Michael Soroka’s debut with the Cubs could hardly have gone worse. The righty only made it through two innings before departing the game with shoulder discomfort. Manager Craig Counsell said postgame that Soroka is headed to the 15-day injured list; the severity of the injury and recovery timeline aren’t clear (relayed by Maddie Lee of The Chicago Sun-Times and ESPN’s Jesse Rogers).
The Cubs acquired Soroka from the Nationals on Wednesday. They sent rookie ball infielder Ronny Cruz and Triple-A outfielder Christian Franklin to Washington in return. Soroka had made his final start for the Nats the night before the trade. That kept him from making his first appearance with Chicago until tonight. Soroka fanned three while allowing a run in his two innings of work against the Reds. Cincinnati starter Nick Lodolo also left in the second inning with an injury — a blister on his throwing hand, in his case.
Shoulder discomfort seems a more significant concern than a blister. Soroka’s fastball was sitting in the 90-91 range. His season average is 93.6 MPH. Soroka’s velocity has plummeted coming out of the All-Star Break. His four-seamer was above 93 MPH in all but one start in the season’s first half. It was down to 91.7 in his first appearance of the second half, then to roughly 91 flat over his final two appearances in a Washington uniform.
Soroka said tonight (via Rogers) that he underwent an MRI before the trade which confirmed he was healthy. He indicated he felt the discomfort tonight when he tried to reach back for a little extra velocity. Soroka has logged his heaviest workload in six years. The Canadian right-hander reached 174 2/3 innings over 29 starts as a rookie with Atlanta in 2019.
Consecutive Achilles tears essentially robbed him of the next three-plus seasons. Soroka also missed time with shoulder injuries in both 2023 and ’24. He spent a good portion of last year with the White Sox in the bullpen, only starting nine of 25 appearances. He reached 79 2/3 MLB innings last season and is up to 83 1/3 frames this year. Tonight was his 17th start, his most since his excellent rookie season.
The Cubs assumed roughly $2.9MM on Soroka’s $9MM salary in the trade. He’ll be a free agent at season’s end. Jameson Taillon isn’t far off his return from a calf strain, but he’s expected to require at least one more rehab start with Triple-A Iowa. In the interim, they’ll probably go with a rotation of Matthew Boyd, Shota Imanaga, Cade Horton, Colin Rea and Ben Brown. The Soroka acquisition was meant to push Brown to the bullpen; he tossed four innings of one-run ball tonight in relief.
Lol cubs
Hahahaha too bad MLB doesn’t have a lemon law amiright?
They’ll always be the loveable losers.
More like DL for butt hurt amirite?
no
Sigh
Nice acquisition jed! Really deserved that extension.
The easy explanation is that Jed Hoyer is an idiot.
The easy explanation is correct.
To be more precise, he is an idiot for trading for a soft tosser with an injury history who has not been good for years, in the first place.
The team is about to go into free fall because of Hoyer’s stupid approach and bad decisions.
for Hoyer’s empire, the writing was on the wall long before this deadline. He has been making ill-fated decisions like this for 5 seasons.
The extension was an endorsement of failure.
Hopefully seeing Kyle Tucker in Yankee pinstripes will solidify this realization for Cubs fans.
@blah: Would love to see Strikeout Tucker playing for anyone else. But Hoyer might just be dumb enough to sign that overrated prima donna.
@Alan – that is one weird take. Tuckers 13.8 stirkeout % is in the 88th percentile, or to put it another way, only 21 players in all of baseball have struck out less frequently than Tucker. He is one of the rare players that walks more than strikes out and I only counted two ballplayers that struckout less then him and hit for more power (ISO), Jose Ramirez and Cody Bellinger.
I get having reservations about being the high bidder on him, but not liking him because of the strikeouts is pretty out there.
