Occasionally, MLB executives will acknowledge a deal didn't go their way. Some moves just don't work out and they can admit that. What you never see, though, is an executive publicly regret a deal less than a week after making it.
So Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer entered some new ground on Tuesday, five days after acquiring starting pitcher Michael Soroka from the Washington Nationals at the MLB trade deadline. In return, the Nationals received prospects Christian Franklin and Ronny Cruz, the Cubs' No. 13 and 14 prospects on MLB Pipeline.
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Soroka made his Cubs debut on Monday and lasted only two innings, exiting due to what was described as right shoulder discomfort. The next day, he was placed on the 15-day injured list with a shoulder strain.
Hoyer opted to speak to the media in the wake of the move, and admitted the deal already looked much less attractive than before:
"We spent a lot of time on that. We knew the velocity was trending down. We obviously talked through that extensively. Given the market, given the asking price and given all those different things, we felt like it was a good bet to make. Ultimately, he came off the mound last night and right now, it's not looking like a good bet.
"That's our job to make bets on these things. Doesn't mean he's not going to help us the rest of the year, we're still waiting on the medical stuff."
As Hoyer pointed to, a major red flag was Soroka's velocity. After sitting around 94 mph for the first three months of the season, his average velocity on four-seamers nose-dived, going from 93.7 mph on July 10 to 91.7 mph on July 18, then 90.9 mph on July 23. He averaged 90.8 mph before exiting his start on Monday.
A multi-tick velocity drop is a classic red flag for an underlying medical issue with a player, to say nothing of the basic drop in effectiveness. The Cubs still went through with the deal and parted with two real prospects to do it.
Hoyer was candid in his explanation for why they did that, while also reflecting the dehumanizing nature of MLB roster moves:
"Earlier, he was sitting a much higher velocity. It was coming down and we were trying to get to the bottom of what exactly that was. He had the MRI before that. That risk profile was known and we decided, given the asking price and given the fact we felt he was a notch above the other guys we were talking about in terms of talent and development opportunities, we felt it was the right risk.
"We make bets on human beings and sometimes they work out ... We did a lot of due diligence, a ton of research, and if it doesn't work out, that's on me. That's the job."
As far as how Soroka's pre-trade MRI looked, Hoyer acknowledged that "there are no clean MRIs" for veteran MLB pitchers, whose ligaments carry a lifetime of wear-and-tear and can give way without warning.
Chicago was likely attracted to Soroka's peripherals much more than his surface stats, as his 4.87 ERA in D.C. hardly screamed a deadline upgrade. Baseball Savant had his xERA (which combines strikeout, walk and batted ball data to determine what a player's ERA should be) at 3.32 at the time of the trade, and it wasn't a big leap to think he would perform better in front of the Cubs defense, which is good, than the Nationals defense, which is bad.
Soroka's way forward obviously now depends on how his new round of imaging looks. Even if it comes back fine, a move to the bullpen could be in his future between his performance on the mound and injury risk.
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