The Angels May Have Found An Ace

Angels right-hander José Soriano has had a really tough journey but it seems he has arrived. He has largely stayed healthy for a few years and his results keep getting better. The timing of his breakout puts the Halos in an interesting position.

Soriano has always had good stuff. Even as a teenager, he was hitting the mid-90s with his fastball and showing good secondary stuff while pitching in Rookie ball. Still, there were questions about whether or not he could utilize that arsenal. From 2016 to 2018, he tossed 155 2/3 innings between Rookie Ball and Low-A. He did have a 2.89 earned run average but his 19.3% strikeout rate and 12.7% walk rate didn’t suggest dominance.

He missed a few more bats in 2019 but also with more walks. Then the injury odyssey began. He required Tommy John surgery in February of 2020. The pandemic canceled the minor leagues that year but Soriano was going to be rehabbing regardless.

The Pirates tried betting on his arm, selecting him with the first overall pick in the Rule 5 draft in November of 2020. Naturally, the hope was that he would return from his surgery and get right back on track. He began a rehab assignment in May of 2021 but that lasted only two appearances before his elbow discomfort returned. He required yet another Tommy John surgery in June. At the end of the 2021 campaign, he was returned to the Angels.

He sat out most of the 2022 season but did make seven appearances in the minors late in the year. The Angels were encouraged enough that they didn’t want to risk another Rule 5 selection, so they added him to their 40-man roster in November of that year.

The Halos used Soriano as a reliever in 2023, an understandable decision for a guy who had effectively missed the previous three years. He tossed 23 1/3 innings in the minors and another 42 in the majors, getting him to 65 1/3 for the year overall. The major league results were good, as Soriano posted a 3.64 ERA. His 12.4% walk rate was high but perhaps some rust was understandable after so much missed time. He struck out 30.3% of batters faced and induced grounders at a 51% clip.

Going into 2024, the Angels could have kept him in the bullpen but decided to give starting another try. A few years later, that looks like an inspired decision. He stayed healthy in 2024 for the most part. Soriano had a brief stint on the injured list in the summer due to an abdominal infection and also landed on the IL late in the year due to some arm fatigue. However, he logged 113 innings over 22 appearances with a 3.42 ERA. His 20.7% strikeout rate and 9.6% walk rate weren’t astounding but he got grounders at a huge 59.7% pace.

Soriano’s 2025 season was even better. His only IL stint was right at the end of the season. He was struck by a comebacker and was put on the shelf on September 18th with a contusion. He made 31 starts on the year and tossed 169 frames. His 4.26 ERA wasn’t as nice as the year before but his rate stats were largely the same. He had a 21% strikeout rate, 10.8% walk rate and a huge 65.3% ground ball rate.

Soriano’s velocity has been in the upper 90s throughout his big league career but he has thrown his sinker a lot, leading to the grounder-heavy profile. He was atop the leaderboard in that category by a decent margin, with Andre Pallante a distant second at 59.1% last year.

Here in 2026, Soriano has changed up his pitch mix and it has seemingly propelled him to a new level. He threw his sinker 49.1% of the time in 2025 but that’s down to 30.5% so far this year. That’s led to way more four-seamers. Soriano threw that pitch just 8.6% of the time last year but is up to 23.4% in 2026. To smaller degrees, he has also thrown more splitters, sliders and curveballs.

This is only four starts and 27 innings but Soriano has only allowed one earned run, giving him a tiny ERA of 0.33. Part of that is a .143 batting average on balls in play and 100% strand rate, but it’s not entirely luck. Soriano is still getting grounders at a strong 60.7% clip but with a strikeout rate that has soared to 32%. His 2.33 FIP and 2.73 SIERA suggest he would be showing huge improvement even with more neutral favor from the baseball gods.

It’s obviously tremendous for the Angels. They need several things to break right in order to compete this year, since they haven’t been good in a decade and actually cut the payroll coming into this year. That creates a need for some internal guys to step up and be nice surprises. They’re getting a tremendous bounceback from Mike Trout. Former prospect Oswald Peraza is out to a great start. Reid Detmers moving from the bullpen to the rotation is going well so far.

Time will tell if that’s enough to make the Angels legitimate contenders. They are currently 10-10. Hanging around .500 is enough to be in a playoff race these days, with the expanded postseason field. In some recent years, they have had strong starts that faded over time, as their lack of depth generally gets more exposed as a long season proceeds.

If the Angels aren’t strong contenders when July rolls around, Soriano will be an interesting theoretical trade candidate. His Rule 5 odyssey was harmless for the Angels in a sense, in that they got him back. However, he did get a year of big league service time while spending that season on the injured list. That means that despite only having pitched parts of three seasons with the Angels, he came into 2026 with his service clock at three years and 121 days. He is therefore slated for free agency after 2028.

That doesn’t mean the Angels would have to move him this summer but there would be an argument for it. A dominant pitcher with two-plus seasons of club control could get a haul. Given Soriano’s injury history, there would be sense in selling high, before another injury tanks his value.

This is an approach the Marlins have taken in recent years. They traded two-plus seasons of Trevor Rogers to the Orioles, two years of Jesús Luzardo to the Phillies, three years of Edward Cabrera to the Cubs and three years of Ryan Weathers to the Yankees. Those guys all had notable injury issues in Miami but were cashed in while the Marlins felt they were able to get good value. Those trades netted the Fish Kyle Stowers, Connor Norby, Owen Caissie and a bunch of prospects who are still in the minors. Their farm is now generally ranked in the top third of the league, and it’s possible they are forming a young nucleus that will have them well set up for the coming years. Along similar lines, MacKenzie Gore and Shane Baz were traded for big prospect packages in the most recent offseason, by the Nationals and Rays respectively. Gore had two years of club control remaining. Baz, who has since signed an extension with his new club in Baltimore, had three.

This is a path the Angels have typically avoided. Broadly speaking, they appear to be higher on their own chances of contention than outsiders. They have avoided rebuilding and haven’t made many major moves with a long-term focus. They often use their best draft picks on older college players and then fast-track them to the majors to try to help as quickly as possible. They had many chances to trade Shohei Ohtani for a huge package of prospects but held onto him and couldn’t get to the playoffs with him. They sent out notable prospects at the 2023 deadline to get Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo López and others but immediately floundered and put those guys on waivers a few weeks later.

As a result, there’s not a lot of optimism about the future. Each of Baseball America, MLB Pipeline, ESPN and The Athletic consider the Angels to have one of the four worst farm systems in the league.

If the Angels aren’t in contention this summer, there would be some sense in selling high on Soriano, Detmers, Peraza, Zach Neto, Jo Adell and others, in order to lay out a long-term path. History suggests that, if they are close this summer, they will try to ride the wave into the postseason. For the sake of their fans, it would be great if that worked out, though it has backfired on them in the past.

As mentioned earlier, Soriano’s step forward is unequivocally a good development for the Angels. The question is whether they will be able to take advantage of it. Making the playoffs for the first time since 2014 would be one way to do that. Setting themselves up for the future by building up a barren farm system would be another. The club hasn’t been able to take either of those roads in recent history. Hopefully this time is different, one way or another.

Photos courtesy of Patrick Gorski, Imagn Images