After their last starts Soroka now has an xwOBA of .287 and Fried .288. That’s in the range of a 2/3 where folks start to argue they are TOR guys, and the argument turns into one of semantics.
This is what we expected from Soroka, so nobody should be overly surprised. That may be taking him for granted a bit, but we knew he was going to be good as long as the shoulder cooperated.
The new slider and greatly improved control from Fried transformed him from #5 or longman in the BP to a weapon in the rotation. It’s getting to the point where it’s becoming hard not to believe in the improved control, even if it may not be quite elite.
I’ve been advocating for Fried to add a pitch to mitigate the flat FA for over a year now, and I’m not sure why it never crossed my mind that pitch could be a slider. Imagine if he also added the above average or plus SI I still think he is capable of throwing. Those 5 pitches with his current control would be an undisputed TOR guy.