Twenty nuggets on new Marlin Jorge Soler, his track record and where team goes from here
Twenty nuggets on what the Marlins are getting with new outfielder Jorge Soler, and how he fits and the aftermath of his acquisition:
▪ This is a player who, at times, has had trouble staying healthy and - as recently as last season - has struggled for months at a time.
But the 30-year-old Soler also is immensely talented, among the top power hitters in the game since 2019, and capable of dynamic stretches such as the three-homer-in-six-game performance that helped win him the World Series MVP for the Atlanta Braves last season.
▪ On July 19 last year, Soler was hitting .183 with just seven home runs for Kansas City. Then he smashed six homers in six games, building up his trade stock and motivating the Braves to acquire him.
“Before, I was looking at pitches in the zone and missing them,” Soler told reporters at the time. “Now I’m not missing them.”
He played well for the Braves (.269, 14 homers, 33 RBI in 55 games) but was particularly good in the final two weeks of the regular season (four homers, 11 RBI in the final 11 games) and then in the World Series.
In between, he went 1-for-11 in the divisional series and missed five games (the last four in the NLCS) after testing positive for COVID-19.
But he was brilliant in the World Series, hitting a leadoff home run in Game 1 against Houston, provided the winning run with a home run in Game 4 and hitting another homer in Atlanta’s 7-0 World Series clinching victory in Game 6.
“He’s had a down year by his standards, but he finally got it going and he’s got tremendous power, especially against left-handers,” Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos said after he acquired Soler. “The numbers are outstanding; the power is real. He’s someone that we’d really like to use against left-handers.”
▪ On that last point, Soler is a career .245 hitter against right-handers, .247 against left-handers. He has 88 career homers against right handers and 33 against left-handers. But if he had as many at-bats against lefties as he did against right-handers, his career home run total would project to 98 against lefties.
So you don’t need to platoon him.
▪ A strong case could be made for the Marlins to trade Garrett Cooper, a pitching prospect and perhaps Brian Anderson for a very good natural center fielder and use Soler at designed hitter.
In 2020, Soler admitted that playing a lot at DH helped him offensively during his 48-homer season in 2019.
“When I was DH-ing, I had all of the time just to focus on the next pitch and could pay attention more to the pitcher and what he was doing while other people were batting as well,” said Soler, who played in all 162 games in 2019 but started just 54 in the outfield. “When I was playing outfield, I didn’t have the chance to have that time and make those observations because I was constantly running up and down.”
▪ The 6-4, 235-pound Soler isn’t an option to play center. If the Marlins don’t acquire a center fielder, they’ll need to get by with using Avisail Garcia and Jesus Sanchez in center, even though both are better suited for corner outfield spots.
Garcia has played 90 career games in center. Sanchez played 91 games in center in the minors. Both are getting work in center field this spring.
The Marlins could get by with that situation. The more ideal scenario is dealing one of the surplus of pitchers and Cooper or Jesus Aguilar (preferably Cooper) and perhaps Anderson - if needed - for a frontline center fielder.
The Marlins have tried to acquire center fielder Bryan Reynolds, but the Pirates have resisted those efforts.
Soler has primarily been a right fielder (344 career starts) and designated hitter (214 career starts) throughout his MLB career. He’s a minus-17 in outs above replacement average since 2016, including minus-6 last season, per mlb.com.
▪ Baseball people rave about the talent.
Royals manager Mike Matheny, a couple of years ago, said he respected Soler and his “amazing ability” and noted that he has “all the makings of a superstar-style player” but also admitted a few years ago, before managing him, that “we had a pretty good idea how to get him out” before his weaknesses “were all of a sudden his strong suits.”
▪ He led off for Atlanta in the World Series but has batted leadoff in only 12 games (61 plate appearances) in his career, hitting .260. He has most frequently batted fourth (159 times), fifth (145) or second (117). He has had his most career success in the fifth hole: .260, 25 homers, 74 RBI.
▪ A string of injuries caused him to miss significant time in Kansas City; a toe injury ended his 2018 season after 61 games.
But he was brilliant in 2019, batting .265, leading the American League with those 48 homers, driving in 117 runs and posting a .569 slugging percentage in his record-setting year.
His home run mark that season also set a new single-season record for homers by a Cuban-born player, one more than Rafael Palmeiro hit in 1999 and 2001.
“Jorge Soler was amazing to watch perform here,” Royals president Dayton Moore said after trading him to the Braves last summer. “He’s the single-season home run champ here in Kansas City. He gave us a lot of thrills. He gave us everything that he had, but most importantly he gave us a lot of thrills. He hit some majestic home runs, and he was really, really fun to watch. I know we all feel very privileged to be able to watch him play baseball.”
▪ Soler was the third player to win World Series MVP honors after starting the season with another team, joining the Mets’ Donn Clendenon in 1969 and the Red Sox’s Steve Pearce in 2018.
