Nobody watches the Angels. This is not a complaint so much as a weather report — a fact of life for a franchise that has spent the better part of a decade being irrelevant in a division that contains the Dodgers, the Astros, and the Rangers. You accept it. You move on. You watch your team’s best player pitch on a Wednesday afternoon in Anaheim to a half-empty crowd while the national conversation orbits someone else.
But at some point, the numbers get loud enough that ignoring them stops being an editorial choice and starts being a failure of attention. Jose Soriano is at that point right now. The Cy Young conversation should be happening. It isn’t. Let’s fix that.
The April Nobody Noticed
Through seven starts and 42.2 innings this April, Soriano went 5-1 with a 0.84 ERA, 49 strikeouts, a 0.94 WHIP, and held opposing hitters to a .164 batting average. The Angels named him AL Pitcher of the Month for March/April. MLB barely noticed.
What he did in April doesn’t have much precedent. Soriano became just the third pitcher in MLB history to finish April with five or more wins, 49 or more strikeouts, and a sub-1.00 ERA. The other two: Randy Johnson in 2000 and Jered Weaver in 2011. Johnson’s season ended with a Cy Young — 19-7, 2.64 ERA, 347 strikeouts. Weaver started the 2011 All-Star Game. The company Soriano is keeping is not subtle.
He was also the first Angels starter to win his first five starts of a season since Weaver in 2011. Through his first four starts, he became the first pitcher since at least 1900 to throw 25-plus innings while allowing fewer than 10 hits and fewer than 2 runs. Through six starts, his ERA sat at 0.24 — the lowest ERA (minimum 30 IP) through a pitcher’s first six starts since 1913.
What Soriano Is Actually Doing
The surface stats are dominant. What’s underneath them is more interesting. Soriano’s fastball averages around 98 mph and grades in the top 2% of MLB by pitching run value. His offspeed ranks in the top 1%. But velocity isn’t why Angels coverage has changed its tone on him — it’s command and craft. He added a splitter this season that gives hitters a third look they can’t solve, turning a flamethrower into a pitcher who can beat you multiple ways.
“He’s not just a flamethrower anymore. He’s a pitcher now,” Angels analysts noted this spring. That phrase carries real weight when you look at how his arsenal plays. A 98 mph fastball is terrifying. A 98 mph fastball paired with a splitter that tunnels identically off the same release point is a different problem entirely — one that explains the .164 opponent batting average better than pure heat ever could.
His 2.41 ERA through roughly 59.2 innings ranks among baseball’s best as of mid-May. That number absorbed a rough outing against the Dodgers on May 17 — six walks in 5.1 innings, six runs, the kind of night that happens to every pitcher. One bad start against the best lineup in the NL didn’t wreck what he’s built. The ERA went up. The numbers remain elite.
Is Jose Soriano a Cy Young Candidate in 2026?
Yes. He led baseball in ERA and WHIP through April. The full-season numbers remain elite — 2.41 ERA and a sub-1.10 WHIP through mid-May. He has the most statistically dominant April by any pitcher in over a century of comparison. His name isn’t in the national conversation because of geography and market size — neither of which has anything to do with what happens between the lines.
The landscape has shifted in his favor, too. Tarik Skubal, the reigning AL Cy Young winner, underwent elbow surgery on May 7 and faces an uncertain recovery timeline. That’s not a reason to hand Soriano the award — the season is long — but it removes the conversation’s most obvious endpoint. The AL race is genuinely open in a way it wasn’t a month ago.
The Extension Question
Angels fans get to be anxious here in a completely different way. Soriano is earning $2.9 million this season on a one-year deal. He remains under team control through 2028, becomes arb-eligible in 2027, and hits free agency in 2029. The market for what he’s doing right now is significant — Shane Baz just got five years and $68 million from Baltimore, and Baz hasn’t approached Soriano’s current production.
The Angels have an obvious window to lock up an ace before arbitration inflates his price year by year. A pitcher performing at this level, with this stuff, with three-plus years of control remaining — that’s what organizations build around. Or lose when they wait too long.
The Cy Young race runs through October. The extension conversation should start now. Soriano has done his part. The question is whether the front office is watching.
