Jorge Soler Holds Cuba’s Home Run Record — and Is Currently Unsigned

Jorge Soler is a .238 career hitter. He has been optioned to the minor leagues, designated for assignment, and released. He has also hit more home runs in a single season than any Cuban-born player in major league history, and he is still the only Cuban ever named Most Valuable Player of a World Series. Those two descriptions are not in tension. They are the same career, read from either end.

The record nobody mentions

In 2019 Soler played all 162 games for a 103-loss Kansas City team and hit 48 home runs, leading the American League. Mike Trout finished second with 45. It was the first home run title by a Cuban-born player in major league history, and it broke two records at once: the Royals franchise single-season mark, previously 38 by Mike Moustakas in 2017, and the Cuban-born record, previously 47 by Rafael Palmeiro.

Seven years later the Cuban record still stands, and the field behind it is not close.

La Habana, and a suspension at nineteen

Soler was born in Havana on 25 February 1992. He played briefly for La Habana in the Serie Nacional and never got the chance to build a record there: at nineteen he was suspended for attempting to leave the country, and he left for good in late 2011.

That matters more than it looks. The Cuban players this site usually writes about arrive in the majors carrying a Serie Nacional career behind them — Alfredo Despaigne with a home run record, Yuli Gurriel with fifteen seasons, Yoelkis Guibert with a province. Soler arrived with almost nothing on paper. Scouts signed a body and a swing. His Cuban record was set entirely outside Cuba, by a player Cuban baseball never had time to finish.

A $30 million bet

The Chicago Cubs signed him as a free agent on 30 June 2012 — nine years, $30 million, reportedly about $5 million clear of the next offer, for a nineteen-year-old with a handful of professional games. He debuted on 27 August 2014 and hit .292 with five home runs in 24 games.

In 2016 he was a World Series champion, though barely a participant: two games, three at-bats, a .400 average off a bench role. That December the Cubs traded him to Kansas City.

Kansas City, and the year it landed

The first Kansas City season was close to a disaster. Soler hit .144 in 35 games in 2017 and was optioned to Triple-A Omaha three separate times. Then, in 2019, everything arrived at once: 162 games, every one of them, 48 home runs, 117 RBI and a .923 OPS on a team that lost 103 times.

Six games in Houston

Kansas City traded him to Atlanta at the deadline on 30 July 2021. The Braves had been under .500 at the All-Star break and had lost Ronald Acuña Jr. to injury; only the 1964 Cardinals had ever won a World Series after a losing first half. Atlanta made a run of deadline moves and Soler was one of them — a player most of the league read as having peaked two years earlier.

Atlanta hit him leadoff in Game 1 of the World Series. He homered off Framber Valdez on the fourth pitch of the series.

Then Game 6. Third inning, two on, Luis García pitching: Soler hit a ball 446 feet by Statcast measurement, over the left-field wall, over the Crawford Boxes, over the train tracks and out of Minute Maid Park entirely. Atlanta won the game and the championship.

His series line was six games, .300, three home runs, six RBI, a 1.191 OPS. All three homers gave the Braves a lead. He was named the Willie Mays World Series Most Valuable Player — the only Cuban to hold that award.

Five organisations in five years

What followed was the career of a man whose value is entirely in one skill. Miami signed him as a free agent in March 2022; he hit .207 that year, then 36 home runs in 2023 and made the National League All-Star team. San Francisco signed him in February 2024 and traded him to Atlanta in July. Atlanta traded him to the Los Angeles Angels that October.

Released

The 2026 season did not go well. Soler played 86 games for the Angels and hit .203 with 12 home runs, missing time with a left oblique strain in June. On 4 August the Angels designated him for assignment. He cleared waivers and became a free agent days later.

As of publication he is unsigned. There has been reporting of interest from Houston — the club he beat in 2021 — but nothing has been signed, and it should be read as interest rather than a deal.

What the record actually measures

Soler does one thing. When it works he is the most dangerous Cuban hitter alive and a team wins a championship because of him; when it does not, there is no defence, no speed and no average holding him up. The Cubs paid $30 million for that at nineteen. Atlanta got the best six games of it at twenty-nine. The Angels released him at thirty-four for the same reason.

The 48 is not a fluke inside that career. It is the cleanest possible expression of it — and it is a Cuban record set by a player who never had a Cuban career, which is its own quiet comment on what the last fifteen years have done to Cuban baseball.

Career by season

More on Cuban baseball

• Cuban baseball: the whole picture
• Aroldis Chapman is closing in on 400 saves
• Every Cuban to play for the Houston Astros
• Cuba’s two best pitchers are in Japan

Sources: single-season and career totals verified against the MLB statistics register and its transaction log. Record context from the Society for American Baseball Research’s account of 29 September 2019. Game 6 detail from MLB.com.

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