Soler also became the second Cuban-born player to win the award, joining pitcher Livan Hernandez, who was MVP of the 1997 World Series with the Marlins.
▪ Soler is due to earn $12 million, $15 million and $9 million over the three years of his Marlins deal. He can opt out of the final two years of the contract.
Per FanSided’s Robert Murray, incentives based on playing time could boost his 2024 salary to $3 million. Soler would pocket an additional $500,000 for reaching the 350-plate appearance and 400-plate appearance thresholds, and then another $1 million for getting to 450 plate appearances, then 500, and then 550.
So the three-year deal could be worth as much as $40 million if he doesn’t opt out next November or in November 2023.
▪ For his career, he’s a 3.6 wins above replacement offensively, including 1.1 with the Braves last season. He’s a career .246 hitter with a .331 on base percentage. He has struck out 26.9 percent of his big-league plate appearances.
On the plus side, his 43 homers of at least 420 feet since 2019 are the most in baseball.
▪ Fangraphs rated him the 49th-best free agent entering the offseason, offering this comment:
“Soler was really bad in Kansas City this year, so much so that the Royals sent him to Atlanta in exchange for a minor league reliever with command issues. He improved across the board after the change in scenery, which will make him an intriguing option for many teams, particularly if the universal DH is in place. I think he’ll get a prove-it deal, because 30-year-old DHs with middling career offensive numbers aren’t exactly in demand, but if his Atlanta form is real, he’ll garner interest next year.”
▪ Baseball Trade Rumors rated him the 25th best free agent in this class, with this comment: “Soler played 752 innings in right field [in 2021], his most in the field since 2015 – in part because the Royals traded him to the Braves at the deadline. He’s never been a good fielder, and rated as one of the game’s worst defensive right fielders this year.
“Soler struggled mightily in the first half of the season, but from July 20th forward, he posted a 144 wRC+ that ranked 21st in all of baseball. Soler capped his season by winning the World Series MVP, crushing three big home runs against the Astros. Age-30 in February, Soler lights up Statcast and demonstrated his ceiling back in 2019, even if he played at replacement level overall this year.”
▪ Soler defected from Cuba in 2011, established residence in Haiti and signed a nine-year, $30 million deal with the Cubs. He was a part of the Cubs’ 2016 championship team but was traded to the Royals for Wade Davis after that season.
With the Cubs, he became the 117th player in history to hit a home run in his first career at bat and became the third major league player in the last 100 years to have at least one extra-base hit in each of his first five games in the majors.
▪ Vahe Gregorian detailed Soler’s defection from Cuba is this excellent 2020 profile of Soler for the Kansas City Star:
In Soler’s first attempt to defect, “it was six of us when we first got caught, first by a plane [sighting] and then from the [U.S.] Coast Guard when we were in the water. They caught us before they sent us back after five days in the detainment process. Once [that happens] you get a target on your back and become a black sheep.”
Soler said there were subsequent “multiple” efforts to defect but “we were always stopped a little before. For a lot of people, it depends how many times [one attempts to leave]. And it also just depends on the luck one has. Everyone has different stories, and there are some players who have gone through a lot more.”
Gregorian said Soler ultimately “reached Haiti by way of a boat to the Dominican Republic… While his father was joined in Miami by Soler’s mother and sister a few years ago, that still meant missing home and friends and funerals of grandparents with whom he felt close. When he could finally return to Cuba for the first time, he spent 12 days there.”
He called that experience of returning to Cuba “surreal,” adding “to be drawn back to your reality and where you came from was very tough. I saw a lot of the guys I grew up with, the guys I would wake up early in the mornings with, without shoes.”
▪ Back to the less important MLB metrics stuff…
Soler’s clutch numbers are subpar. For this career, he is a .223 hitter with two outs and runners in scoring position, .218 in late and close situations, .236 in tie games, .262 when his team is ahead and .237 when his team is trailing.
He has hit .179 in the ninth inning, by far his worst inning.
▪ Among NL East teams, Soler has been the worst against the Marlins. He has nine homers in 63 games in the division. He’s 5 for 26 with a homer in seven games at loanDepot Park.
▪ He’s better making contact at night (.258, 78, 240 in 1428 at bats) than during the day (.223, 43, 103 in 828 at bats). There are no domes in the NL East, which is a positive; he has hit .205 in 127 career plate appearances inside domes.
▪ Soler and Garcia combined for 56 homers and 156 homers last season, and were the second and fifth best right fielders in free agency, from a wins over replacement standpoint. So the Marlins clearly have upgraded.
▪ Per cotsbaseball.com, the Marlins’ projected payroll (including arbitration projections) is now on pace to be about $88 million, with more money likely to be allocated for the bullpen. That $88 million would have ranked 24th in baseball last season.
The Marlins were 27th last season at $58 million, per spotrac.com.
This story was originally published March 21, 2022 at 5:00 PM.
