House That Hank Built
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Atlanta Braves: don’t listen to Mark DeRosa

By Alan Carpenter

TORONTO, ON - APRIL 27: Marcus Stroman #6 of the Toronto Blue Jays delivers a pitch in the first inning during MLB game action against the Texas Rangers at Rogers Centre on April 27, 2018 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)
TORONTO, ON - APRIL 27: Marcus Stroman #6 of the Toronto Blue Jays delivers a pitch in the first inning during MLB game action against the Texas Rangers at Rogers Centre on April 27, 2018 in Toronto, Canada. (Photo by Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images) /
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NEW YORK, NY – MAY 01: Michael Soroka #40 of the Atlanta Braves pitches in the second inning against the New York Mets at Citi Field on May 1, 2018 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY – MAY 01: Michael Soroka #40 of the Atlanta Braves pitches in the second inning against the New York Mets at Citi Field on May 1, 2018 in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo by Mike Stobe/Getty Images) /

It’s a bad idea because…

Partly Soroka, but mostly Stroman.  Let’s start with the obvious:  there are just not very many starting pitchers in professional baseball standing at 68 inches tall.

Though his motion appeared free and easy in this 2014 prospect video (not a game situation), there appears to be much more effort at the end of his delivery in a 2017 video.

These are observations (and admittedly unskilled ones at that), but observation that nonetheless cannot be correlated to Stroman’s performance on the mound, which has been exemplary up until 2018.

Between the 2015 and 2016 season, Stroman jumped from 131 innings to 204, following up with 201 in 2017.  But this Spring, there were some concerns about his shoulder, and he only recorded 7.1 Grapefruit League innings.

But after answering the bell in April, he only managed 7 innings once and seldom ventured past the 5th inning at all… not for health reasons, but for performance reasons (7.71 ERA).  More to the point, he’s only had a single decent outing on the year.

So now he’s on the Disabled List with what was characterized as “right shoulder fatigue”, but this statement about his situation was … interesting:

"“The 27-year-old said there were a variety of factors at play in his DL stint, and not all of them appear to be directly related to his shoulder. As his struggles on the mound continued to linger, Stroman conceded they began to affect other facets of his life as well.” It just got to a point where it became very frustrating, physically and mentally,” Stroman said. “Just at a point where I felt like I had to work at 115-120 percent when I would normally be working at 80-85 percent to do what I do out there."

He’s now back at extended Spring Training to regroup and begin the process of restarting/rebooting the season.

To be clear, I have found no published hints at this point of long-term concerns or MRI issues or anything else like that (in fact, while an MRI exam was performed in February, none has been done thus far here in May).

What is clear is that Stroman hasn’t been throwing like himself lately, and whether that’s mental or physical, the upshot is that any team interested in acquiring his services would do well to take a pause and assess whether anything else might be of long-term medical concern.

If it weren’t for that, my own opinion might be “okay – get the proven guy for the as-yet-unproven”.  But he’s definitely not ready to be traded at this point… to anyone.

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