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Internet reaction to Joakim Soria trade a mixed bag

Like it does, the internet reacted (and overreacted, in some cases) to the Tigers' trade for reliever Joakim Soria.

By Rob Rogacki
Hannah Foslien

Despite a confirmation time of 10:20 p.m. last night, the Tigers' trade for Joakim Soria has already made waves throughout the internet. Here's a roundup of the initial reaction to the deal.

The Good

You have already read my reaction to the trade, but the BYB staff isn't in 100 percent agreement on this one. HookSlide chimed in with this last night.

Some guy that occasionally writes here also liked the move.

Matthew Mowery of the Oakland Press is taking the "flags fly forever" approach.

When you’re in the position to win, you give yourself every advantage you possibly can to do so.

Because — like with the 1984 team — you don’t know when that window is going to come crashing closed.

With Max Scherzer, Victor Martinez, Chamberlain and Torii Hunter all free agents after the season, there’s no guarantee there’s another title run in the franchise after this season.

Ante up while you can.

Bob Wojnowski of the Detroit News called the move "one that needed to get done."

Joakim Soria is a tremendous addition to the battered bullpen, acquired Wednesday night from Texas for two of the Tigers’ top prospects, pitchers Corey Knebel and Jake Thompson. Frankly, the Tigers could’ve traded all their prospects plus the Ty Cobb statue in Comerica Park to land Soria and you wouldn’t complain.

Grey at Walkoff Woodward was also accepting of the move.

The price is steep, but as I wrote three days ago, giving up talent like this for a reliever in a trade was always inevitable. There aren’t that many sellers, and even fewer of them have quality relievers they’d be willing to move. Everyone knew the Tigers were desperate for help. In a vacuum, this isn’t a great deal for Detroit, but the alternative here was standing pat and doing nothing – and as we’ve seen from this bullpen repeatedly, doing nothing was simply not an option. The choice Dave Dombrowski was faced with wasn’t optimal, but he made the correct one in this instance.

And others...

The Bad

Lynn Henning wonders why the Tigers' farm system hasn't come through lately.

But one of these days, also, the Tigers need to be strong enough to withstand these July shopping sprees that are always fraught with tension and risk. They must begin developing more of their own talent, especially when amassing pitching is supposed to be their organizational trademark.

Neil Weinberg, who writes for pretty much every site imaginable, thought the Tigers paid a steep price.

That’s a high price. It’s not insane. It’s not crazy. But it’s a lot. I’d trade Knebel for Soria easily and I’d throw in more but I wouldn’t want to add Thompson. I get why the Tigers did it. They need a reliever badly. It makes sense and it could be a big upgrade.

But there’s a problem. They don’t just need one reliever. They need two or three relievers. In order to win this year, they need another great reliever and they fired off two of their best bullets. They’ve taken two important prospects and sent them away. Which is fine in principle, but if you’re making this trade, you have to make more. This trade only makes sense if you’re really going to go all in.

Twitter was also not happy, though many reactions are not fit for print.

In This Stream

Tigers acquire closer Joakim Soria from Rangers

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