Largely, we deal with the Los Angeles Angels just like the pal whose life is a wreck however there’s nothing you are able to do about it as a result of they’ll by no means ask for assist and gained’t take recommendation. So that you simply verify in on the AL West standings sometimes and really feel a mix of pity and helplessness.
Nicely, you possibly can take your pity and shove it, as a result of as I write this the Angels are in first place within the division. Tied for first place, at one recreation over .500, however it nonetheless counts. A lot as Jo Adell’s three-robbery night time on Saturday gained fawning headlines, and far as Zach Neto’s 4 dwelling runs are main the offense, there may be one man driving this practice: José Soriano.
Soriano is an effective pitcher, however greater than something he’s a bizarre pitcher. He’s among the many hardest-throwing starters within the league, however his sinker-heavy repertoire has historically not missed many bats. In 2025, Soriano was second amongst certified starters in four-seamer velocity, trailing solely Paul Skenes. However he was solely forty sixth out of 52 in Okay-BB%.
Final 12 months, I wrote about Soriano as one of many avatars of one thing that’s starting to seem like a systemic downside for the Angels: They love velocity, however their laborious throwers don’t strike anybody out. I say “starting to seem like a systemic downside” like I didn’t spend the mid-2010s telling everybody who’d hear that, no, I’m severe, that is going to be the 12 months Garrett Richards stays wholesome and wins the Cy Younger Award.
In July, Jake Mailhot adopted up with an in depth look into why Soriano struggled to strike batters out — a query made all of the extra puzzling by the truth that his particular person pitches did generate plenty of whiffs, even when they didn’t result in many strikeouts.
Soriano throws 5 pitches: Sinker, four-seamer, curveball, splitter, and slider. The primary three he throws to everybody, with the splitter largely reserved for opposite-handed batters and the slider for same-handed batters. Final 12 months, he was largely sinker-curveball, and the splitter and slider got here out extra later in counts.
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After I say Soriano’s a bizarre pitcher, it’s not due to the pitch sorts he makes use of, or how he makes use of them. His five-pitch combine is now and has been extremely orthodox. It’s bizarre as a result of he throws laborious sufficient to make the pitch labels deceiving. Soriano’s curveball, for example, averaged 85.2 mph final 12 months, making it one of many hardest hooks within the league. A number of the guys forward of him, like Jhoan Duran and Jacob Misiorowski, solely throw a curveball as a result of we don’t know what else to name that insane breaking pitch.
His curve can also be unusual in its motion profile: A Kirkland Signature curveball will dip with comparatively little horizontal motion. Soriano’s curve has common vertical motion however six inches extra horizontal motion than regular. It’s one of many side-to-side-iest curveballs within the league, adjusted for velocity, to the purpose the place when you referred to as it a sweeper I don’t assume anybody would discover. Framing it that manner, the Soriano of 2025 makes extra sense: That is Eduard Bazardo plus 5 miles per hour and a pair show-me pitches.
I’ve been damning Soriano with faint reward for about 400 phrases now, so I really feel obligated to say that his splitter is really gross. I’ve talked about Duran and Skenes already, and whereas his splitter isn’t on that stage, it’s not too far off. Soriano is both a throwback or a sufferer of outdated recommendation, in that he likes to pitch to contact so he can work quicker. Regardless, his sinker generates a bucketload of grounders.
Final season, there have been 844 particular person pitches (e.g., Tanner Scott’s slider) that generated 50 or extra batted balls. Soriano’s sinker had the seventh-highest groundball charge amongst these pitches, at 74.0%. And since he threw the sinker in large quantity (1,368 instances, or 49.1% of his complete pitches), that made his sinker the main producer of main league grounders by an infinite margin: Opponents hit 242 grounders off Soriano’s sinker final 12 months, 51 greater than Framber Valdez’s sinker. Solely 23 pitches even produced 100 groundballs in 2025.
