Given that Reynaldo Lopez missed nearly all of the 2025 season, I’m sure no one was really looking forward to a reality where he was the Braves’ de facto number two starter. Nonetheless, that reality is here: Spencer Schwellenbach and Hurston Waldrep went down with substantial injuries earlier, and then Spencer Strider hit the shelf with an oblique issue. So, here we are: behind Chris Sale, it’s Lopez today, and then Grant Holmes in the series finale.
Lopez’ health and effectiveness is a pretty swing-y part of the Braves’ eventual 2026 success, or lack thereof. He dazzled in his return to starting in 2024, with a collective 48/74/85 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) where he at least hinted at the ability to outperform his peripherals by amping up his pitches in key situations. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to see whether he could repeat the misaligned pitching line, because he made all of one start in 2025 and then went down with shoulder woes for the rest of the year.
Coming into this season, Lopez’ production is a wild card. On the one hand, he avoided explicit injury in Spring Training. On the other hand, when getting his tune-ups in, he exhibited diminished velocity, and set off the unpleasant clanging of alarm bells when, in his most recent outing, he not only looked disastrous mechanically, but was lobbing in sub-90 mph fastballs for the whole outing. That resulted in an uncanny (and not in a good way) bit of damage control by the Braves — who first answered that the lower velocity (and presumably other issues) were the result of a mechanical misadjustment, and then had Alex Anthopoulos confirm such (and indicate that he now felt much better about the situation) on an Opening Day radio appearance.
How much you believe all of that is entirely up to you. Maybe it’ll be fine, maybe Lopez’ shoulder has just congealed into one of those weird reheatable ham blocks I heard advertised on the radio this morning and is no longer suitable for big league pitching. The proof is going to be in the pudding… or… ham… block… thing. (Seriously, I wish I didn’t know how ham was made. Don’t look it up.) If Lopez falters, the Braves do have a bunch of bullpen arms capable of throwing a bunch of innings to salvage this game, so hopefully, if there are issues, we see something fairly proactive in terms of pitching management.
The Royals, meanwhile, will be looking for their first W of 2026 behind Michael Wacha. The now-34-year-old signed a chunky deal with Kansas City ahead of the 2024 season ($51 million, three years), and delivered with a career-high 3.6 fWAR across 31 starts (also a career high) and 172 2/3 innings. That performance topped the first year of his deal, where he had 3.3 fWAR and an 81/89/101 line. Basically, the Royals feel really good about this deal, in all likelihood. His 2025 performance benefited from some stuff beyond his pitching, as his line was 91/88/109. A lot of his success was driven by a very low HR/FB rate, and the Braves will have to hope and/or force the issue, as their path to success still probably runs through hitting a bunch of homers, as they showed yesterday. (For his career, Wacha is at 96/97/100, so this gap-against-xFIP is pretty recent development and likely related to whatever adjustments he’s made to keep pitching into his mid-30s.)
Kind of amazingly given his career, Wacha hasn’t faced the Braves since 2023, where he had a dominant outing against them. Before then, the Braves had knocked him around in four straight prior starts going back to 2017. He’s been around for over a decade now, and has evolved a fair bit, so history is probably just a curiosity here. The same goes for Lopez, who has 27 career appearances against the Royals and terrible numbers against them, but most of those issues came during his uneven White Sox tenure. He dominated them in a start in late 2024, but again, that’s probably not too relevant for these proceedings.
Anyway, the Braves are on a quest to go 2-0 and keep exorcising last year’s demons. We’ll see if they can manage it.
Game Info
Kansas City Royals at Atlanta Braves
Saturday, March 28, 7:15 pm EDT
Truist Park, Atlanta, GA
TV/Video: Fox (national, should not be blacked out on MLB.tv)
Radio/Audio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan
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