JUST IN: The incredible Braves star appears ready to sweep the Rockies however…..
The Atlanta Braves are looking to complete their revenge tour against the Colorado Rockies as they look to complete their sweep of them in
Reynaldo López takes the mound for the Braves and he has a high probability of lowering his season ERA below the 2.00 ERA mark at some point in the game. With him currently sitting at 121.2 IP, this accomplishment would obviously be impressive.
López does not have enough innings to be a qualified pitcher for the ERA crown. He is nineteen behind what he would need to qualify, which this late in the season is not many. Even so, let’s look at how many pitchers who ended a season with a sub 2.00.
In the past decade only eight qualified starting pitchers ended the season with an ERA below 2.00, and three of them were in the 2020 shortened season. Keuchel, Bauer, Bieber did it in 2020, deGrom and Snell did it in 2018, Grienke and Arrieta did it in 2015, and Kershaw in 2014. Although it is unlikely, should López reach the innings needed to be qualified, it would put him in rarified air. Either way, it does show how impressive this stretch of run prevention has been.
It should be noted that his expected ERA (xERA) sits at 4.15 and his rolling expected weighted On Base Average (xwOBA) has been right around league average in his last one-hundred plate appearances against him. This is partly due to being quite lucky in the strand rate (LOB%) arena. League average LOB% typically sits between 70.0-74.0 percent depending on the year. Currently, López has a strand rate of 86.5 percent.
This is not to take away from what he has done. He has been an absolute boon for the Braves. It is just a little insight into the fact that we may see some regression to the mean at some point.
Two of his last three starts were against the Phillies and in these past three starts his has given up a combined three earned runs. He has not faced the Rockies this year, and has only faced four of their players in the past. Toglia and Jones have one at-bat against him, and Stallings has two. None of these players have gotten on base. The one player to keep an eye on is Jake Cave, who has faced López in thirteen at-bats. He has a career .385 average, 1.352 OPS, and two HRs in this somewhat limited sample size.
Austin Gomber is on the mound for the Rockies sporting a 4.69 ERA and 1.299 WHIP over 144.0 innings pitched this season. He has not faced the Braves this season. It should be noted, that he has an xERA of 5.23, which is in the bottom 8.0 percent of MLB qualified starters.
He has faced most of players on the Braves in the past, but in very limited fashion. He has seen Whit Merrifield the most with ten at-bats, and Jorge Soler the second most with eight. Merrifield has a .900 OPS and a HR against him, and Soler has a 1.625 OPS with two HRs against him. It will be interesting to see if Merrifield is good to go tonight after the scary HBP to his head earlier in the week.
Ludacris rocked the giant arms and sneakers from his iconic “Get Back” music video, leaving some fans utterly confused.