I simply need you to take a second to visualise a pitch that’s greater than 1 / 4 extra bowling ball-y than Valdez’s sinker, which is itself one of many main soil disturbers within the sport. That is mirrored in Soriano’s groundball charge: 65.3% final 12 months, the best amongst beginning pitchers (minimal 100 innings) by 6.2 proportion factors.
That’s how a pitcher with comparatively poor strikeout and stroll figures finally ends up with a formidable 3.73 FIP: Soriano principally by no means offers up dwelling runs.
In 2024 and 2025, that’s what Soriano was: a groundball machine who threw plenty of innings. Like, what if Aaron Prepare dinner wore out the radar gun? That’s an excellent pitcher — Prepare dinner had a pair 3-WAR seasons and made an All-Star workforce — however it’s not an ace.
Let’s have a look at how issues have unfolded in 2026: Soriano has taken the choice in three of the Angels’ six wins up to now this 12 months, and whereas I’m normally loath to derive which means from that stat, you need to say he earned the W every time: Six scoreless innings and two hits in opposition to the Astros on Opening Day, after which the identical 5 days later in opposition to the Cubs.
On Monday, Soriano left a fastball as much as Drake Baldwin, who tomahawked it into the proper subject seats for a solo homer, however that was the one harm. Soriano allowed simply two extra hits, and this time he struck out 10 over eight innings.
Our WAR has Soriano at 0.6 via three begins, which is nice — multiply that over 33 begins and you find yourself round the place Tarik Skubal did final 12 months. And that’s utilizing FIP; Soriano has walked six and (irony of ironies) allowed a house run. One run over 20 innings involves an ERA of 0.45. Our RA9-WAR has him at 1.4 wins above alternative via simply three begins.
Spectacular as that’s, I’m extraordinarily reluctant to declare something primarily based on every week and a half of video games. (You possibly can inform it’s too early to attract conclusions due to what I stated earlier than: The Angels are in first place as I write this.) Per week into April, there may solely be one significant big-picture query that may be answered analytically: Is a given pitcher throwing one thing completely different in comparison with final 12 months?
And in Soriano’s case, sure, he’s. It’s the identical 5 pitches, with roughly the identical velocities, coming from the identical arm angle. However he’s throwing his four-seamer extra: 22% of the time, up from 9% in 2025. He’s additionally getting extra drop on his sinker and splitter in comparison with final 12 months.
In his article from this previous July, Jake talked about that Soriano didn’t get very a lot two-strike chase on his splitter as a result of he didn’t command it effectively sufficient. He hasn’t thrown any pitch sufficient instances for us to be taught a lot from the outcomes, however each pitch he throws is getting chased extra, together with the splitter. The chase charge on Soriano’s splitter has doubled from final 12 months.
Once more, that’s most likely a small-sample factor, but when Soriano is lastly throwing his four-seamer sufficient that hitters have to fret about it, it stands to motive that they’d get confused and supply at a misidentified sinker pretty typically. That’s the entire level of throwing a sinker, I believed.
On the entire, Soriano’s chase charge is up by virtually half year-on-year, from 26.7% in 2025 to 39.2% up to now this season. And though opponents are making extra contact within the zone (and hitting the odd dwelling run on a pitch outdoors the zone), his general contact charge is down 5.4% from final 12 months.
Pitching traits — particularly fastball utilization traits — are cyclical. One 12 months, cutters are in, then four-seamers up, then sinkers down, then sinkers up, skinny denims, saggy denims, punk, post-punk, pop-punk, post-punk revival… it’s laborious to maintain observe. However that is the second publish I’ve written this week a few pitcher discovering success after he supplemented his sinker with elevated four-seamer utilization. Nice pitchers can all the time succeed of their chosen model, however guys like Soriano should adapt.
If Soriano has actually discovered a brand new edge, and might get extra whiff and chase with out sacrificing that elite groundball manufacturing, this might be a enjoyable 12 months for him.