Did the Braves Make a Mistake by Trading This Fan Favorite?

The Atlanta Braves made a major deal this offseason, and some fans are disappointed with one of the exits.
The Atlanta Braves made a lot of transactions this winter, and Alex Anthopoulos, president of baseball operations, usually gets things right.

But other fans are questioning whether he made a mistake this winter.

Last November, the organization sold a five-player package to the Chicago White Sox for reliever Aaron Bummer, and one of the guys that went was righty Michael Soroka, who has impressed in spring training thus far.

In a recent mailbag episode, our own Jake Mastroianni, host of the Locked on Braves podcast, was asked if the Braves front management made a mistake by trading Soroka.

Jake’s response was essentially no, for several reasons.

The first is that, despite Soroka’s outstanding spring performance – a 2.00 ERA in three starts, twelve strikeouts to four walks in nine innings – we still don’t know if he’s back to his “Maple Maddux” form. As Jake so eloquently stated, “we should take all spring training stats and numbers with a large grain of salt.”

And Jake is correct: spring training statistics are not as predictive as we would like, save for outliers. What’s more significant, for a pitcher, is what he’s doing: pitch velocities, pitch movement, whether he’s added or changed anything in his arsenal, and so on.

And, while Soroka’s anecdotal results appear to be positive – here’s a wonderful video from Pitching Ninja of two strikeouts the other day – we don’t have any Statcast data available for Soroka to determine whether he’s doing anything differently or how his pitchers are rating from a Stuff+ viewpoint.

The second factor, which Jake alluded to, is Soroka’s lack of roster flexibility at this stage in his career. After spending almost three full seasons on the injured list following his 2020 Achilles tear and subsequent re-rupture, Soroka has run out of minor league options, which Jake explains as making it difficult to keep the righthander on the major league roster all season.

“If he wasn’t going to be in the (Opening Day) rotation, and there was no guarantee of that, they would have to DFA him and could possibly lose him through waivers.”

This November, the Braves were effectively presented with a decision: tender him a contract, knowing that he would either make the Opening Day roster as the fifth starter or be claimed on waivers, or deal him and get something in return.

The Braves elected to trade him as part of the return for Bummer, a decision that Jake believes was the best for both Atlanta and Soroka.

“As much as I wanted him to thrive with the Braves, this was the greatest option for him. To move elsewhere, obtain a fresh start in a place where there is not

There is a lot of pressure to win now so you can put him out there every fifth day. Let him work through some issues, and perhaps he’ll bring it back together.”

What if Soroka does return to the form we all desire him to take? Jake concludes with what we’re already thinking about:

“If he does, I hope to trade for him. Because I’d love to have him back here and a regular part of this rotation.”

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