Through the first three months of the season, he posted wRC+ of 87 (eww), 25 (beyond gross), and 91 (eww again). In 360 plate appearances with Kansas City, he slashed. When he was with the Royals as their designated hitter and occasional outfielder, he was truly not good. However, again, this was a tale of two seasons for Soler (and also a tale of xwOBA underperformance in Kansas City tanking his overall line). well, they leave something to be desired. The power output was okay, but not great considering he was a designated hitter and corner outfielder for the season, and the overall wRC+ and WAR numbers. If you were somehow completely unaware of what Soler did in a Braves’ uniform, you could absolutely be forgiven if you saw Soler’s stat line from the 2021 season and uttered some version of “Eww.” The batting average was ugly. (The PA cutoff had to be dropped to 75 or more to drop Soler out of the top 10 underperformers, where he was still 11th.) So, there were plenty of reasons to be bullish on Soler’s offense for the final two months of the season, and you could just close your eyes when he had to take the field.Īs it turns out, the Braves were very, very right.Ģ021 Stats: Jorge Soler. He was literally the biggest xwOBA underperformer among all players with 250+ PAs at the Trade Deadline, and second to just Ozuna among players with 200+ PAs. As a result, Soler kind of looked like a lottery ticket on both ends: first, could he bounce back offensively, light tower power and all, and second, could he actually play in a DH-less NL and not kill a team with his defense?Īfter the trade, the Braves indicated that they were interested in Soler because of his pre-trade hot streak (a wRC+ of over 200 and six homers in his last 37 PAs), and in pretty expected fashion for this front office, he was a clear xwOBA underperformer - as a Royal in 2021, Soler had an above-average. He stopped his 2020 passivity at the plate, but had started to chase a fair bit instead. Soler had -1.1 fWAR in his 360 PAs with the Royals, which combined some terrible outfield defense with a 79 wRC+. That, combined with some added whiffs in the zone, shot his strikeout rate way up in a weird way, and it wasn’t clear whether it was a blip or some kind of new issue.įast-forward a few months, and things were weird.
One specific concern for Soler coming into 2021 was that he spent his 170-odd PAs in 2020 being very passive, swinging at below 60 percent of strikes he saw. The basic idea was that Soler hit enough to be a well above-average player, but provided essentially no other value in the field or on the bases, which made him more of an average contributor overall. Soler was coming off a disappointing 2020 in which he underhit his xwOBA a fair bit en route to a 108 wRC+ and 0.6 fWAR, which came on the heels of a 3.6 fWAR season in 2019 (136 wRC+, 48 homers). 246/.342/.495 line with 30 homers on his way to a 2.4 fWAR season. Before the 2021 season, ZiPS had Soler projected as a designated hitter that would post a. There are two very distinct categories for this: preseason, and midseason, right after Soler was traded. Kalich was a ranked relief prospect towards the end of Atlanta’s top prospect lists, but to get a guy with the kind of power upside that Soler possesses, even for a couple of months, the deal was a no-brainer. Remember when Abraham Almonte and Guillermo Heredia were getting a bunch of at-bats out there? Yeah, it’s best not to think too much of those days.Īfter trading for Joc Pederson a few weeks before the Trade Deadline, the Braves were not content with their outfield depth and, among a flurry of other moves, they grabbed Jorge Soler from the Royals in exchange for relief prospect Kasey Kalich on July 30th.
The Braves found themselves in a really rough spot with their outfield: Marcell Ozuna was first getting hurt and then embroiled in a domestic violence case, while MVP candidate Ronald Acuña Jr suffered a season-ending knee injury.
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One of the key players among the set of these acquisitions? Look no further than 2021 World Series MVP, Jorge Soler. However, what ended up happening was that those assets fueled a playoff berth and then a run through the postseason for the ages.
At the time, it was lauded primarily because Alex Anthopoulos traded for some useful players without giving up any meaningful long-term assets. The 2021 MLB Trade Deadline that the Braves put together could be considered to be among the most impactful that MLB has ever seen.