Jorge Soler's Humongous Dongs

[Ding Dong Johnson]

Mr. Soler,

your Uber to Iowa is here.

 

Does his contract place any limitations on sending him down? It was a major league contract, so how many options does he have?

1. 2016 be it

[David]

per north at psd

 

I think that Soler has been a little unlucky. His average exit velocity is 92.3mph, which is about the same as Rizzo's exit velocity. And his exit velocity has been stable - standard deviation is only 12.7mph. As a comparison, Harper's exit velocity is 91.7mph and standard deviation is 14.2mph.

 

The issue with Soler is that his fly balls aren't traveling that far. He's hit a lot of hard hit baseballs, but he is just missing pitches, popping them up (255 HR + FB distance).

 

He is making more contact, swinging at better pitches, and has hit the ball hard. Over a larger sample, based on the fact that he's hitting the ball hard, those pop ups should decrease in frequency. And when those pop ups do decrease, there is a possibility we stop complaining about Soler.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

For the record, I love Georgie more than all of you combined, but we are going through a thing right now. I don't want our relationship to end.

[Bote McBoteface]

Soler was my favorite of the prospects until recently. I want him to be awesome so badly. He just....looks like he should be awesome. I really want him sent to Iowa. Bring him back up in mid-june, the weather will be warmer and he will have had consistent at bats to work out his issues. This not playing much and sucking when he does has gotta be hard on him.

[minnesotacubsfan]

Send him to Iowa so I can see him hit 450' hrs next week in Tacoma

[minnesotacubsfan]

Thx

[Banedon]

For the record, I love Georgie more than all of you combined, but we are going through a thing right now. I don't want our relationship to end.

 

I'm with you. I think the biggest problem for him right now is that we have guys that are just flat out playing better that we can put out in his place.

[KingCubsFan]

per north at psd

 

I think that Soler has been a little unlucky. His average exit velocity is 92.3mph, which is about the same as Rizzo's exit velocity. And his exit velocity has been stable - standard deviation is only 12.7mph. As a comparison, Harper's exit velocity is 91.7mph and standard deviation is 14.2mph.

 

The issue with Soler is that his fly balls aren't traveling that far. He's hit a lot of hard hit baseballs, but he is just missing pitches, popping them up (255 HR + FB distance).

 

He is making more contact, swinging at better pitches, and has hit the ball hard. Over a larger sample, based on the fact that he's hitting the ball hard, those pop ups should decrease in frequency. And when those pop ups do decrease, there is a possibility we stop complaining about Soler.

Has there been any studies showing that high exit velocity correlates with long-term success? My first instinct is that it's obviously a good thing, but I haven't seen anything to back that up.

[Ding Dong Johnson]

"This is where he belongs."

[SeldomSeen]

Motion to change the thread title to "Pedro Cerrano is moderately good- looking."

[sneakypower]

Motion to change the thread title to "Pedro Cerrano is moderately good- looking."

[Thrilho]

If you swapped Baez and Soler's BABIPs, the former would be back in AAA and the latter would be lining up All Star votes.

 

Posted this in the game thread, but I like attention, so I'm posting here too.

 

Soler had Javy's current BABIP last year and still wasn't any good. In 2015, he had a .361 BABIP, which got him a .262/.324/.399 line. And that was with a 28% LD rate, 36% hard hit rate, and 13.5% HR/FB. Cut to his peripherals this year, and he's been solid at 21% LD, 29% hard hit, and only a 6.7% HR/FB. So with his lack of speed and (to this point) inability to translate exit velocity into slugging I probably wouldn't expect another .350 BABIP.* As the wind starts blowing out I'd at least expect the HR/FB rate to go up, but just assuming that his BABIP is .300+ seems like a stretch at this point.

 

He's cut his K rate down from 30% to 25%, so yeah if he got his BABIP up to the .350 range he'd be better than he is now and maybe better than last year. But those were some pretty stellar peripherals in 2015 and he wasn't able to get that much production out of it. Plus he sucks hard in the field and on the bases, so he's not an all-star unless he is absolutely mashing.

 

Then, with Javy, he has had great peripherals both this year and last to get to his great BABIP. LD of 31% last year and 28% this year, hard hit of 33% last year, 30% this year. He can beat out an infield hit, he's been going to right field effectively, and a lot of his hard hit balls find the gaps. Sure if you give him Jorge's .213 BABIP he'd look like [expletive], but he hasn't earned it.

 

Not to mention, he's has cut his K% to 23%, so he's also earning that part of his production related to the 7% extra balls he's putting into play. If you give him Jorge's BABIP, but let him keep his K rate, defense, speed, and ISO I think he'd still be with the big club. And I think we'd be seeing a good deal better than Georgie's -0.9 fWAR.

 

 

*Btw, I'm aware that LD% doesn't have awesome correlation with BABIP, but you've got to start somewhere. If you'd prefer, Javy's IFFFB% is 0% in 2016 and 6.3% in 2015, relative to Jorge's 10% in 2016 and 12% in 2015.

[TruffleShuffle]

petition to make thrillho post more.

[Thrilho]

Thanks, I was actually all aboard the Don't Trade Soler for Mid-level (Odorizzi type) Pitching train this offseason. He was that second right handed power bat in my lineup before they got Dex. Didn't even really want to give him up for a Teheran type. But now he's in Javy's way and that I can't abide.

[Thrilho]

Also he's super sucked. I thought the playoff run last year was the start of him tapping into his patience and also that it was possible that with an offseason of slimming down and practice maybe he'd be ok in the outfield. Or he'd hit enough home runs to make it not matter. But right now he's really not hitting the ball on the button no matter what the exit velocity says. As that article about the distance of his average fly balls showed (~250 ft?) he's just not hitting it at the right launch angle.

 

Maybe he can get there but I'm losing patience with him as a guy who fits in David's picture carousel. Right now it's Javy but soon it'll also be Almora and maybe next year Schwarber if either isn't in some crazy deal. Before the season I figured they'd need Soler's bat more than an Enciarte/Almora type but the offense is amazing and you've got to hit sooooo much better than he has to make it worth it to keep him on the field.

 

And comparing him the Almora type is medium/long term thing. Right now Javy and Seal Boy need to be taking like all the at bats because they're better and they're developing players in their own right.

[Bull]

Patience.

[Old Style]

:barf:

[Ding Dong Johnson]

[rocket]

are we still sure he's good-looking

[Sammy Sofa]

are we still sure he's good-looking

 

HOW DARE YOU.

[CyHawk_Cub]

I just remember that during the offseason one of the posters on BN flipped out on me and told me his skillset was better than Harper's.

 

I'm not shocked by this. There are some really special people posting over there.

[Sammy Sofa]

The baseball gods are seemingly determined to give Soler every possible chance to prove he's not just really, really, really good-looking. Don't screw it up, you incredibly handsome bastard.

[CubinNY]

He's been cursed by the BABIP Gods and the umpires think his ankles are his knees and home plate is 3' across, he'll bounce back. Unfortunately, his defense is still really bad.

[Banedon]

He's been cursed by the BABIP Gods and the umpires think his ankles are his knees and home plate is 3' across, he'll bounce back. Unfortunately, his defense is still really bad.

 

Is it though? I mean, I know he's made some bad plays, but are there stats that bear out that he's bad? I don't know what defensive stats are considered the good ones right now.

[biittner77]

I don't believe it's a question of Soler being terrible defensively so much as he has to hit to be valuable since he's not likely to make a positive difference with his defense.