For most of the first half of the baseball season, when Jorge Soler was a Kansas City Royal, he looked lost and disinterested.
He swung wildly at pitches out of the strike zone, and his batting average was .192. That means he was getting a hit less than once in every five at-bats.
Then at the July 30, major league trade deadline, the Royals shipped him to Atlanta. In exchange for Soler, the Royals got a minor-leage pitcher named Kasey Kalich, but, more importantly for the Royals, they shed $2.8 million in salary they would have had to pay Soler had they kept him.
The trade came as a surprise because it was not announced until more than 30 minutes after the trade deadline. But he was gone…and I cheered. I thought he was dragging the Royals down, both with his indiscriminate swinging and what looked like an indifferent attitude.
It was clear during his last two weeks with the Royals, however, that Soler was coming around to resemble the hitter who in 2019 hit 48 home runs, a Royals’ record until Salvador Perez tied the mark this season.
In his last nine games with the Royals, Soler went 8 for 30, batting .267, with six home runs and seven runs batted in.
After arriving in Atlanta, he continued his upward momentum, finishing the season batting .223. At some point he became a more selective hitter, either learning the strike zone or watching it more closely. I don’t know if the Braves’ coaches were responsible for that or if it was Soler’s doing, but it made a huge difference. Instead of looking inept, he began looking like a smart, dangerous hitter.
But then, in the National League playoffs, he had a big setback. On Oct. 12, a few hours before the decisive Game 4 of the National League Division Series against the Milwaukee Brewers, Soler tested positive for Covid-19 and was declared out of the game, which the Braves won 5-4. He missed the first four games of the National League Championship Series against the Dodgers and was reactivated for Game 5.
In Game 1 of the World Series in Houston, Soler got off to a smashing start, hitting a lead-off home run. It was the first time in Series history that the first batter up had hit a home run.
In Game 4 on Saturday, Soler was on the back end of a stirring one-two home run punch that started with teammate Dansby Swanson hitting one out. Soler’s follow-up home run gave the Braves a lead they never relinquished.
But the best was yet to come. In tonight’s Game 6, with two runners on base in the top of the third inning, Soler blasted a breaking ball 446 feet over the left field wall. As soon as he hit it, he dropped his bat and mouthed some words to either the third-base coach or the player rounding third base and heading home. At that point, he had driven in six runs in the World Series.
That belt put the Braves ahead 3-0, and they kept building the lead from there. Dansby Swanson hit a two-run home run in the fifth inning, and Freddie Freeman hit another two-run shot in the seventh, putting the Braves up 7-0.
When it was over at 10:33 p.m. and the Braves were celebrating on the field, Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck said, “What a quick, fun ride for Jorge Soler” — from the Royals to the Braves to a World Series championship.
At 10:52 p.m. Soler was announced as the Most Valuable Player of the 2021 World Series. And this time I was cheering for him. What a thrilling performance by our former Royal.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Yea, another great trade by Royals GM Dayton Moore. Jorge Soler, World Series MVP, for an A-ball pitcher.
With all respect, Soler was not a World Series MVP the first half of this season. He had one stretch when he went one for 27, and everyone wanted to DFA him. He was going to be a free agent at the end of this year, and Royals fans would have lynched Dayton Moore if he tried to re-sign Soler. So, we lost Soler for the balance of the ’21 season when we traded him in July and at least got a kid with a good arm. Even if Soler had hit as well in KC as he did in Atlanta for the balance of ’21, we would have lost him to free agency after September, with nothing in return. Given his performance in the first half of ’21, why would anyone have given us more for Soler than Atlanta did, unless they were clairvoyant?
Health and injury play a major role in the fate of players and teams. When the Royals traded Wade Davis to the Cubs for Soler, the latter had a reputation for frequent injuries, similar to Lorenzo Cain’s reputation before joining the Royals. Subsequently, Soler mounted his record-setting Royals homer mark at 48 during a 2019 season where he stayed healthy and played in all 162 games. But Covid constricted 2020 to only 60 games, an almost non-existent spring training and stunted conditioning and development.
Across the board this year (with the exception of Nicky Lopez and Salvy Perez) Royals players struggled to match earlier production. And young starting pitchers, expected to have gone through a shake-down freshman season in 2020, instead didn’t face competitive batters until this season. For the most part (Carlos Hernandez being the exception), they were very disappointing. Toward the end of this past full season, the Royals looked to be improving significantly. Soler is now a free agent, but could the Royals afford to pay him a multi-year contract, and where would he fit in an outfield that requires premium fielders?
Soler won’t be coming back to KC. Besides the money, he’s just not a good fit here.
Soler’s defense is terrible as any Royals fan could tell you. I would surprised if he was back with either the Braves or a team like the Royals. It was also reported that he would listen to coaching advice about modifying his plate approach which is why he was hitting so poorly here the past two seasons.
Also if you watched the telecast, his hit area was only if the pitch ran down the middle of the plate. Everything else was outs. Rarely do pitchers do that on purpose. So he hits mistakes. Having a guy who hits .200 and fields poorly, home runs do not make up for.
I’m happy for the guy. His World Series performance will pay off for him in a multi-year contract.
I bet you meant to say “he would not listen to coaching advice…”
As I said, a key area where he has improved is being more selective and not swinging at so many terrible pitches. Maybe getting away from Sal Perez cured him of that.
Yes I meant would not listen to coaches advice. However, Kevin Seitzer is the Braves hitting coach and has been known to get the best out of people. Many a different voice helped him in 2 1/2 months in Atlanta.
Rany Jazayerli has said he thinks that Dayton Moore firing Seitzer was one of his bigger mistakes in his GM tenure.
I had Soler in my fantasy baseball league early in the year (which I ended up winning for the first time!), so I felt his pain. He was terrible, especially compared to his home run season. When he left, he posted something somewhere about how much he liked KC and liked his team. I have a lot of respect for him and I’m glad he did so well. The Royals do value power, so you never know what the future holds (but probably not). My prediction – back to the Cubs or maybe the Padres.