@padre: Yeah, I know, he walks a lot. And I suppose he doesn’t strike out all that much. But he sure grounds out to the right side enough, and it’s been a couple of months since he has driven in runs or hit homers at even the pace of a mediocre hitter. He just has not been successful for the Cubs. Harry used to say of good hitters: “He’s a hitter, not a walker.” Tucker is a walker, not a hitter. He is way, way worse than his stats, and they aren’t very good. He is a drag on the lineup. Let him be some other team’s overpay.
did Hoyer even look at medicals?
Soroka has a +6 war but most of that is from one season.
They’ll unfortunately give him another 2 year extension.
Who are the people on the Cubs’ medical staff?
The Cubs already have two pitchers (Boyd and Horton) in the starting rotation whose innings have to be carefully managed going forward. That’s why the trade for Soroka was so frustrating to begin with. Jed just added another guy with the same issue. And here we are.
I’m not cubs fan or a supporter of Jed, don’t have an opinion whether he’s a good gm or not. Not sure why I have to qualify anything before saying this but generally I think it helps the discussion.
How many other teams got starters? Aren’t most teams in a similar situation as the cubs? Like everyone seems to have starters with limit caps due to young arms or injury concerns. The whole sport seems to run out of starting pitching depth around this time of year, which is why everyone loads up on RP at the deadline.
I don’t really have an answer to the issue in the sport either. Because the entire sport is fascinated with spin rates and velocity it’s leading players to train in a way that leads to more injuries. I would personally make rule changes that would force teams to develop pitchers who can throw longer and get away from the one inning RP. I would start with 4 batter minimum rule and expand to 5 in two years, two years after that 6 batter minimum. Basically hoping you get a starter pitching 6 innings, than a set up guy 2 innings and closer for the last inning.
You’re right that not many other teams acquired impact starting pitchers. The Rangers got Merrill Kelly. Maybe the Blue Jays caught lightning in a bottle with Shane Bieber. But if Mike Soroka is the best you can do, why even bother? I would have rather seen Jed use his precious prospects on another relief pitcher instead.
I think beiber could be Soroka or put up sandy alcantara numbers. Jays fans think he’s an ace. And might return to form but it was a risk they took, I’m surprised Kelly didn’t fetch a better return given his numbers and his salary. All the other starters who were available came with giant worts. Kelly wasn’t highly sought after by some teams because of his stuff I just heard on a podcast.
I’m a big defender of these gms using analytics but there seems to be such surplus value in innings eaters who just get outs in todays baseball of high velocity, high spin rates high strikeout rate pitchers, they all injured or a injury waiting to happen. Give me Eric Lauer and Kelly and get me into the playoffs with a bullpen 6 guys deep and let’s roll the dice.
You can’t prevent pitchers from trying harder or using max effort, especially if it is financially lucrative for them to go all out. Maybe there are other ways to manage their arms by limiting innings pitched in high school, college ball. Add more rest days. But telling a guy not to throw so hard or try spinning it less doesn’t seem natural.
I’m aware of that, that’s why you gotta change rules to forced teams to train them differently.
Needs to be a way to make it harder for teams to send down a RP with options who just pitched who pitched well.
Teams are taking advantage of optional RP who have their service time stalled regardless of it their effective or not.
I think by changing it to a 4 batter min first and eventually getting to a 6 batter min that would solve some of the optional RP service issues
Jed isn’t the GM. Carter Hawkins is the GM.
Did the Nationals pull the old Tampa move ? Sure he was healthy, what a hoot.
Sign Chris flexen to take his spot!
Welcome back Chris Flexen
On his birthday too. That’s like an extra gut punch.
Cubs don’t understand it’s a 6 month season, but give out extensions like they’ve already won a WS. Choking at its finest.
So they just released a pitcher with a $1.5M salary and arbitration eligible for another year after trading for a pitcher with a lengthy health history AND a $9M salary? He was pulled after 3.1 innings in his last start with Nats! Why? Nuts and Bolts….Nuts and Bolts, Cubs got screwed!
The kids…they called him Mr. Glass.
Soroka whose velocity has been down his last few starts and then the Cubs trade for him which adds to the facts that Jed Hoyer is an idiot and a pawn of ownership. As other teams who are serious about contending added at the trade deadline Hoyer and the Cubs, who said they are “all in” do practically nothing.
