José Soriano Is Carrying the Angels Rotation Alone

The Angels’ rotation plan entering 2026 was, in the words of one beat writer summarizing Perry Minasian’s own public assessment, “a #3, a #4, a #5, and a handful of 6s.” That was the optimistic version. Three weeks into the season, the #3 (Grayson Rodriguez) hasn’t thrown a bullpen session. The notional #4 (Alek Manoah) lost a fingernail in spring training. The emergency fifth option (George Klassen) left his only start with a finger injury after surrendering six runs. The replacement for the replacement (Sam Aldegheri) was recalled from Triple-A Salt Lake carrying a 10.80 ERA.

One starter is keeping this from becoming a total disaster. José Soriano is that starter, and what he is doing right now is historically unusual.

What Soriano Is Doing Is Historically Good

Through four starts, Soriano is 4-0 with a 0.33 ERA across 27 innings — leading all of Major League Baseball in ERA, wins, and strikeouts (31 in those 27 frames). Opponents are hitting .103 against him. WHIP: 0.667. In less than a month, he has generated 1.8 bWAR — the kind of number that shows up in Cy Young campaigns.

The historical footnotes are not small print: Soriano is the first pitcher in American League history to throw at least six innings in each of his first four starts of a season while allowing three or fewer hits and one or fewer runs in every outing. He is also the only pitcher since 1900 — across both leagues — to allow fewer than ten hits and two runs in his first four appearances covering at least 25 innings. Sit with that second record for a moment.

The fastball is sitting 96.9 to 97.5 mph with a 33.8% whiff rate. His sinker has gained an extra inch of drop and nearly two more inches of arm-side run compared to prior seasons — a mechanical refinement that Fangraphs documented as the core of his transformation. He leads all MLB pitchers since 2025 with a 66.0% ground-ball rate, which pairs with the strikeout rate (29.6% in 2026) to create a profile that should not logically coexist. Ground-ball machines usually trade swing-and-miss for contact management. Soriano is doing both at once.

Walt Weiss — the Atlanta Braves manager, an opposing party with no incentive to be charitable — watched Soriano work and said: “It’s some of the best stuff you’ll see in this league. You hate giving credit to opposing pitchers, but sometimes you have to. That was big-time stuff right there.”

On April 13, Soriano was named AL Player of the Week — the first Angels pitcher to win the award since Reid Detmers after his no-hitter in May 2022. And he is the first Angels starter to win his first four decisions since Jered Weaver in 2011 — a comparison that, as we will get to, cuts two very different ways.

SORIANO ON FIRE!

José Soriano, do Los Angeles Angels, desbanca batters e leva o PLAYER of the WEEK da AL:

2-0
15 IP
20 Ks
0.60 ERA#RepTheHalo https://t.co/KPyPWPWpjy pic.twitter.com/a9r7RrUYGo

— After Home Plate (@AfterHomePlate) April 13, 2026

The Rotation Behind Him Is a House of Cards

When Suzuki told Soriano he would be the Opening Day starter, Soriano said he almost cried — “it’s a big honor for me,” he said, adding that it felt incredible to have the organization believe in him. That emotion is earned. It also tells you something about how this rotation was constructed: the Angels needed to hand the ball to a pitcher who had never been a true staff ace, because the pitchers they actually signed to be reliable were already broken before the calendar hit April.

Grayson Rodriguez was acquired from Baltimore in November 2025, trading Taylor Ward to get him. Rodriguez missed all of 2025. Rodriguez opened 2026 on the IL with right shoulder inflammation — described charitably as “dead arm” — and as of mid-April had only just begun increasing his throwing distance off flat ground. Still needed: bullpen sessions and a full rehab assignment before he can pitch in the majors. Weeks away is the honest framing; any firmer timeline would be fiction.

Alek Manoah signed for $1.95 million in December — a buy-low bet on a pitcher returning from Tommy John surgery who, it turned out, then proceeded to allow 16 earned runs in 15.1 spring training innings before a fingernail literally fell off during a March 17 start, landing him on the IL before Opening Day. Manoah threw to hitters on April 11 and is nearing a minor-league rehab assignment — which is progress, technically, but the “nearing a rehab assignment” stage of the return process is not the rotation.

Then Klassen. The rookie made one start, gave up six runs on seven hits in under five innings on April 11, and left the field with a finger injury of his own. Klassen was optioned to Triple-A the same day.

So the Angels recalled Sam Aldegheri from Salt Lake. Aldegheri’s Triple-A ERA entering the recall: 10.80. Career MLB ERA: 6.41. Not a prospect development moment. A front office calling the number farthest down the depth chart and hoping for a passable outing.

Yusei Kikuchi is still in the rotation and his underlying metrics — a FIP of 3.08 against a surface ERA of 6.52 — suggest the ugly ERA has a bad-luck component and will regress. That is the rosiest read on the rotation situation beyond Soriano and a quietly solid Reid Detmers.

Jered Weaver’s name keeps coming up, and what it actually reveals is being left unsaid. Weaver in 2011 was the front of a rotation that included Dan Haren and Ervin Santana; he was first among peers. Soriano in 2026 is surrounded by men who are injured, injured, injured, posting a 10.80 ERA in the minors, and maybe-will-regress-eventually. Weaver’s dominance launched a run. Soriano’s dominance is plugging a structural hole.

Perry Minasian bet on two medically fragile arms at the back of the rotation and a thin pool of organizational depth as insurance. One of those bets broke before the season started. The other broke in spring training. The insurance policy left on a cart with a finger injury. Bad luck is not the right framing; the injury history of both Rodriguez and Manoah was available information in November and December when the Angels built this staff.

At 11-10, the Angels are still in the AL West race because Soriano is posting one of the most dominant four-start stretches any pitcher has put together in living memory, and because Trout has still been Trout. But the gap between what Soriano is doing and what the rotation would look like without him is the gap between a competitive baseball team and a slow-motion implosion.

May will test this more than April has. May is where the Soriano ERA will face a fuller sample, where Rodriguez and Manoah will either return and be effective or will not, where Aldegheri will be asked to give the team something resembling major-league innings. The front office built a rotation on wishful thinking, and right now one extraordinary pitcher is making the wish seem like it came true.

It hasn’t.