Mike Soroka, Atlanta Braves
Calling Mike Soroka an “unheralded MLB player” is a bit of a stretch. After all, the soon-to-be 23-year-old was a consensus top-30 prospect for Baseball America and MLB.com heading into this season. I decided to add him in here because when people talk about impressive rookie pitches so far this season, the conversation seems to focus on Chris Paddack.
While Paddack does lead qualified rookie starters with a 1.4 fWAR (Soroka has 1.2 so far), Soroka easily has him beat in the ERA department (1.01 to 1.93). The Braves’ starter has some catching up to do in innings pitched — he’s tossed 44.2 so far in ’19 — but he’s just been straight-up dominant. He’s made seven starts, with each of them being at least five innings (he’s gotten into at least the sixth on six occasions).
Of those seven starts, Soroka has yet to allow more than one run per outing.
There are obviously some statistics that’ll need to come back to reality, like his 87.2% strand rate and .203 BABIP. However, he’s doing the work to earn those numbers. His ground-ball rate is up to 56.5% (44.0% last year), while his line-drive rate has gone from 32.1% to 20.9% and his soft-hit rate allowed has improved from 14.1% to 23.5%.
About Matt Musico
Matt Musico currently manages Chin Music Baseball and contributes to The Sports Daily. His past work has been featured at numberFire, Yahoo! Sports and Bleacher Report. He’s also written a book and created an online class about how to get started as a sports blogger. Check those out and more helpful tips on sports blogging at his website.
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