Athletics 1B Tyler Soderstrom Begins Season With Torrid Power Binge

There’s been an awful lot of change surrounding the team now simply known as the “Athletics” since last season. Their long run in Oakland ended, and they are spending a transition period in Sacramento before their planned move to Las Vegas. At this point it’s unknown how long they’ll be playing their home games in California’s capital, and the official standings don’t even list the city’s name.

But while the club hasn’t been competitive in recent seasons, their fortunes did turn a bit upward in 2024, and they are off to a respectable start this year, crowding the .500 mark with a youthful roster. DH Brent Rooker anchors their lineup, they inked homegrown RF Lawrence Butler to a long-term deal and even landed a prime free agent pitching prize in RHP Luis Severino. Yes, the Athletics are even beginning to spend some money again.

But their biggest development – and perhaps their biggest surprise – so far has been the early power breakthrough of 1B Tyler Soderstrom, currently tied for the MLB lead in homers, with 9, alongside Mariners’ catcher Cal Raleigh.

The club has long had high hopes for Soderstrom. He was their first round pick in 2020 out of a California high school and had a fairly illustrious run through the minor leagues. He was selected as a catcher, and the club envisioned him as a long-term power source at a defensive position, much like Raleigh.

And his bat stood out in the minor leagues. Each year I prepare a list of top minor league position player prospects based on performance and age relative to league and level. It’s purely based on statistics, and there are no adjustments made for context, like position or home ballpark. I take the actual rankings with a grain of salt, but qualifying for the list means something, and high rankings have correlated with eventual MLB success over time.

Soderstrom qualified for my list in four consecutive seasons, from 2021-24, at #39, #104, #200 and #50. To twice rank in the Top 50 at a glove-first position is a big deal, and did point toward future success at the game’s top level. But there were some other factors at play. It wasn’t just me, either – Soderstrom made the Baseball America Top 100 prospect list four times, peaking at #21, and the MLB.com Top 100 prospect list twice, peaking at 29. Those lists also take defense into consideration.

His introduction to the big leagues didn’t go well. Things weren’t going as swimmingly behind the plate, and that seemed to negatively affect his offensive performance. And offensively, he was just having a devil of a time putting his bat on the baseball. That’s a couple of big issues he was trying to tackle simultaneously, and he simply wasn’t able to do it. The defensive issue is a huge one – some of the game’s top catching prospects, like Joey Bart and Henry Davis, have taken an awful long time to get that complicated facet of the game under control, and their projected offensive performance has taken a hit over that span.

So Soderstrom was pretty much permanently moved to first base in 2024, and his offensive output didn’t immediately pick up. In 2023-24, he batted ..204-.282-.354 at the MLB level, with a 96/31 K/BB in 351 plate appearances. Contact frequency was his overriding problem. though his K rate did decline from 31.2% in 2023 to 24.9% in 2024, offering a ray of hope.

Positives? He crushed the ball in the air in 2024. His 98.4 mph average fly ball exit speed was topped by only Aaron Judge (98.7 mph) among AL qualifiers. On all batted balls, his average exit speed was 91.9 mph (over a standard deviation above league average), his average launch angle 9.6 degrees (a standard deviation below league average). There were some things to build upon in this profile if he could make more contact and elevate the baseball a little more often.

So what has happened to turn himself from an ordinary offensive 1B (.233-.316-.429 in 2024) to the leading home run hitter in the game in an admittedly small sample thus far in 2025? First and foremost, more contact. His K rate has continued its steep downward descent to a more than acceptable 20.0% (all 2025 stats are through Saturday’s games). His line drive rate – abysmally low at 14.5% in 2023 and 13.1% in 2024, has trended up to a more respectable but still pedestrian 18.8% in 2025. His average launch angle is up by over three degrees to 13.0 as his grounder rate has trended down from 55.6% in 2023 to 48.9% in 2024 to 40.6% in 2025.

And you probably figure that his fly ball exit speed has spiked, right? Nope. It’s almost exactly the same as last season, creeping up fractionally to 98.7 mph. He’s hit his grounders harder than average in both 2024 (88.1 mph) and 2025 (89.0 mph), so it’s those extra line drives that have helped push his overall average exit speed from 91.9 to 93.0 mph.

So now you have a player with a respectable K/BB profile (his walk rates have sat in a narrow band from 8.0% to 9.4% from 2023-25, and at 8.9% this far this season), who crushes the ball in the air and hits it harder than average on the ground, who has pushed his liner rate up to a respectable level. And you can’t point to a relatively cozy home park as the reason for his early season outburst – 7 of his 9 homers have been hit on the road. He’s managed to post a .309-.367-.667 line through Saturday’s games without a single unsustainable data point on his 2025 line.

There will be challenges, however. You may wonder why I haven’t mentioned his line drive exit speeds yet. That’s because they’re far lower than his fly ball exit speeds (crowding the league average, in fact), and that’s pretty rare, and generally not a good sign. It’s indicative of a player who’s overly focused on driving the baseball in the air. Such players tend to have holes in their swings that are eventually exploited by opposing pitchers. Soderstrom’s average liner exit speeds are far below his fly ball marks, at 92.7 mph in 2024 and 94.0 mph in 2025. But at least that’s trending up as well.

I don’t see Tyler Soderstrom as a budding superstar, but I do see him as a player with real power who is making real improvements across the board. At the tender age of 23 he appears primed to hit 30+ homers this season, though his batting average will likely fade. He still has plenty of things to work on, but he’s working on them. He’s likely to have his best seasons relatively soon, and projects as a power before hit guy rather than the preferable hit before power archetype. But the Athletics will take it – he’s clearly a member of their inner core who will be a selling point to fans as they move into a new home in the not too distant future.