Mike Soroka Will Not Live Up to Draft Price Expectations

Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Mike Soroka had a strong rookie season and helped many fantasy baseball owners in 2019. Michael Florio explains why that has led his draft price to be inflated based on expected stats and low strikeout rates, which could make him a bust in 2020.

Every year there are polarizing players in fantasy baseball. These polarizing players leave no room for middle ground. They are the catalyst for Twitter debates, articles, videos, podcasts, and by the end of it you are forced to chose a side: are you in or are you out?

For those of you thinking, surely there is a middle ground, the answer truly is no. You may not feel as strongly as the people on the negative side of the player, but unless you are willing to pay the price that those people buying in are, you will never actually acquire that player. 

Mike Soroka is one of those players this season. I inadvertently contributed to that myself.

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A Reasonable Question

While digging on starting pitchers I noticed that Soroka and Kyle Hendricks had similar stats. So, I did what any fantasy baseball analyst would do, I took to Twitter: 

Explain to me why Mike Soroka is going over 50 picks before Kyle Hendricks?

Soroka: 2.68 ERA, 3.85 xFIP, 20.3% K, 14.4% K-BB, 1.11 WHIP, 36.3% Hard Hit, 10.3% swinging strike

Hendricks: 3.46 ERA, 4.26 xFIP, 20.6% K, 16.2% K-BB, 1,13 WHIP, 33.8% hard hit, 10.3% swinging strike

— Michael Florio (@MichaelFFlorio) February 1, 2020

That tweet caused a little bit of a stir and led to some people backing the Braves young hurler and some saying they will be avoiding him. That led to me diving deeper into Soroka and his breakout 2019 season. I came away with one simple thought and my hope is by the end of this article you agree with it: Let someone else draft Mike Soroka.

When I say that, I do not mean he is going to be a bust in the sense that he is this year's Nick Pivetta and will absolutely implode. I am simply saying the juice (fantasy production) is not worth the squeeze (cost to draft him).

Dissecting The Surface Stats

Soroka's rookie year was a great development for the Braves and fantasy players' rotations last season. He pitched to a 2.68 ERA with a 1.11 WHIP and 142 strikeouts in 174.2 innings. Looking at those numbers you’d probably think, "I wish there were some more strikeouts, but he's still a very good pitcher." Unfortunately, the ERA is a mirage as the 3.45 FIP shows he was not nearly pitching to that level but instead was a little lucky. The 3.85 xFIP shows that the ERA was not to expected moving forward and one closer to four is what should be expected. Just in case you’re still not sold, his SIERA was 4.28 in 2019. 

But my issue is not just with the ERA. Soroka does not miss enough bats. Last season, he had just a 20.3 percent strikeout rate, which ranked 73rd among pitchers with at least 120 innings. I get what you are thinking: we already know he will not be a huge strikeout pitcher. Well, not only are strikeouts 25 percent of the categories that starting pitchers impact (they do not pick up saves), but the fewer batters a pitcher strikes out the more variance there is with the other stats. Pitchers can certainly work around lack of strikeouts and have successful seasons, but that success just becomes harder to sustain over time.

Soroka was able to put up a very strong 1.11 WHIP last season, but no projections have him anywhere close to that number. Soroka picked up that WHIP last year largely in part to a .280 BABIP. Only once in the minors did we see him sport a BABIP around that number and often it was around or even above .300. But I am not basing my research off of his minor league BABIP.

Since 2016, the first full season in the new juiced-ball era, there have been 91 cases where a pitcher (min. 120 innings) finished with a groundball rate of 50 percent or higher (Soroka was 51.2 percent in 2019). Of those 91 pitchers, only 22 of them, or 24 percent, had a BABIP of .280 or lower. The majority, 46 pitchers or 51 percent, had a BABIP of .300 or higher. And of those 46 pitchers, 23 of them had a BABIP of .318 or higher. Perhaps Soroka really is the second coming of Hendricks and can maintain a BABIP around .280 or so, but I do not want to have to pay a premium to find out. 

Dissecting His Repertoire 

Soroka gets by with his spin, rather than his velocity. In fact, his average velocity is below league average on all four of his pitches, but the spin rate is above league average on all of them. 

Based on this, I would say that Soroka has one plus pitch, his changeup. Perhaps he can go the Patrick Corbin route and throw his best pitch a bunch more, but it is hard to do that with a changeup. Soroka threw that pitch only 12 percent of the time last year, the fewest of all his pitches. But, the league average usage of a changeup is 11 percent. In fact, only six pitchers last year threw a changeup over 25 percent of the time, according to Fangraphs. Spin rate is very important for pitchers, but I have difficulty paying up for a pitcher with below-average velocity and swing and miss stuff. 

Baseball Savant has a great tool that takes pitcher velocity and movement and compares them to other pitchers' stuff around the league. In 2019, Soroka compared most similarly to: Kyle Gibson, Ariel Jurado, Adrian Sampson, Dakota Hudson and Lance Lynn. Only one of those five pitchers is going around where Soroka is in fantasy drafts. It gets even worse when you look at his stuff, judged by Baseball Savant: 

Lastly, all the expected stats were higher than the surface ones. That is not good for a pitcher. Batters hit just .236, but the expected average against him was .264. Batters had a .340 slugging percent and .272 wOBA, but the expected slugging was .395 and the xwOBA was .304. 

Expected Production

Soroka is the 33rd pitcher off the board according to NFBC ADP in the last two weeks. But of those 33 pitchers, five are closers, so he is the 28th starting pitcher off the board. In that same span, Hendricks, the pitcher I keep comparing him to, is the 57th pitcher off the board, going over 50 picks later. I have long been a Hendricks guy because you never have to pay a premium for him. In fact, he is underrated yearly. If you are drafting Soroka this year, you are hoping for him to build off of last year. For Soroka to live up to those expectations, he either needs to start striking a lot more batters out or he needs to be able to duplicate last year's success in ERA and WHIP, neither of which I want to pay up to find out if he can. 

The other issue with Soroka is there are pitchers projected to put up similar numbers, but you do not need to pay for the helium. Here are some pitcher projections from TheBAT and their ADP:

- Mike Soroka: 12-10, 182 IP, 3.83 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 149 K, 109.76 ADP

- Marcus Stroman: 12-10, 179 IP, 3.90 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 146 K, 210.70 ADP

- James Paxton: 9-6, 129 IP, 3.64 ERA, 1.18 WHIP, 154 K, 179.11 ADP

- Julio Urias: 10-7, 137 IP, 3.80 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 140 K, 152.19 ADP

- Carlos Martinez: 10-10, 160 IP, 3.85 ERA, 1.32 WHIP, 146 K, 189.13

- Lance McCullers: 11-6, 139 IP, 3.47 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, 157 K, 190.04 ADP

- A.J. Puk: 10-8, 147 IP, 3.64 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, 162 K, 236.10 ADP

And of course:

- Kyle Hendricks: 11-10, 180 IP, 4.07 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, 141 K, 162.02 ADP

Of those pitchers listed above, only Urias is going within 50 picks of Soroka. You can get very similar projected results out of Stroman but 100 picks later! I am not saying these pitchers listed above will all be better than Soroka, but showing that his skill set is not one worth paying up for in drafts. 

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