Demotion drives Soroka to 'let it fly'

This story was excerpted from Mark Bowman’s Braves Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

After returning to Atlanta’s rotation in successful manner on Friday night, Michael Soroka said he benefited from the Braves’ decision to send him back down to Triple-A Gwinnett after he made a couple of big league starts earlier this season.

“My goal was to just continue to let it fly,” Soroka said. “That’s the one thing I found when I went back down. I found it at different point this year, but it was a little spotty. I went down with a little fire lit underneath me and just started letting it fly.”

The results were encouraging. Soroka limited the Marlins to three runs over six innings. The runs came courtesy of two homers surrendered in the third. His ability to put that behind him and throw three more scoreless innings enhanced the hope he may indeed be ready to compete at the Major League level again.

“It was good to see how he ended,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said.

It was also impressive to see Soroka begin the game with a strikeout of Luis Arraez, who entered the game having struck out in just five percent (16 of 322) of his plate appearances.

“Arraez is the kind of guy who could see nine or 10 pitches and still get a single,” Soroka said. “That’s not what we want to lead off the game. So, I went right after him, threw a good changeup and got the strikeout. That was big to start the game. I felt like I left off where I had been in Triple-A.”

The Arraez strikeout was the first sign his stuff was better than it had been when he had been optioned to Gwinnett after his June 4 start in Arizona. During that outing against the D-backs, Soroka got just two swings and misses and his fastballs (sinker and four-seamers) averaged 92.6 mph. He got 13 swings and misses and his fastballs averaged 93.3 mph on Friday night.

Pitching effectively allowed Soroka to enjoy a night that he and countless Braves fans celebrated. It was the first time he had stepped on the Truist Park mound since first tearing his right Achilles tendon on Aug. 3, 2020. He tore the same Achilles again a year later and didn’t return to the Majors until this year.

Soroka’s return to a Major League mound on May 29 start against the A’s -- his first in the Majors since 2020 -- was emotional, and the feel-good story was still developing when he pitched in Arizona six days later. But now the Canadian pitcher is trying to prove he can rekindle his 2019 success and stay in Atlanta’s rotation.

But as Snitker said, performance isn’t the only variable of roster construction. Innings limits are among the other considerations teams have to make while deciding how to best navigate through a 162-game season.

“I hope he is [going to gain a lasting spot],” Snitker said. “We’ll see going forward. This thing is so fluid and it changes so much, you never know how you’re going to have to construct things and what you’re going to have to do. It’s not the individual as much as it is the whole process and getting to where we want to get to go.”