tier starter, simply because innings are valuable.

The goal was to build value

Atlanta signed Reynaldo López almost immediately after the 2023 offseason started, inking him to a three-year, $30M deal in mid-November.

But they did it with the intention of converting him back into a starter.

The team structured the contract as a backloaded pact, with López getting $4M in year one and $11M each in years two and three. Even at the larger yearly cost, that’s a relative pittance for even a backend starter in free agency. Between 2022 and 2025, seven different starters signed for an AAV of between $10M and $11M. Here’s the list, as well as the ERA and innings in their first season:

Lance Lynn: 117.1 IP, 3.84 ERA
Tyler Mahle: 12.2 IP, 4.97 ERA
Jordan Hicks: 109.2 IP, 4.10 ERA
Matthew Boyd: 71 IP, 5.45 ERA
Kyle Gibson: 192 IP, 4.73 ERA
Corey Kluber: 55 IP, 7.04 ERA
Reynaldo López: 135.2 IP, 1.99 ERA

2nd in innings and 1st in ERA, by a healthy margin. Good job, Alex Anthopoulos.

The 1.99 ERA for López came on the strength of his breaking balls, with the curveball and slider allowing batting averages of .151 and .167, respectively. He also used the experience as a reliever to ramp up his velocity with runners on base, averaging nearly 98 miles per hour at time with on his fastball with runners in scoring position compared to 95.6 for the entire season and 95.2 without runners on base. “Reaching back for a little extra” was absolutely a thing for López, with his batting averages for runners in scoring position (.090) dramatically outpacing his batting average allowed with the bases empty (.261).

That first season, one in which López was named to his very first All-Star Game before forearm and shoulder injuries made him miss part of the second half, went so well that the Braves reworked his contract in the offseason. López’s new deal paid him $8M in 2025 and 2027, sandwiching a $11M salary for 2026. In essence, the team guaranteed his $8M club option for 2027 in the old contract in exchange for three million less in this most recent season.

Taking that extra guaranteed year turned out to be a good move on López’s part. After his first start of the season, a loss in San Diego where he gave up three runs on nine hits in five innings, he went on the injured list with right shoulder inflammation that became a “clean-up” arthroscopic surgery. He was shut down for twelve weeks and then started a throwing program, but he won’t be able to return this season.

But as we alluded to earlier, he told MLB.com’s Mark Bowman that when he returns, it’ll be to the rotation - he has no intention of moving back to the bullpen. What does this do to Atlanta’s rotation depth and plans for next season?

How many starters can one team carry?

Those that have followed me throughout the years have heard some of the old chestnuts that I repeat frequently: “your power tool is only as good as your hit tool” when talking about position player prospects, or “two things can be true at once” when trying to articulate that who a player is now doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll always be the exact same player.

Here’s another one for you: Depth will always work itself out.

As I repeat fairly often, the Braves have used between ten and thirteen conventional starters in each of the last five seasons. They just hit 13 with Hurston Waldrep’s call-up a few starts, and Cal Quantrill’s start on Saturday will actually make it 14 this year, a new high for the Statcast era.

Here’s the tentative starting five, in no specific order, as I see it right now:

Chris Sale
Spencer Strider
Spencer Schwellenbach
Reynaldo López
Hurston Waldrep

This is (obviously) without AJ Smith-Shawver, out after Tommy John surgery, and without Grant Holmes, who is attempting non-surgical rehab of his UCL injury but who might end up needing to go under the knife this winter.

But Atlanta has other starting options in the organization, as well. Just counting guys who have both pitched in the majors for Atlanta and have additional team control:

Joey Wentz
Bryce Elder
Didier Fuentes
Dane Dunning
Davis Daniel
Ian Anderson

Depending on how you feel about the last two names on there, that’s somewhere between nine and eleven starters on your depth chart.

When you look at prospects who haven’t yet debuted, it goes even deeper. Just players who could realistically get a cup of coffee (or more) in 2026:

JR Ritchie
Blake Burkhalter
Jhancarlos Lara
Ian Mejia
Lucas Braun
Drue Hackenberg

Depending on how you feel about those last two, that’s now somewhere between thirteen and seventeen starters.

This gives you flexibility

If the organization thinks that Reynaldo López can stay healthy and hold down a rotation spot for all of 2026, this gives the team flexibility this winter.

I’d previously discussed wanting the team to grab two starters in free agency - one of the ‘Big Four’ of Dylan Cease, Framber Valdez, Michael King, and Zac Gallen, and then supplementing with a backend, “innings-eater” veteran. There are a lot more options there, ranging from potential postseason starters in Ranger Suárez and Chris Bassitt to pure backend guys in Aaron Civale, Michael Lorenzen, and Andrew Heaney.

But if López is in the rotation, is it possible the team grabs one starter instead of two and then goes after a strong back-end relief class? Not only could they bring back Raisel Iglesias if they so chose (and likely at a discount), they could also target someone like Devin Williams, Ryan Helsley, Andrés Muñoz, or even Aroldis Chapman to fortify the 9th inning.

(More on these relief options coming later this weekend from Grae.)

The big question here is health for López: Can he hold up to another season in the rotation? My inclination is yes. I’m not a doctor, but you’d think that whatever cleanup procedure he had likely fixed the recurring shoulder issue that’s nagged him since last summer.

And if he can stay in the rotation, look out, MLB. I’d put that starting five up against any other organization’s top five, because top to bottom, it’s all guys you’d let start a postseason game for you. How many teams can say they have that when they break spring training?

Now, getting three of them to October is easier said than done, but let’s take this one step at a time.

1. Interestingly, in both seasons, opposing batters hit .247 off of it. There were just a lot more singles in 2023 versus extra-base hits in 2019.