This article is part of our Sorare MLB series.
This time around, when it comes to my Sorare MLB recommendations, I want to focus on something simple: Squaring up a baseball and smashing it. Or, on the flip side, making it hard for hitters to square up and smash. I'm talking about things like barrels and hard-hit percentage. Sometimes these yield home runs, which Sorare MLB players such as yourself obviously like. Nothing delivers Sorare points like homers. However, line drives turn into hits more than grounds and fly balls. You know what doubles do? Drive in runs, put you in position to score, and yield Sorare points. So, here are my upgrades, holds, and downgrades.
The number in parentheses represents each players' last limited card sale price as of 5/14.
Upgrades
Zach Neto, LAA ($5.08): Neto just hit a couple home runs at Petco Park, racking up double-digit Sorare points both times. The Angels have a lot of bleakness going on, but Neto is quietly quite intriguing. Last season he had 23 home runs and 30 stolen bases. Neto is a 24-year-old shortstop. The average exit velocity when he's hit the ball? That would be 94.7 miles per hour. To contextualize that, it's a hair above Juan Soto and Matt Olson.
Austin Riley, ATL ($4.95): In terms of racking up barrels, the names you would expect are atop the leaderboard. Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani are pacing MLB. Right in the mix below those two, though, in the realm of sluggers like Pete Alonso and Rafael "I'll die before I play first base" Devers is Riley. He's barreled 21 balls already. Last year, with some bad luck and an injury that limited him to 110 games, Riley failed to get to 20 homers, much less his 30-homer baseline he had set. If Riley is squaring up the ball like this, though, I fully expect him to get to 30 home runs once again.
Shane Baz, TAM ($2.38): Baz has as many starts with negative Sorare points as over 30.0 Sorare points, but I think there's an opportunity here. While he has a 5.02 ERA, he has a 4.33 FIP and a 3.81 xFIP. Furthermore, his line-drive rate is only 11.1 percent, and his groundball rate is up to 47.0. If those rates continue, Baz's ERA should start to look more like that xFIP.
Lenyn Sosa, CWS ($2.17): I mentioned line drives earlier, so I figured going to that well was necessitated. Sosa is of the "potential diamond in the rough" category. The 25-year-old is allergic to walks, and he hasn't delivered a ton of the counting stats that generate Sorare points. However, he does have seven doubles, and he has a 32.4 percent line-drive rate which has helped on that front. Sosa has one of the highest line-drive rates in MLB, so if you want to take a shot on somebody, give him some consideration.
Holds
Jordan Beck, COL ($2.67): Hitting a baseball hard is good. Hitting a baseball hard at Coors Field is even better. Over 46 percent of Beck's hits have been classified as "hard." He's barreled up the ball in 11.5 percent of his plate appearances. In each of his last two series at home Beck has had a game with double-digit Sorare points. I have Beck as a hold, though, because last season in his 55-game MLB debut he had a .521 OPS. That is worth a bit of pause.
Cristopher Sanchez, PHI ($2.60): Yeah, Sanchez seems solidified as a top-level pitcher now. He emerged in 2023 with a 3.44 ERA, and then last season he had a 3.32 ERA. Now, through eight starts in 2025, Sanchez has a 2.91 ERA. I don't know if this will sustain itself, but his strikeout rate is up to 10.80 per nine innings. The reason Sanchez is here, though, is because he's been hard to hit hard. He's allowed only five barrels across 43.1 innings.
Downgrades
Xavier Edwards, MIA ($3.80): Edwards has stolen 11 bases this year, but when bags aren't being swiped, the Sorare output has been limited for the Marlins shortstop. While he hasn't yet played in 162 MLB games, Edwards has just a single home run in his career. One. He has zero barrels this season. That limits his upside. After all, guys like Adam Frazier and Jose Iglesias are also in the zero-barrel club — not the most inspiring company.
Colt Keith, DET ($2.67): As a Tigers fan, I heard plenty of "Keep an eye on Colt Keith!" prior to his rookie campaign. While he's only beginning his second season, the takeaway now would be more along the lines of "Um, never mind." Keith's bat isn't cutting it, and even for a guy who can play second base, his power is too limited. To that end, 23.8 percent of his hits have qualified as "hard," while 27.5 percent have qualified as "soft." Yes, Keith has hit the ball softly more than he's hit it hard, and that's going to make it hard for the Tigers to keep playing him.
Jose Soriano, LAA ($2.69): Soriano is interesting, but ultimately I'm skeptical. He has a 3.46 ERA, keeps the ball in the park, and has a notable 62.1-percent groundball rate. On the other hand, Soriano is getting hit hard. His line-drive percentage is 20.3, and his exit velocity allowed is 86.0 mph. Sure, a hard grounder can still be fielded and turned into an out, but a hard grounder can also squeeze through a hole in the infield. That's why I'm feeling skeptical.
Tyler O'Neill, BAL ($1.31): The move from Boston to Baltimore has led to O'Neill dropping off a cliff. He hit 31 homers in 113 games last year, but only has two through 22 games with the Orioles. The key issue for O'Neill is that he's really getting under the ball. His line-drive rate has fallen to a woeful 7.7 while his fly-ball rate has risen to 55.8 percent. That has meant a lot of pop-ups that have helped nobody, including Sorare players.
