Atlanta Braves 2024 All-Star starting pitcher Reynaldo López enters the season with workhorse ambitions. Last season, he clocked 135 2/3 innings across 25 starts. According to MLB.com’s Mark Bowman, he’s looking to top that and reach a mark no Braves pitcher has reached in a decade.
López has the goal of making between 30 and 35 starts and also reaching 200 innings pitched. According to Bowman, no Braves pitcher has reached the 200-inning plateau since Shelby Miller and Julio Teheran both reached it in 2015.
He’s looking to reach a mark that Max Fried – known for being able to toss a couple complete games a season – has only come within 25 innings of once. Spencer Strider missed it by 13 1/3 innings in 2023.
To be fair to López, he’s come close himself in the past. He’s surpassed 180 innings pitched twice in his career. His career high was 188 2/3 innings pitched across 32 starts in 2018.
However, it’s been some time. Last season saw him throw more than 66 innings for the first time since 2019. The fact that he was able to build back up into the starting role and put in the workload that he did is admirable.
Since he’s shown he can make more than 30 starts in a season before, we can assume he’ll do that just by staying healthy. Thirty-five starts is a big ask. Since 2008, that mark has been reached by three pitchers: Justin Verlander (2009), Dan Harren (2010) and David Price (2016). Go back to 200, and the number only jumps to 12 instances overall (and Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling combine for five of them).
It’s ambitious to give the 30 to 35 range, but he can do it, it’s all the power to him.
It still needs to be determined what it’ll take for him to reach 200 innings.
To state the obvious, he’s going to need to pitch deeper into games. Less obvious is how deep. He averaged about 5 1/3 innings pitched last season in 25 starts. The one-inning relief outing was omitted from the math.
If he makes 30 starts, five more than last year, he’ll pitch about 162 innings. If he reaches the high end of 35 starts, he’ll finish with about 189 innings pitched. So, if he does actually reach the high end of his goal for starts, he doesn’t need to pitch that much deeper – only 5.71 (realistically averaging six) innings per start.
But if he just reaches 30 innings pitched, he needs to average 6 2/3 innings per start. He pitched that many innings in a start once when he finished the seventh inning on April 24.
Again, if he had been healthy, he probably would have pitched deeper into games as the season went on. But the injuries also reflect that he hadn’t pitched that much in some time too. He had two stints on the Injured List last season. Reaching 200 innings in the modern day means missing no time.
With Charlie Morton no longer around to guarantee somebody gets 30 starts in on the mound, the Braves are praying he’s able to follow through on this plan.
López is coming off of his first Spring Training start of the year. He pitched two scoreless innings.