Soroka's Stuff

E

Enscheff

Well-known member
Soroka came out and threw 4 pitches almost 15+ times each in his debut. That's a good amount of data to judge these pitches, so let's take a look...

FA: 94.3 mph (Grade 54.6), -4.0" X-Mov (Grade 43.4), 8.0" Z-Mov (Grade 40.8)

Soroka improved the rise on his FA from last year from terrible to below average. Considering his spin rate on this pitch actually decreased from last year, this improvement in rise suggests he has worked on spin efficiency to get more rise. Movement is also proportional to velocity, so the increase in velocity of this pitch has improved the rise as well. Overall this went from a bad pitch in 2018 to one that's nearly average, and it will play up if he spots it as well as everyone hopes his plus control will allow.

SI: 92.6 mph (Grade 55.0), -9.4" X-Mov (Grade 58.3), 4.5" Z-Mov (Grade 55.1)

Simply put, this is a prototypical plus SI. Every part of it is above average, which adds up to a ~60 grade pitch that should generate a lot of grounders when located down in the zone. Working this pitch at the bottom of the zone, and then spotting the average-ish FA up in the zone will likely prove effective.

SL: 83.9 mph (Grade 47.1), 4.1" X-Mov (Grade 58.3), -2.3" Z-Mov (Grade 68.3)

This is a good downer SL that grades as ~65 overall and should produce a lot of grounders if thrown in the lower part of the zone, and should miss a lot of bats. He threw it almost 30 times vs the DBacks because he noticed Gausman didn't throw many breaking balls the day before, and wanted to give them a different look from a RHP.

CH: 13.2 mph delta (Grade 76.1), -8.1" X-Mov (Grade 53.0), V-Mov (Grade 43.5)

The CH is an excellent change of pace from the FA with enough movement to be effective. It will be a key weapon along with the SL down and in against LHB. Depending on how much the velocity delta is weighed, this is another ~60 pitch.

Overall that's a 45 FA, 60 SI, 65 SL and 60 CH. That arsenal paired with his command and baseball IQ makes it very easy to project Soroka as a 2/3 SP as long as that shoulder cooperates. He is easily the best pitching prospect in the system, even though I no longer consider him a prospect...he is a fixture in the rotation from this day on with the only caveat being possible innings limitations due to the shoulder injury.
 
Thanks Enscheff.

It's pretty funny that Soroka and Allard seemed so similar in talent coming up if you just looked at the results. I remember Allard had some crazy stat like he struck out 11 of the first 12 batters he faced in pro ball.
 
Soroka is one of the few starting pitching prospects we have with a non-zero chance of being a TOR starter.

Derek Lowe comes to mind as a comp for Soroka.
 
Enscheff, a question if I may...you're grading three components of each pitch, then reaching an overall grade...the overall grade doesn't always seem to be, like, an average of the three components. Not that I would expect it to be, because I would think that a pitch with extraordinary movement and ordinary velo would grade higher than ordinary because of the movement, or vice versa...what methodology are you using to reach your weighted average?
 
I found some work done that explained what parts of each pitch are most important, and tried to weight each pitch component based on those values. For example (from memory), for a FA it’s mainly velocity with rise as the secondary component, for SL it’s mainly the horizontal break with vertical break the secondary component, and for CU it’s mainly the vertical movement with velocity the secondary component. Location was very important with each pitch type, but that’s not what we are grading here.

When I started trying to come up with overall pitch grades for guys like Kimbrel, who’s CU is very hard and doesn’t grade that well, but we know it’s a wipeout pitch, I stopped trying to come up with a concrete overall number. That’s why each component of the pitch is graded separately, and I give more subjective approximate overall grades.

A pitch like Soroka’s SI is a 60 because all 3 components are 55+. A bit like a player with a 50 in all 5 tools is a 55/60 player rather than an average 50 player. It’s rare to have all components grade high.
 
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