MLB Rookie Profile: Mike Soroka, RHP, Atlanta Braves

This morning the Atlanta Braves announced that they would promote right-handed pitching prospect Mike Soroka to the major league roster. He’ll make his MLB debut tonight against the New York Mets. Here’s a quick summary of what to expect.

Soroka is a Canadian, drafted in the first round (28th overall) in 2015 from high school in Calgary. His rise through the system has been extremely rapid for a high school arm: Low-A in 2016, Double-A in 2017 at age 19, now Triple-A and the majors in 2018 at age 20.

His performance has been excellent especially given his youth. He holds a career 2.85 ERA in 353 innings with a 311/76 K/BB. This includes a 1.99 ERA in four starts for Triple-A Gwinnett in 2018 with a 24/5 K/BB in 22.2 innings.

Soroka is 6-5, 225, born August 4, 1997. Our own Wayne Cavadi saw Soroka pitch a few weeks ago, noting a combination of deception, power, and precision that kept hitters under control. He has a complete arsenal with both two-seam and four-seam fastballs into the mid-90s now, along with a quality breaking ball and change-up. David Laurila at Fangraphs interviewed Soroka recently and talked about his arsenal, with Soroka noting that he’s comfortable with his breaking ball being somewhere between a curve and slider.

For his debut, keys to watch are:

***Does he locate his fastball against major league hitters as well as he did against AAA hitters?

***Consistency of his change-up;

***What would you call the breaking ball?