In Memoriam: Soler’s 2015 ROY Hopes

We gather here today to mourn the loss of one of our dearly beloved. Jorge Soler‘s chances of earning the National League Rookie of the Year award recently walked off into the sunset, fading into a distant memory, albeit a fond memory at that. In light of Joc Pederson’s performance thus far, however, we maybe gather here today to mourn something that never existed. My heart struggles to understand how we could have possibly loved but never lost.

It seems like just yesterday that Soler was the Chicago Cubs’ safest prospect. As much was argued — nay, commanded — by our very own Scott Spratt. Indeed, another of our Scotts, surname Strandberg, once spoke of the Cubs’ embarrassment of prospect riches by leading with Soler’s name rather than Kris Bryant‘s or Javier Baez‘s or Addison Russell‘s or Arismendy Alcantara‘s or Albert Almora‘s or Kyle Schwarber’s. I think that the fault is neither Scott’s nor Scott’s; the greater fantasy baseball community had its eye on Soler. Indeed, I tabbed Soler as my NL ROY favorite. So, too, did Eno. We are all fallible.

And now, here we sit, staring at an epitaph that reads

Jorge Soler
.265/.322/.402 with a 32.2% strikeout rate
Also had a .383 BABIP so yeah

and while we reflect on the fact that it was a miserably bad idea to prematurely engrave the headstone, and we’ll very likely have to purchase a new one, we also reflect on where we went wrong.

Rewind: JD Sussman presciently anticipated the Soler hype more than two years ago. Here is a chunk of text from his post broken into smaller chunks of text:

Power will be the Cuban’s carry tool

Soler owns a paltry .138 isolated power (ISO) this season after posting an absurd .378 ISO across three Minor League levels last year.

but he also [possesses] a plus arm and average or better speed.

Soler hasn’t stolen a base since high-A ball in 2013. Still, his speed score (Spd) ranks in the bottom third of all qualified hitters, and his defense has been worth 1.2 runs below average. So far, nothing is adding up, perhaps leaving one to wonder if the craftsman has lost his tools or simply misplaced them. Considering he’s a 23-year-old rookie with relatively limited professional experience, one probably concludes he’s the latter, especially since he flashed all these tools in a small-sample debut last year (except for the defensive acumen).

His power is derived from the immense bat speed he generates with his hands and hips […] The power projection comes not only from the bat speed, but the lift and leverage present too.

His lift and leverage, as characterized by the balls he elevates, are constituted less of the kind that manifests power — fly balls — and more of the kind that fuels batting average — line drives. To attest: his 29.0-percent line drive rate ranks fifth among all qualified hitters. The power outage can be, in part, explained by his modest fly ball rate.

In fact, Soler has hit more line drives than fly balls this season (although, given it’s by tenths of a percentage point, he’s one misclassified ball in play away from not fitting the criterion). Only 17 other qualified hitters can say the same:

Name	Team	LD%	FB%	HR	ISO	BABIP
Starling Marte	Pirates	22.4%	20.0%	12	0.208	0.317
Eric Hosmer	Royals	26.2%	23.3%	7	0.174	0.345
Jason Kipnis	Indians	28.3%	26.9%	5	0.169	0.375
Jimmy Paredes	Orioles	26.1%	23.1%	6	0.168	0.385
Howie Kendrick	Dodgers	26.8%	17.5%	6	0.145	0.333
Avisail Garcia	White Sox	25.5%	23.4%	7	0.142	0.355
Jorge Soler	Cubs	29.0%	28.2%	4	0.138	0.383
Chase Headley	Yankees	27.8%	24.4%	6	0.125	0.303
Cameron Maybin	Braves	28.5%	21.5%	5	0.115	0.36
Anthony Gose	Tigers	22.8%	21.3%	1	0.102	0.397
DJ LeMahieu	Rockies	29.3%	21.0%	3	0.100	0.402
Joe Mauer	Twins	24.9%	23.3%	2	0.096	0.302
Johnny Giavotella	Angels	27.1%	25.9%	2	0.087	0.309
Yunel Escobar	Nationals	23.9%	19.7%	3	0.082	0.362
Ben Revere	Phillies	30.3%	17.4%	0	0.080	0.312
Nori Aoki	Giants	22.3%	15.9%	2	0.075	0.344
Nick Markakis	Braves	24.6%	23.2%	0	0.068	0.35
Dee Gordon	Marlins	25.2%	16.0%	0	0.062	0.418

There’s Soler near the top. Notice the generally unsexy displays of power. There is a light at the end of this tunnel, however, in that every single batting average on balls in play (BABIP) exceeds the league average, some by a wide margin. For fantasy purposes, trading power for batting average isn’t a total loss.

