Why Can't Joakim Soria Miss Bats Anymore?

until someone gives me concrete evidence something with his pitches has changed.

I bet that if someone looked carefully, he or she could find a stretch of similar length from Soria with the low K numbers, only it happened in the middle of a season when the numbers weren’t so stark.

Having said that, this stretch probably means the Royals will have to settle for Jesus Montero in trade for Soria.

his foul percentage is also way down

Might not be helping that he has pitched 5 times in 6 games (and 5 times in 6 days)..

then again, we might have won if Collins (who threw 6 pitches) pitched the 8th.. or if Mike Aviles wasn’t ice cold and about to explode in frustration

and has been since early last year. That’s strictly observational, of course, but I haven’t had absolute confidence in Soria in a year or more. We always joke that the dude likes drama, but it’s true that if he’s not lights out, he’s trouble.

Yeah I mean his arm has to be tired because we rely on him quite a bit his pitches were up in the zone very hittable but I hope we can move on and get ready for the next series now…….by the way O’Sullivan needs to be sent down. Terrible

I just have a really really hard time caring after 5 innings.

5 innings represents about 7% of his expected season’s work (70 innings or so).

For a hitter, that would be 46 PA’s (of 650).

I don’t think anybody was crapping themselves when Mark Teixeira has an OPS sub-.400 after that long last year. Nobody will be concerned if Pujols is still scuffling in a few days when he passes that many PA’s.

Maybe Soria/Aviles/Frenchy/SOS absolutely sucked to make sure we didn’t get carried away.

• In 2007 and 2008, he threw his curveball almost 1 out of every 10 pitches (9.8% and 9.9%, respectively).

• In 2009, his curveball rate increased slightly to 11.8%

• In 2010, though, his curveball% dipped to a career-low 7.1, and as we have seen so far, he doesn’t break out the Uncle Charlie (he was ahead of two consecutive hitters with either 1-2 or 0-2 counts with two outs in the 9th and threw fastballs each time that caught a large part of the plate).

• In 2009 and 2010, he threw a much higher percentage of changeups than he did in 2007 and 2008.

• So far, his slider and changeup are accounting for almost half of his quantified pitches on the season.

Right now, according to FanGraphs, ~30% of his pitches have been unquantified, but in having seen every game this year on TV, I can tell you that 30% is not chock-full of curveballs (especially when FanGraphs has his FB% around 47% right now).

It’s pretty clear that he moved away from the curveball last season and went to the changeup more heavily, and the slider also saw an increase, but not the highest of his career.

So far this year, he has been relying on the fastball, slider, and changeup again, accounting for more than 94% of his quantified pitches.

I wonder if they looked at the data, because in 2010 his wCB was -3.2 while his wFB, wSL, and wCH were 9.1, 3.6, and 2.3 respectively.

The thing is, Soria needs his curveball to set up all of his other pitches. He doesn’t overwhelm with velocity, his fastball doesn’t have a lot of movement on it, and throwing that knee-bender gets hitters off-balance, amplifying the value of his other pitches.

Yes, it is a small sample size, and he will more than likely trend back towards his mean, but I can’t help but wonder if they are tinkering with him and his pitch selection, or maybe the fact that he honestly doesn’t have the best fastball, slider, changeup, or curveball in the bullpen anymore.

Collins has a better hook and a better change, Jeffress, Collins, Tejeda, and Crow all have better fastballs, and Crow and Jeffress throw some very hard sliders.

We’ll have to wait and see, I suppose.

BH standing for Bitch Hit

If there is one positive we can take for Soria, he didn’t get hit too hard.

Pierre had a legit single to lead it off..

Then he walks Gordon Beckham.

Gives up a BH single to Rios off Aviles’ glove..

Gives up another BH single to Konerko to RF

Then gives up a perfectly placed double to the outfield, which I thought wasn’t hit all that hard. Looked like he muscled it off the handle..

All things considered.. I still can’t believe I’m left here thinking we had 1 F$#KING out to get. In other cases, 1 STRIKE. According to gameday, he threw 1 curveball today.. Maybe he should have thrown one in the 0-2 count to Quentin.

Worst part is, we have an off day tomorrow to think even more about this. Completely took the wind out of our sails.. Hopefully it didn’t do the same for the Royals

We could have ourselves a case of an overactive (over-tinkering) pitching coach, bad catchers, or both.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

According to this guy, you need about 150 pa before you can make any meaningful conclusions about changes in k rate. Hopefully, he’s right.

That’s all of the above (which would be option E) plus some other things.

He’s been around for a while now, which means batters have seen him. This is always a huge factor in a pitcher’s career. He no longer surprises the opposition. He’s thrown a lot of pitches, so it’s unreasonable to expect his arm to be the same as it was even a year ago.

Also, don’t forget that he got 2 ground outs and got another ground ball that Aviles couldn’t handle (whether he should have handled it, or maybe even allowed Escobar to make the play is for another post).

And we’ve played a couple of pretty decent lineups. The Angels and White Sox have some quality hitters on their rosters.

I think he’s backing off of it, because he’s not sure where it is going.

If there is something seriously wrong with him, than I won’t be going into 100% freak out mode as I would in years past. They’ve got so many options that would be well worth taking a look at in the “closer” role. I have a feeling this may be Aaron Crowe’s future career path, but there are several other viable candidates, some on the big league roster even that may be able to hold down the fort. I guess the lesson here is that Jack’s still got another five years our so to go before anyone should deem him as the next Mariano Rivera.

He is afraid to Mexicute people. That’s the whole problem. He’s lost his edge. Expect him to turn in his wings. Man, Montero would look good in Royal blue.

He should be dealt at the deadline. He’ll never be more valuable, and we have a ton of young arms to replace him.

Sure, the math supports what?

It’s the first week, the Red Sox haven’t won and Jeff Francis has an ERA under 2.

I seriously doubt we need to worry about Soria. It’s early, he’s a reliever who rarely gets work. I’m sure he will be in Soria form by May 1st.