Calgary’s Soroka impresses on mound for Braves
He didn’t get the win.
But Mike Soroka did Calgary — and Canada — proud on Friday afternoon.
The pitcher from Alberta put together one of the best opening-day performances for a Canadian in Major League Baseball history by starting the game for the Atlanta Braves and allowing no runs on four hits over six innings.
He also fanned three batters in the 1-0 loss to the host New York Mets.
The former Calgary West Little League and Redbirds star faced reigning National League Cy Young Award winner Jacob degrom in what amounted to a thrilling pitchers’ duel.
“For me, he matched up with the game’s best right there, and it was pretty impressive on both sides,” Braves manager Brian Snitker told Atlanta Braves Radio Network host Grant Mcauley.
Soroka told Mcauley it was the first time he’d gotten up and down six times in a game since last season and he expects his pitch count to rise in the future.
He added he was comfortable working with catcher Alex Jackson, with whom he’s been paired in the minors. He complimented Jackson’s work behind the plate and said they were on the same page throughout the game.
The only run plated in the game came on Yoenis Cespedes’ seventh-inning solo home run off Braves relief pitcher Chris Martin.
Soroka, 22, become the youngest player in Braves franchise history and the youngest Canadian-born pitcher to start on opening day in MLB history.
By game’s end, he became the youngest pitcher with an outing of six-plus scoreless innings pitched on opening day since a 20-year-old Félix Hernández accomplished the feat for the Seattle Mariners in 2007.
“Mike continues to get better,” Braves outfielder Ender Inciarte told Mcauley. “He looks like a veteran in the clubhouse. He’s a confident, mature guy. It’s fun to watch him pitch out there.”
Meanwhile, Soroka thanked Inciarte for his catch against the centre-field wall that appeared to take a home run away from the Mets’ J.D. Davis in the fifth inning.
“Wow … I mean that’s an Ender catch,” the pitcher told Mcauley. “Talking to him before the game even, I told him, ‘We’re going to need you today’ .... I mean, that’s him. We’ve gotten used to that, and that was pretty special.”
In 1976, fellow Canuck Ferguson Jenkins didn’t surrender a run on three hits while striking out seven in an eight-inning effort that got him the win for the Boston Red Sox.
Five years earlier, the National Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher from Chatham-kent, Ont., went 10 innings on opening day, allowing just one run and three hits while fanning 10 for the Chicago Cubs.
Like Jenkins on those two occasions, Soroka didn’t allow a walk.
In 2012, Ryan Dempster, of Gibsons, B.C., went nearly eight innings on opening day for the Cubs, tossing a two-hitter while allowing one run, walking just three and striking out 10.