Braves fans, frustrated about Atlanta's 0-3 record in bullpen games, have been asking for Atlanta to promote Michael Soroka from AAA Gwinnett to make his first MLB starts since August of 2020, culminating a three year journey to return from two Achilles tears.
That dream came one step closer tonight.
Soroka finished a quality start for AAA Gwinnett tonight, versus the Durham Bulls (Tampa Bay affiliate), going six innings with two hits, one run (earned), three walks and eight strikeouts on ninety-six pitches (fifty-eight strikes).
There's multiple reasons to believe this was a large step towards Soroka's MLB return.
First, it was his second quality start of the year. The Canadian scuffled recently, failing to get out of the 5th in both of his previous starts. This is tied with a outing on April 18th against the Omaha Storm Chasers (Kansas City affiliate) for longest outing of Soroka's 2023 season, and was his highest strikeout total of the season (previous was five strikeouts, on four separate occasions).
Another reason to be hopeful about what Soroka was able to do was the pitch count - ninety-six pitches. Soroka's previous season high was ninety-one, also in that Omaha start in mid-April. His most recent outings in the month of may were typically around four to five innings, and around sixty-nine to eighty-three pitches.
Soroka did all of this on regular rest - early in the season, Atlanta was skipping starts and/or pushing him back, to watch his innings and give him extra rest. Ever since Fried and Wright went down, however, he's been pitching every fifth day and this was his third straight start on an MLB schedule.
The biggest reason to be excited, though, was the effectiveness: A 27% CSW (Caught Stealing + Whiffs, or swings & miss), with both the slider and changeup coming in over 30% (considered to be league average). The fastballs were less effective - 21% for the sinker and 24% for the four-seam fastball - but that's typical of fastballs versus offspeed/breaking pitches.
Soroka averaged 92.5 on the four-seam fastball (touching 94) and 91.9 on the sinker (touching 93.7). It's slightly lower than we've seen from him over his career, but it was consistent with what we've seen in 2023 and he held it through the entire outing, a good sign that his stamina is returning.
Additionally, Soroka only gave up five hard-hit balls (.95 mph), something that's plagued him in earlier starts this season. Of the five, three were over 100mph, but the max was a 106.2 mph Rene Pinto groundout in the 1st inning. The only hits recorded on Soroka were a 105.5 mph double to leadoff the game, by SS Oselvis Basabe, and a 86.6 mph single from 1B Kyle Manzardo in the 6th.
It won't take very many more starts like this for Atlanta's front office to be convinced Soroka's finally ready to make his MLB return. Because once he's up, the goal is for him to stay up.
He's close.
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