Soler power
Jorge Soler is enjoying a monster May for the power-hungry Marlins
I wrote in early April about the Marlins desperately needing significant bounce-back performances from 2022 free agent busts Jorge Soler and Avisail Garcia if their offense was to be significantly improved this season from the unit that has scored the fewest runs in MLB since the start of 2018.
The 2 signed for a combined guarantee of $89 million prior to the start of the 2022 campaign and totaled only 21 homers and 69 RBI in their Marlins debut season, with both missing significant time due to injuries.
While the early 2023 returns on Garcia have not been encouraging (his average and OPS had actually declined from last year to .188 and .577 in 22 games before he went on the IL in early May due to back tightness), Soler is off to the best start of his 10-year ML career.
In fact, he’s performing at a level that, if he can sustain it, would make his team-high $15 million salary this season look like a bargain.
The 31-year-old Cuban hit the one-third mark of the season tied for 2nd in the major leagues with 17 home runs, 3 behind Pete Alonso of the Mets. Soler is 5th in the NL and 8th in the majors with a .563 slugging percentage, while his 27 extra-base hits are tied for 3rd-most in all of baseball behind only Freddie Freeman of the Dodgers and Matt Olson of the Braves.
He homered in 5 straight games in Colorado and Anaheim last week, tied for the longest such streak in the majors this season and the 2nd-longest in Marlins history behind a Giancarlo Stanton run of 6 in a row in August of his 2017 NL MVP season.
With the Marlins returning home tonight to begin a 9-game homestand with the first of 3 against the sliding San Diego Padres, Soler has 6 home runs in his last 8 games, and he’s slugged a dozen long balls in 23 games beginning May 4.
His 12 homers this month lead all of baseball, and they’re tied for the 2nd-most any Marlin has ever hit in a calendar month. His 25 RBI in May are 2 behind the Dodgers’ Freeman for most in MLB.
Marlins All-Time Leaders, Home Runs in a Month
Giancarlo Stanton 18, August of 2017
Jorge Soler 12, May of 2023
Giancarlo Stanton 12, July of 2017
Giancarlo Stanton 12, June of 2015
Giancarlo Stanton 12, May of 2012
Dan Uggla 12, May of 2008
Soler’s 17 home runs in his first 52 games of the season are the most any Marlin has ever hit in his first 52 appearances. 5 Marlins hit 16, most recently Justin Bour in 2017. Giancarlo Stanton had 15 home runs in his first 52 games en route to mashing a club-record 59 in 2017.
So the question becomes can Soler sustain this production? The Marlins desperately need him to since he’s produced nearly one-third of the team’s 53 total long balls, a total that stands 24th in the major leagues.
The only player who has hit a higher percentage of his team’s homers so far this season is Alonso, the Mets’ first baseman, who has hit 20 of New York’s 62.
The owner of 151 career homers in 10 seasons, Soler slammed 48 in 2019, when he played in all 162 games for Kansas City, and he hit 21 for the Royals and the Braves in 2021.
Those are the only 2 seasons in his now 10-year career in which he clubbed more homers in a full year than he has through Memorial Day Weekend this year.
Part of the problem for Soler historically has been staying healthy and on the field. Since debuting with the Cubs in 2014, he’s only appeared in 100 games 3 times. He played in all 162 for the Royals in 2019. He appeared in 149 between Kansas City and Atlanta in 2021. And he played in 101 with the Cubs in 2015.
In his first 9 big league campaigns, Soler has averaged 81 games per season, missing exactly half of his team’s games on average. And if you remove the 162 he played in Kansas City in 2019, he’s averaged 71 games per season in his other 8 campaigns.
In the last 9 years, Soler has been on the IL on 9 separate occasions, including twice with the Marlins in 2022, first with bilateral pelvis inflammation and later with a lower back strain that ended his season in late July.
A healthy and productive Soler is critical if the Marlins are to make a run in 2023.
Soler by month in 2023
April (27 games): .221/.308/.463/.772, 8 2B, 5 HR, 10 RBI
May (25 games): .284/.348/.657/1.005, 2 2B, 12 HR, 25 RBI
Soler by position in 2023
In RF (12 games): .391/.462/.913/1.375, 3 2B, 7 HR, 12 RBI
As DH (38 games): .208/.285/.436/.721, 7 2B, 9 HR, 21 RBI
As PH (2 games): 1-for-2, 1 HR, 2 RBI
ADDITIONAL SOLER HOME RUN NOTES
Soler leads the majors with 10 home runs that are classified as “no-doubters,” meaning they would have been homers in all 30 big league ballparks.
Soler’s average home run has traveled 421 feet. Among players with at least 10 home runs, only 2 have longer average home run distances: Ronald Acuña Jr. of the Braves has averaged 437 feet on his 11 home runs, while San Diego’s Juan Soto has averaged 428 feet on his 10 round trippers.
Soler’s 468-foot bomb off Arizona’s Brandon Pfaadt May 9 at Chase Field is the 7th-longest home run hit in MLB this season, and matches the longest of his career.
Among players who have hit more than 3 home runs, Soler has the 3rd-slowest average home run trot at 27.8 seconds. Marcell Ozuna of the Braves averages 29.5 seconds per trip around the bases, while Tampa Bay’s Randy Arozarena averages 27.9 seconds.
The Marlins still have 38 games to play before the All-Star break. With 17 home runs already, Soler needs 3 more to become only the 14th Marlin to connect for 20 or more long balls in the first half of the season. The club record is 28 in 93 games before the break by Mike Lowell in 2003. Other top totals are Giancarlo Stanton’s 27 in the first half of 2015 and 26 in prior to the break in 2017 as well as Gary Sheffield’s 25 before the break in 1996.
With 7 home runs at loanDepot park one-third of the way through the season, Soler has a shot to become only the 4th Marlin to hit 20 at home in a season since the new ballpark opened in 2012. Stanton hit 31 in 2017 and 24 in 2014, while Ozuna hit 22 at home in 2017.
They will need to trade him.