Braves Offseason Acquisition Voted One of Most Impactful Offseason Signings by Front Office Executives

The Atlanta Braves are getting good reviews for their offseason signing for the rotation.

Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Reynaldo López has been one of the league's best offseason additions, as voted on by MLB front office executives. / Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

The Atlanta Braves typically aren’t that active in free agency. 

As a team that prefers to either draft and develop or acquire players via trade and sign them to extension, the Braves don’t typically get too involved in the free agency market, where players are often overvalued from a salary standpoint and being paid for what they’ve done in the past, not what they will do going forward. 

When President of Baseball Operations Alex Anthopoulos does go out in the free agent market, however, he likes to make under-the-radar signings for specific players, choosing that method over trying to fill a need with anyone available at that position. 

One of those moves from last offseason is proving to be a well-regarded one. In a MLB.com poll of front-office executives, the late November signing of reliever-turned-starter Reynaldo López was named one of the ten best signings of last offseason. 

López tied for third place with one vote out of the two dozen cast; only two players, Chicago Cubs starter Shota Imanaga (nine votes) and Los Angeles Dodgers two-way player Shohei Ohtani (four votes) received more than one vote in the poll. 

An anonymous AL executive, presumably the one that voted for López, explained it simply. “Reynaldo López could be quite a steal for Atlanta if they successfully continue his conversion back into the rotation.”

López, 30, signed a three-year, $30M deal early in the offseason. He’s earning only $4M this season before that increases to $11M in both 2025 and 2026. The team also holds a $8M team option for 2027, his age 33 season, with a $4M buyout due to López if the team does not pick up the option. 

As the anonymous executive mentioned, López converted from the Chicago White Sox rotation to the bullpen after the 2020 season. Over the last three seasons, he’s had a 3.14 ERA across 149 games, striking out 9.6 batters per nine innings. His 189 innings across that three-season span equal his yearly totals from his last two full seasons in the rotation, 2018 & 2019, where he pitched 188.2 and 184 innings respectively. 

Atlanta announced soon after the signing that López was converting to the rotation, a move that’s been spectacular. Across his first six starts, López has allowed only six earned runs, not allowing more than one run in any single game until the season’s fifth outing. His 1.53 ERA would be good for 2nd among starters were he to have enough innings to qualify; MLB leaderboards require one inning pitcher per team game, so 162 for a season and 38 right now; López has 35.1 innings pitched. 

Part of the reason López doesn’t qualify from an innings perspective is the team has been cognizant of the workload issues for López this season. Generally, season-to-season increases in innings are recommended to be held to around 50 or so, meaning López shouldn’t go above 120 innings this season. Atlanta has ensured that both López and the two veterans in the rotation, 40-year-old Charlie Morton and 34-year-old Chris Sale (who is coming off of multiple seasons of reduced workloads due to injury) get extra rest between starts. 

In López’s six outings this season, he’s pitched once on five days of rest, three times on six days of rest, and once on seven days of rest. Most MLB rotations feature four days of rest between outings, but Atlanta has strategically used off days and minor-league callups to give extra rest to their rotation, already without expected ace Spencer Strider (elbow) for the entirety of 2024.