Chicago Cubs: Warning, don’t run on Jorge Soler

Runners on notice – Soler has a cannon for an arm

What does the Chicago Cubs’ Jorge Soler have in common with Yasiel Puig, Ichiro Suzuki, Vladimir Guerrero, and Roberto Clemente? If you said they are all right fielders, you are correct, but more importantly they have unbelievable arms that runners know not to test.  While not all of baseball has caught on yet to Soler’s arm – they soon will.  

Monday night’s game against the Reds, Zack Cozart took a large lead off of Jon Lester. Lester attempted a pickoff throw, but air mailed it into shallow right field. Cozart had second easily but got greedy and went for third – Soler ran down the ball and fired a laser to third and getting the runner by a couple of feet.

Friday’s Chicago Cubs versus the Colorado Rockies – Nolan Arenado also found out the hard way by trying to stretch out a single into a double. He was tagged out with another picture perfect throw by Soler by a few steps.

It takes more than just a strong-arm to make runners pause – the accuracy of the throw could be even more important.  If your outfielder has the accuracy to hit the cutoff man – you’re going to make runners hesitate.

You add the power with the accuracy – that is an automatic hold signal from the coaches to their runners.

Soler also is very quick to get to the ball as well. He takes no time in tracking the ball’s path and with his speed and athleticism it really cuts down on the amount of time a runner has to move around the bases. The only issue that he had to start this year was fielding it cleanly on the scoop while running – but that was the first couple of games and that very well could be chalked up to nerves.

I haven’t noticed a problem with that since.

It doesn’t take long for runners and managers to start to take notice of who they can test and who they can’t and those players make it on a very elite list. I’d say that Soler is now on that list of player’s not to test.

Next: Chicago Cubs: Time to move Castro?