Alright, it’s Friday, this game preview is going up in the mid-afternoon because this game is happening very late if you are on East Coast time, and I’m going to take a quick detour because I’m not sure how many people even read game previews in general, much less read game previews that will go up at 5 pm ET on a Friday for a game that starts after 10 ET.
Over the past few years, I’ve had this recurring thought: what if stuff just worked out? I don’t mean, in the end, after a bunch of detours and elbow grease and serendipitous solutions to cropping-up problems. I mean, just… from the jump. What if you wanted or needed to do something, and it was easy, and your first idea worked out fine? The reason I think about this, of course, is because it feels like stuff doesn’t just work out. Here’s an example: we got a car to replace the one that was totaled a few years ago. A minor “want” in the replacement car we got was finally having a car new enough to plug your phone into the USB port and get stuff like Google Maps shown on the infotainment display. It isn’t that we erred in this regard, it was just… I hopped into it to set this up for my wife before she took the car to work this morning, and come on, seriously? It wasn’t a plug-and-play. First the phone wouldn’t pair (even though it was plugged in via USB), then it paired via USB but apparently also needed Bluetooth to actually connect, and the Bluetooth couldn’t find the car or vice versa on my wife’s phone but could on my phone, so after clearing every cache (including the car’s, which wasn’t straightforward), and finally realizing that you had to do a specific order of operations that involved first connecting and syncing via USB and the re-syncing via Bluetooth while it was connected via USB, would you finally get the car’s system to actually be able to use Android Auto rather than just saying the phone was connected but Android Auto crashing with no error message. So that was not a great use of an hour or so.
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But that’s just one example. There are so many that occur every week that — even if this doesn’t happen to you directly — you can see why I fixate on “what if stuff just worked out?” Here’s a fun one: I am supposed to get a payout from the insurer. They have an electronic payment thing. It requires 2FA to be able to log in and direct the payment. For some reason, the insurer has the 2FA number listed as my office number… which would be fine, except that during the pandemic we switched to a fully-electronic switchboard (no more receptionist), but the insurer won’t change the number on file, saying that they’ll just send me a check once the five-day limit on receiving electronic payment lapses. Why didn’t they use my cell for the 2FA number? Because stuff doesn’t just work out. There are a billion similar enshittification-related examples from daily life, but hopefully you get the idea, even if you don’t personally experience this. And, if you don’t, I am personally delighted for you.
(I hired a guy to do some mild landscape/lawn work because I don’t have time. My hiring process was explicitly oriented around “I want someone that will just do it and not bug me” because if I had the time to be bugged about it I’d just do it myself. He said he’d start two weeks ago. He has not. Hopefully he’s still alive. The lawn is… how it was before I hired him. | I signed my older kid up for summer camp months ago. It starts in a couple of weeks. No communication from the camp about logistics or anything, even though it was the same camp and they had clear, timely communication last year. Now I have to reach out to them. Oy. It goes on and on like this.)
Why do I bring this up? Because it’s so wholly relevant to the Braves. 2023 was the last year of “stuff just works out” (something I feel relatively mirrored in my life; I think stuff got harder in 2024). 2024 was an epic inputs underperformance that lasted for months, along with injuries. Even though it was successful, it wasn’t easy and there was no “just” in it working out. 2025, well, it didn’t work out at all, but it also featured a lot of teeth-pulling while it was failing. Injuries, an unforced error of a changed offensive approach, and more injuries.
And then we get to 2026, and it’s whiplash-inducing in a way. The first two months of 2026? It was glorious. It was “stuff just works out” with a vengeance. The Braves have to use a roster fill-in in a key role? Dominic Smith comes through, again and again, and posts some pretty insane outputs and inputs considering his career arc. The Braves don’t have a north star offensive approach with a spare parts lineup? No worries, they all hit the ball hard early in the count and post great outputs and inputs. Austin Riley has no idea what’s going on at the plate? No worries, Drake Baldwin and Matt Olson are two of MLB’s best bats in the early going to more than make up for it. The rotation is suspect? No sweat, the defense will play so well that the team barely gives up runs. The Braves could do no wrong… for a while. Michael Harris II was day-to-day and not in the lineup, but had a game-winning pinch-hit double that cleared the bases and was the only source of the Braves’ runs in a game against the Pirates that secured a sweep.
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And then, just like that, it all came crashing down into “it just doesn’t work out” territory. The Braves were aggressive with pitching decisions to some extent, but have given the ball to Carlos Carrasco, in all his roster barnacle-ness, in two games in the past two weeks, each of which turned a lead into a loss. There have been a number of other foibles, but these are perhaps all overshadowed by how all the stuff regarding run-scoring that worked so well over two months just cratered. The fill-ins are playing like fill-ins, the non-fill-ins are playing like fill-ins, Drake Baldwin was rushed back to reduce the reliance on no-hit backup catchers and started hitting like one himself… I’m not going to detail all of it, but basically, things went from immaculate vibes and smooth sailing to the baseball equivalent of all those paragraphs about my personal first world problem-esque travails above.
So, how are the Braves responding to this? By… pushing Chris Sale back two more days (his normal rest pitch day would’ve been yesterday) and giving the ball to Reynaldo Lopez. Yes, the Reynaldo Lopez that was yoinked out of the rotation after five starts, and has been pitching nondescript mop-up relief since.
Lopez’ first five starts of the season were, commensurate with his whole 2026 saga, just really weird. His first two were really gross peripherals-wise, but because everything was working out easily, the only run charged to him came on a solo homer in each. His third had better peripherals, but ended after a bout of fisticuffs with Jorge Soler. His fourth kept up the good peripherals, but the Marlins BABIPed him. His fifth and final was a disaster that got him banished from the rotation. In aggregate, it was an 89/130/118 line (ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-) in five starts — okay only if you look at the ERA, and honestly, pretty brutal otherwise. So, Lopez went to the bullpen. Banished to the bullpen, more like. He’s pitched very intermittently (13 outings in about seven weeks), and has largely pitched in garbage time (no high-leverage outings, four medium-leverage but on the very low end of medium leverage). His relief performance has been better but not good considering his usage: 78/95/104, which is basically what you’d expect from a decent mop-up guy.
And now, he’s going back into the rotation. The Braves don’t expect him to go more than a few innings, but since nothing is easy, this could mean they have to cover eight or nine frames with the non-Lopez bullpen if things go awry. On the flip side, if the Giants blow Lopez up on relatively few pitches, the bullpen will still have to work a lot. It’s an odd strategy for a team desperate to save the bullpen — as someone noted in the comments, you can’t actually rest both the starters (i.e., Sale) and the bullpen, but the Braves are somehow attempting to thread that needle right now while also not collapsing out of the division lead altogether. It’s a very tall order.
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The Giants haven’t announced a starter. It’s nominally Trevor McDonald’s turn in the rotation; McDonald has a 121/103/94 line in nine starts, but has gotten blown up each of his last two tries, not making it out of the fourth in either try. Maybe that means the starter is unannounced because the Giants will use one of their numerous lefty relievers as an opener ahead of the right-handed McDonald, or maybe something else will happen. In any case, this isn’t a marquee matchup, and the Braves need to figure out how to win games like this in the effortless manner they managed in April and May. But if they don’t, well, maybe they can spend some time calling that lawn guy or my kid’s camp instead.
Game Info
Game Date/Time: Friday, June 26, 10:15 p.m. EDT
Location: Oracle Park, San Francisco, CA
TV: BravesVision
Streaming: MLB.tv
Radio: 680 AM / 93.7 FM The Fan
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