Kansas City Royals: Not time to hit panic button on Jorge Soler

Jorge Soler is going to hit a lot of home runs and is going to strike out a bunch. The two go hand-in-hand in 2021 professional baseball. Unfortunately for the Kansas City Royals, through seven games this season Soler is striking out, he just isn’t hitting the long ball. Or hitting the ball at all.

After the breakout season of 2019, where Soler hit a league best 48 home runs (and tallied a league high 178 strikeouts) the Royals had to feel like their six foot, four-inch, hulk was just coming into his own.

Then, he dropped off in 2020, and is off to a dismal start to the 2021 season.

Kansas City Royals slugger Jorge Soler is off to a slow start again, though it’s not time to hit the panic button just yet.

With the acquisitions of Carlos Santana, Andrew Benintendi, Mike Minor, and some bullpen pieces, the Royals sent the message they were going to compete for a wild card berth, if not the division title. Cleveland shed payroll in the offseason, Minnesota is always in peril regardless of how good they are, and Detroit doesn’t seem to be trying. As much as the Chicago White Sox did in the offseason, the injury bug has already bitten the South Siders, and they show no signs of running away and hiding with the division.

Sitting at 4-3 through the first week of the season, the Royals utilized hot hitting out of the gate to get off to a good start, before coming down to Earth some. They did this without the help of Soler.

The Royals need Soler to contribute and/or at least make productive outs. While the Royals did walk away with a 4-3, extra-inning win on Sunday, they needed a ninth-inning home run from Santana to send the game to another stanza. Soler strolled to the plate four times and made a u-turn after each at-bat.

Soler has 23 official at-bats this season and has struck out 13 times. He’s hitting .130 and even though he is notoriously a slow starter, the Royals need better offensive output from the designated hitter role.

Should the Royals panic? They should not. Hitters ebb and flow, and right now Soler is in a valley waiting to find his peak. Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint, and as Soler’s history has shown us, he will get his hitting stroke back at some point this season.