{"id":805617,"date":"2026-09-15T12:30:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T12:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/805617\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T12:30:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T12:30:16","slug":"atlanta-braves-news-atlanta-drops-series-opener-to-cubs-owen-murphy-and-j-r-ritchie-return-to-atlanta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/805617\/","title":{"rendered":"Atlanta Braves News: Atlanta Drops Series Opener to Cubs, Owen Murphy and J.R. Ritchie Return to Atlanta"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">The Braves lost <a href=\"https:\/\/www.batterypower.com\/atlanta-braves-scores\/139795\/atlanta-braves-chicago-cubs-recap-final-score-reynaldo-lopez-aj-smith-shawver\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">to the Cubs 7-3 on Monday in Chicago. <\/a>While the Braves did have a chance to make things interesting late, the game never really seemed that close. One bright spot was a solid outing in relief from A.J. Smith Shawver.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">However, the story of the game were the continued struggles of Reynaldo Lopez. He was not effective at all in his two starts since returning from the IL. Following the game, he also let the team know that he had experience should issues at different points of the season. As a result, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.batterypower.com\/atlanta-braves-injuries\/139803\/reynaldo-lopez-will-be-going-on-the-il-per-report\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">he will be headed back to the IL. <\/a>And with shoulder issues being the reason he only made one start in all of 2025, it is a less than ideal end of Lopez\u2019s 2026 season.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Mark Bowman looks at where Chris Sale\u2019s season ranks among the best seasons of Braves\u2019 pitchers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Braves lost to the Cubs 7-3 on Monday in Chicago. While the Braves did have a chance&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2394],"tags":[191,46,4206,4166,5,192,4],"class_list":["post-805617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-atlanta-braves","tag-atlanta","tag-atlanta-braves","tag-atlanta-braves-news","tag-atlantabraves","tag-baseball","tag-braves","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117275067880595612","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805617","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=805617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}