Is a Cy Young campaign in reach for the Angels’ breakout ace José Soriano?

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José Soriano’s stock is rapidly rising amid a dominant start that no one saw coming.

The Angels have a real ace on their hands. The 27-year-old José Soriano looks like the Halos’ best pitcher since Shohei Ohtani, and yes, it’s only been four starts.

In his fourth season, the hefty right-hander has allowed just one run through 27 innings. He’s won all four starts:

6.0 IP, 0 ER, 2 H, 7 K, 4 BB vs. Houston Astros
6.0 IP, 0 ER, 2 H, 4 K, 2 BB vs. Chicago Cubs
8.0 IP, 1 ER, 3 H, 10 K, 0 BB vs. Atlanta Braves
7.0 IP, 0 ER, 2 H, 10 K, 2 BB vs. Cincinnati Reds

Entering Thursday, the Astros rank atop MLB in runs scored. Additionally, the Braves rank third. Soriano silenced two of the best offenses in the league, putting validity behind his impressive numbers.

Soriano leads qualified pitchers in earned run average, innings pitched, strikeouts, slugging percentage allowed, and wins. That’s a mouthful. However, that’s just been the José Soriano experience to this point.

Naturally, a pitcher who wins the Triple Crown will win the Cy Young. So, the pressing question for Soriano is: Can he keep this up?

A Reliable Formula for Success

While José Soriano’s career has seen a multitude of statistical ups and downs, one metric has remained a constant: ground-ball rate. José Soriano is arguably the most extreme ground-ball pitcher in the major leagues, and he’s finally translating it into results.

In 2026, José Soriano is getting ground balls on 61.4% of batted-ball events. Dating back to 2024, no starting pitcher has induced grounders at a higher rate.

Keeping the ball on the ground has been his calling card, as it devalues hard contact against him. Despite landing in the bottom 4% of MLB pitchers in average exit velocity allowed in 2025, he was above average in SLG. This means that despite giving up very loud contact, it didn’t impact him on the results side of things.

Soriano’s pitching style gives him a huge performance floor, considering that he’ll never give up a ton of homers or extra-base hits.

The Brand-New Skill

José Soriano has been a ground-ball pitcher his entire career. That tendency is what allowed him to reach the major leagues and, quite honestly, what’s kept him there through his age-27 season.

However, Soriano is developing a new talent in 2026 that we haven’t seen in the past. This year, José Soriano is striking out batters a whopping 32% of the time, which is a significant jump from his 21% clip the year prior. As mentioned earlier, he currently leads MLB in strikeouts.

In 2025, Soriano accumulated 125 strikeouts over 169 innings. In 2026, Soriano is currently on pace for 240 strikeouts across 209 innings (assuming he makes the same number of starts). While it’s an extreme long shot, Soriano’s pace would nearly double his total from the prior season in the same number of outings.

Thanks to this new strength, Soriano has become a fearsome matchup for opponents. Through four games, 76% of all plate appearances against Soriano have ended in a strikeout or a ground ball. That’s outlier stuff, and the GB% vs. K% graph below illustrates it.

2026 Ground Ball Rate vs. Strikeout Rate. Visual courtesy of Baseball Savant

A chance at Cy Young?

As of Monday, April 13, ESPN Bet ranks José Soriano as the fifth-most likely pitcher to win the 2026 AL Cy Young Award. Currently, he sits above notable arms like Dylan Cease, Cole Ragans, and Trevor Rogers.

There’s obviously a tall task cut out for Soriano with Tarik Skubal still at the peak of his performance. There’s still a lot to prove for Soriano, who—unlike any of the other candidates—is finding success really for the first time. However, while he leads the league in ERA, wins, and Ks, Soriano will remain as the technical frontrunner.

While it seems like a long shot, we’ve seen it done before. Once upon a time, a hard-throwing righty sinkerballer named Sandy Alcantara won the award with the Miami Marlins. Alcantara had shown flashes of elite caliber, but hung above a 3.00 ERA for the first part of his career.

It’s very early, but Soriano has checked all the boxes to be the next breakout starter in Major League Baseball.

Willy Warren