Is Nicky Lopez good? Well, maybe.

I was not overly impressed when the Braves made the deadline trade to bring a .213 hitting 28 year old over to fill a roster spot that hadn’t seen the field in almost 2 months. Noah stepped off the ark more quickly than Charlie Culberson was ever loosed from the Atlanta dugout, so there really didn’t seem to be any reason to care who was holding down that 26th roster spot.

Nicky got his first start for the Braves on August 12th against the carcass of the Mets, going 4 – 6 and raising his batting average 16 points in a 21 – 3 blowout. By the 9th inning, Lopez was approaching folk hero status, homering off position player Danny Mendick in the top of the inning and pitching a hitless bottom half. An injury to Ozzie Albies put Lopez in the lineup on August 14th and he responded with a 3 – 4 effort and added another 12 points in batting average, now up to .241. He ended up playing in 25 games in 2 months with the Braves and had a cumulative total of .231/.326/.307 in 262 plate appearances across Kansas City and Atlanta.

Lopez has an excellent defensive reputation and shows up on several fielding leaderboards over his career. With a .249/.312/.319 career batting line and turning 29 in March it would seem we should have a pretty good picture of Nicky Lopez at this point. However, there are a couple of things I overlooked back in August that intrigue me. Stuck in the middle of 4 fairly poor offensive seasons, in 2021 Lopez hit .300/.365/.378 and stole 21 bases in 22 attempts. The other thing is that he was a pretty decent hitter for average in the minors, batting .296/.379/.403 in over 1592 plate appearances, and pretty consistent numbers across A, AA, and AAA.

So, is Nicky Lopez good? I think Lopez could be a surprise for somebody if all he needs is to get the Kansas City off of him. Remember that Arcia had an outlier year in him back in 2017 after all, and came back to life at age 28. I wouldn’t bet my 2024 World Series ring on it, but Nicky Lopez could probably be helping somebody.