{"id":649747,"date":"2026-03-29T02:50:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T02:50:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/649747\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T02:50:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T02:50:16","slug":"dominic-smith-crushes-walk-off-grand-slam-to-put-braves-past-royals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/649747\/","title":{"rendered":"Dominic Smith crushes walk-off grand slam to put Braves past Royals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) &#8211; A week ago, Dominic Smith didn\u2019t know if he had made the Atlanta Braves opening day roster.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">On Saturday, he was a hero.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">After the Braves rallied in the ninth inning to tie Saturday\u2019s game against the Kansas City Royals, Smith delivered a walk-off grand slam off right-hander Carlos Estevez, giving the team a 6-2 victory and a 2-0 start to the season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">After the game, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/grantmcauley\/status\/2038082702654492895\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow\" title=\"https:\/\/x.com\/grantmcauley\/status\/2038082702654492895\">Smith shared<\/a> that his mother had passed away from cancer just two weeks earlier. The fan who caught his home run ball returned it, and Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr. signed a baseball for the fan in exchange for the keepsake.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Smith\u2019s home run traveled 386 feet, sending the Truist Park crowd into a frenzy. The excitement came after a lackluster showing from the Braves\u2019 bats for most of the game \u2014 up until the ninth inning, when they capitalized on Reynaldo L\u00f3pez\u2019s stellar season debut.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">It was quite the return for L\u00f3pez, who allowed just one run \u2014 a solo home run by Salvador Perez in the seventh inning \u2014 over six innings, after making only one start in 2025 before missing the rest of the season due to a shoulder injury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">L\u00f3pez averaged 94.4 mph and topped 97.1 mph on his four-seam fastball, a rise in velocity after what seemed like a mechanical error in his last start of spring training.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Now two games into Walt Weiss\u2019s tenure, the Braves are showing early signs of life. They trailed 2\u20130 entering the ninth, but RBI singles from Yastrzemski and Harris tied the game before Smith delivered the walk-off homer.<\/p>\n<p>Up next<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Braves face the Royals on Sunday to cap the three-game series before hosting the Athletics for a three-game set starting Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WANF. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) &#8211; A week ago, Dominic Smith didn\u2019t know if he had made the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2394],"tags":[191,46,83225,48729,4166,5,192,11056,83226,1092,7029,18701,83224,83227,55,4,5171,77072,252,42887],"class_list":{"0":"post-649747","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-braves","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-braves","10":"tag-atlanta-braves-dominic-smith","11":"tag-atlanta-braves-win","12":"tag-atlantabraves","13":"tag-baseball","14":"tag-braves","15":"tag-braves-record","16":"tag-braves-walk-off","17":"tag-carlos-estevez","18":"tag-did-the-braves-win","19":"tag-dominic-smith","20":"tag-dominic-smith-braves","21":"tag-dominic-smith-mother","22":"tag-kansas-city-royals","23":"tag-mlb","24":"tag-reynaldo-lopez","25":"tag-reynaldo-lopez-braves","26":"tag-royals","27":"tag-royals-bullpen"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116310194552522564","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}