The Royals acquired Soler after the 2016 season. Here’s what he did in KC:
2017: 35 games, 2 homers, 5 RBIs, batted .144
2018: 61 games, 9 homers, 28 RBIs, batted .265
2019: 162 games, 48 homers, 117 RBIs, batted .265 (led the league in HRs and Ks)
2020: 43 games, 8 homers, 48 RBIs, batted .228
2021, before the trade: 94 games, 13 HRs, 37 RBIs, batted .192
2021, after the trade: 55 games, 14 HRs, 33 RBIs, batted .269
So except for the 2019 season, he was a major bust for the Royals. The KC fans, including me, were clamoring to get rid of him. Evidently he needed a change of scenery.
I was wondering if there had ever been a World Series MVP who’d been acquired by the winning team mid season, and was surprised to find there had been two before; Donn Clendenon with the Mets in 1969, and Steve Pearce with the Red Sox in 2018.
Well, yeah, but 2019 was great. They got a home run title out of him, and he actually didn’t play badly in 2018 or 2020.
Even one terrific year is a fair acquisition.
Incidentally, according to Baseball Reference, the most statistically similar to Soler in all of baseball history is… Steve Pearce, one of the other two guys to win the World Series MVP after being traded in midseason.
There is. Heard this a week or so ago: the 2021 Braves climbed over .500 later than any team to ever make the World Series. Oddly enough, the previous record holder was also the Braves - the 1914 Boston “Miracle” Braves.
This year I decided I just wasn’t into sports, and haven’t watched a single baseball or football game yet.
Braves won the World Series, Georgia is undefeated, and the Browns are at .500. Frankly, I’m scared to start watching sports now.
Not when he was supposed to be The Guy who was going to be the cornerstone of the next contender in KC. He was hurt in his first two seasons with the Royals. His defense was below average, so he appeared as a DH more times than what was anticipated. Plus he swung for the fences damn near every time, so it seemed like it was a strikeout or HR every AB, with many more of the former than the latter.
Hey, I’m happy for him. But it was definitely time for him to leave the Royals.
I don’t live in KC but am honestly curious - is that how he was seen? If so, it was an odd hope to hang on the guy. He looked like a good young player but he hadn’t set the world on fire in Chicago. KC gave up Wade Davis for him, and while Davis is a really good pitcher, a 31-year-old reliever going into free agency on a team that needs to get younger is not the heftiest price.
Perhaps ‘cornerstone’ is too strong of a word, but he was certainly viewed as an integral part of the Royals rebuilding process after the 2015 championship. He came from Chicago where he really didn’t get a fair shake, but obviously had a ton of potential. Giving up a reliever whose better days were behind him was seen as a steal. Soler was viewed as (hopefully) a consistent 30-homer/100-RBI guy.
