2007 Prediction: Soriano is First 50-50 player in baseball
My bold prediction for 2007: Alfonso Soriano will become the first 50-50 player in the history of baseball. For those of you that don’t follow much baseball, that’s 50 Home Runs and 50 Stolen Bases in a single season - nobody’s ever done it before.
Soriano has his share of critics - it seems to me that no matter how well this kid performs, there is a group out there that wants to tear him down. If you laughed at my prediction, there’s a good possibility that you have spent too much time listening to those critics and not enough time looking at some of the things Sori has done.
- When Soriano set a record for the highest salary ever awarded in arbitration (receiving $10 million), the nay-sayers said he wouldn’t live up to it. Instead, he became only the 4th player in baseball history to reach 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in a season.
- When he was traded to the Nationals, “they” said his power would suffer in the great expanses of RFK stadium. He went on to hit 46 home-runs in 2006.
- “They” say he has no work ethic, but he became the fastest man in baseball history to reach 200 home runs and 200 stolen bases.
- “They” said he couldn’t play left field, and wouldn’t survive the transition from infield to outfield. However, in 2006, Sori had 20 outfield assists from left field. [This is an amazing feat - left fielders don’t typically get a lot of assists, or opportunities for assists. I looked at Bill James’ list of the top 10 left-fielders in the history of the game, and found that only 2 have ever had more than 20 assists in a season: Tim Raines had 21 assists in 1983, and Shoeless Joe had 3 consecutive 20+ assist seasons from 1911-1913. Please shoot me an email if you find a left fielder that 20+ assists in a season]
- “They” say he strikes out to much. Well, each year that he’s played (with the exception of 2006), he’s reduced his total number of strikeous. In 2006, Sori took a different tack, and more than doubled the number of walks he received (67 in 2006, 33 in 2005), showing the baseball world that he may have learned to lay off the low-and-away pitch that is his “kryptonite”.
Soriano is, very quietly, going to put up numbers over the next 5-10 years that guarantee him a spot in Cooperstown. My worry is this: because sportswriters have given him an undeserved reputation as lacking a work ethic and having a bad attitude, he won’t ever get the recognition he deserves.
Good luck in Chicago, Soriano.