Soler follows only six players on FanGraphs’ leaderboard in a deliberately unnamed skill: Giancarlo Stanton, Pederson, Bryant, Chris Carter, Steven Souza and, er, Michael Bourn. In a vacuum, it seems like Soler is in pretty solid power-hitting company. Except this unnamed skill is contact on pitches outside the zone (O-Contact%), and these names actually represent the bottom of the list.

Thus, Soler’s 48.5-percent O-Contact% is not really a skill at all and ranks among the league’s worst. At the time, Sussman anticipated similar problems with Soler’s approach:

The simplicity of his swing and the use of his hands suggest he has the ability develop an average or better hit tool, but his aggressive approach and pitch recognition are important indicators to consider too.

Consider his 40.7-percent zone rate (Zone%) and 34.0-percent swing rate on outside pitches (O-Swing%). None of Stanton, Pederson and the lot has seen nor swung at more bad pitches. Soler’s 32.2-percent strikeout rate has squandered his extraordinary BABIP.

When did Soler’s plate discipline and contact skills erode? Observe Peter Gammons’ quoting of the Cubs’ hitting coach John Mallee during Spring Training:

John Malee says Jorge Soler hasn't swung at a pitch out of the strike zone all spring. Scary good. May be best of Cubs lot right now

— Peter Gammons (@pgammo) March 21, 2015

I am one of the 525 fools who Retweeted this. I am one of at least 525 fools who, for whatever reason, read this and accepted it without enough grains of salt — it was a wolf (“best shape of my life”) in sheep’s clothing. Can we tell ourselves with a straight face that Soler’s skills evaporated sometime between March 21 and April 6?

Soler was — still is? — perceived to have a great eye at the plate. His 20.3-percent strikeout rate and 14.0-percent walk rate during his torrid Minor League stint last year evidenced a hitter who controlled the strike zone but whose beautifully dangerous swing occasionally betrayed him. Suffice it to say I don’t think he’s controlling the strike zone as well now, and pitchers are exploiting the bejeezus out of it. Eno pointed out about a month ago, however, that this trend doesn’t stand to continue, and I’m inclined to agree.

Still, it may be wise to chalk up 2015 as a loss. What, then, are Soler’s offensive prospects for the immediate future and beyond?

Looking to recent history, of all qualified rookies dating back to 2005, Paul Goldschmidt notched the largest single-year improvement in his strikeout rate, cutting it down from 29.9 percent to 22.1 percent (a 7.8-percentage point improvement). Goldschmidt’s a talented guy, and so is Soler, so it’s possible that Soler makes equally large strides next year. However, Stanton, whose rookie-season plate discipline Soler’s almost perfectly replicates, improved his strikeout rate by only 3.5 percentage points. No player who had struck out more often than Soler does now played enough in his sophomore season to qualify for the batting title — a scary notion — although the jury is still out on George Springer (7.2-percentage point improvement!), Jon Singleton (hasn’t played), Mike Olt (1.3-percentage point improvement) and Baez (hasn’t played). Alas, reasons for optimism and pessimism at once.

Which brings us to his batted ball profile. The line drives buoy the batting average but stifle the power. I used the same data set of all qualified hitters from 2005 through 2014 to verify the so-called “stickiness” of batted ball types over time. The year-to-year R-squared (correlation) statistic for a hitter’s ground ball rate clocked in at .655, implying that its inverse — fly balls plus line drives — correlates equally well. Meanwhile, the R-squared for line drive rate is a meager .151, indicating weak correlation. Therefore, it’s reasonable to anticipate that Soler doesn’t lose any loft, instead exchanging line drives for fly balls that can turn into real, tangible home runs going forward. If he can retrain the batting eye that won scouts’ and prospectors’ hearts, the power gains won’t harm the batting average.

If all goes right — sizable improvements to the strikeout rate, modest gains in the walk rate, displacing line drives for fly balls — then I think Soler can reasonably bat something like .265/.360/.500 with 24 home runs as soon as next year. But if he doesn’t — if the status quo persists, that is — then he is closer to the 12-homer, .250/.330/.400 hitter he has been so far in 2015.

If you’ve made it this far with Soler, you might as well weather the storm a bit longer, as his value probably sits at an all-time low; perhaps all he needs is a well-timed DL stint to clear his head and turn things around. As for dynasty leaguers who don’t own Soler: you’ll probably never have a better time to buy low than now.