The North Port Report: Concern About Reynaldo López After Final Start of Spring?

Here's everything you need to know from Braves Spring Training in North Port, FL from Sunday

Welcome to The North Port Report, your nightly notebook from Braves spring training. Each evening, we’ll run through the biggest developments from camp: roster battles, injury updates, standout performances, and the small details that matter more than they seem in late-March. The games may not count yet, but the information does.

Here’s what stood out today

Reynaldo López got the start and it was…less than stellar. In his final outing before Opening Day, he allowed four earned runs on five hits, one of which was a three-run homer from Luke Keaschall. More frustrating than the results was the process - López averaged just 89.2 on his four-seam fastball, picking up just 3 whiffs on 19 swings and giving up 11 batted balls (four hard-hit).

While Braves starters haven’t been aggressively pushing their velocity this spring, it’s still a concerning trend at the end of camp. Was this intentional on the part of López, and will he have his regular velo available next week? Or is he dealing with some sort of dead arm/fatigue? The fact that Atlanta didn’t pull him from the game has me hoping it’s the former and not the latter.

The only other major leaguer who pitched was Aaron Bummer, who gave up one soft base hit but then induced a double play ball to get through a clean 6th inning. Interestingly, he also was significantly down on velo, averaging just 87.4 on the three four-seam fastballs he threw.

On the offensive side, a mostly backup-laden Braves squad jumped on Taj Bradley early and put up three runs, with Drake Baldwin driving in two of them with a single to right. After getting moved to second when Mike Yastrzemski drew a walk, Baldwin scored from second on a line drive to center off the bat of newly-minted DH Dominic Smith.

Outside of that, though, the Braves were mostly held in check. They finished with just six total hits, with both Baldwin and Smith picking up a second later in the contest. It was mostly rough sledding all around: The Braves didn’t draw another walk after the first inning, went 2-for-7 with runners in scoring position, and stranded seven on base.

Quick Hits

• Joel Payamps has converted his slider into a sweeper, so his arsenal is now sweeper/four-seamer/sinker/changeup. MLB made the change to his statcast card, acknowledging that it was probably correct to have always called this a sweeper instead of a more standard slider.

• Didier Fuentes, who has earned a bullpen spot to start the season, is planned for a long-relief role during the season-opening stretch of thirteen games in thirteen days. The plan as of now is to return him to Gwinnett to continue working as a starter after the team’s first off day, although that’s likely subject to change if he excels early.

• A team representative confirmed to the beat in Florida the opening rotation order to start the season vs Kansas City. Chris Sale will face Cole Ragans on Friday, with Reynaldo López (for now) being penciled in for Saturday and Spencer Strider on Sunday. The Royals had previously announced Michael Wacha for game two and Seth Lugo for game three.

• Speaking of Strider, he gets the ball tomorrow for the last road game of spring training. He’ll take on Carson Fulmer and the Pirates at 1:05 PM ET from Bradenton.

Observation of the Day

The new introduction for the BravesVision broadcasts has nailed what this team-owned network could be. It’s a quasi-tribute to Ted Turner and TBS, reusing part of the late 90s-early 2000s TBS musical theme.

Per multiple crowdsourced reports, BravesVision is showing up on the channel guides across several different cable and satellite providers, including Spectrum (451), DirecTV (645), and others. No word yet on either Xfinity or YouTube TV and no formal announcement has been made by the club.

Tomorrow’s watch list

Spencer Strider’s velocity and movement. I’ve personally started to wonder if he’s playing possum and is going to come out in game three throwing 96-97, but either way, the shape looks to be improved and that’s enough to see a path forward towards mid-rotation reliability this season.