Their explanation for not making the playoffs will be interesting
It seemed pretty evident from Hoyer’s trade deadline that he took an approach of backloading the rotation with 4-5-long relief type of pitchers, figuring that it was likely some of the current rotation hurlers were going to either regress because of workload or just the bad luck of injuries… and once Taillon and Assad made their returns to the line-up, they’d have tons of insurance sitting in the bullpen. Unfortunately, the recently acquired insurance pitcher needs his spot covered by pre-existing insurance lol. It was like Hoyer figured since he couldn’t acquire a surgeon, he’d cobble together an impressive first-aid kit. He just didn’t think he’d have to dig deep into it quite yet. Mike Tyson sure wasn’t referring to an MLB scenario when he said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” but that is where Counsell and Hoyer find themselves- having, yet again, to adapt to challenges.
I’m less concerned about the state of the starting rotation or the relief corps (which has been crapping the bed lately but still performing waaaaay better than anybody had a right to expect), and far more worried about the ongoing listlessness of the offense. Tucker’s hand may not be injured enough for rest but seems to be affecting him, PCA is maybe feeling the weight of his first true MLB season, and Suzuki seems to be waiting on things to improve on their own. That’s a problem, because if we can’t rely on those three, then the offensive burden falls on players that aren’t really cut out to carry it, like Happ and Swanson and Hoerner. Hoerner has been outstanding lately, but he’s not gonna be the driving force of any offense.
Normally I’d be like, hey, it’s okay, they’re in a slump, they’ll break out, but if the problem is rookie exhaustion and lingering injuries, that’s not something that goes away until the off-season.
Random observations:
They don’t seem very aggressive on the base paths lately, but that could be the result of match-ups. Just seems like the Cubs need to get back to manufacturing runs.
The Castro pick-up looks really good so far.
Very good analysis. I’m not a Cubs fan, but with my scoreboard watching as a Brewers fan I have see more Cubs than usual. I think what you said about PCA really feeling that weight of his first full season is spot on. He’s tremendous but he’s had some head scratching plays of late. Dropping the fly ball against the Crew and then the pickoff on first late in the Reds game just for a few examples. He will get right and continue improving.
I hate that I find myself typing this, but it is enjoyable to watch the Brewers play, which I do for the same kind of Cubs-motivated scoreboard watching. Even worse, I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Milwaukee teams just because- back in the day- you could purchase a $20 round trip Amtrak from Chicago to Milwaukee, and so I got up there a bunch, plus sometimes drove, and really got to love that town. Even saw a few Brewers games at the old County Stadium, including one (and I’m pretty sure I’m correctly remembering the details about this) where a bunch of people nearby where I was sitting in the bleachers got into a fistfight over the results of the Sausage Race on either a D.A.R.E. or M.A.D.D. theme night. Lol good times.
Sorry for whatever did or didn’t happen, but I’m not reading this
Stoma’s on his way to the Windy City!
In 2016 the Padres traded Colin Rea to the Marlins as part of a multi-player trade for Andrew Cashner. Rea tore his UCL in his only start with the Marlins and afterward the Marlins were livid and approached the Padres about a “deal back” and Rea would be sent back to the Padres with Luis Castillo being sent back to the Marlins. Maybe Hoyer ought to pursue the same tactic depending on the extent of Soroka’s injury
Well Hoyer is just a keep the prospects GM, maybe could of had Kelly if he only was willing to give up some better prospects than what was offer, what’s the old saying when you are only willing to give up low bar prospects you get a low bar starting pitcher. Hoyer has only himself to blame for the Soroka deal.
Sucks for everyone involved.
Possible, but highly unlikely, the Nats knew he was injured when they traded him. They don’t want to blow their respect like that.
He had a recent MRI. If it showed anything that would have predicted this, everyone would have known.
The Cubs, almost certainly, had access to all available information – his trending velocity, the MRI, biometric data?
Sometimes [stuff] just happens.
#bamboozled
Nats flying that W flag on that trade as well