The Washington Nationals made their first significant agreement of this offseason with the official signing of right-handed pitcher Michael Soroka on a one-year contract. The deal is reportedly for $9 million per multiple reports. Reporter Robert Murray adds that Soroka was signed as a starting pitcher.
Yes, Soroka’s statistics as a starting pitcher versus as a reliever had very noticeable disparities. Soroka, 27, pitched to a 4.74 ERA with 84 strikeouts in 79.2 innings pitched overall in his 25 games (nine starts) for the Chicago White Sox in 2024.
Soroka opened the season in the White Sox rotation before moving to the bullpen in mid-May. He went on to post a .189 opponents’ batting average, 15.00 K/9, and an impressive 2.75 ERA (11 ER/36.0 IP) in 16 relief appearances in 2024. Soroka finished his 2024 season on a high note by striking out 13-of-the-26 batters he faced with just two walks and a .083 opponents’ batting average (2-for-24) across his final three outings with a 0.00 ERA in the month of September.
When you read that, you wonder why the Nats might give Soroka the nod as a starting pitcher, and two points to focus on is that only three spots in the starting rotation are locks so far with MacKenzie Gore, Jake Irvin, and DJ Herz. If Mitchell Parker takes the fourth spot, who takes the fifth spot? Sure, it could be Cade Cavalli, but it sounds like the team will go slow with him, then you have Triple-A pitchers Andrew Alvarez, Brad Lord, and Tyler Stuart. On projections, Jackson Rutledge and Joan Adon are not locks to make the team either as a starter. All of them are penciled in for Spring Training.
Using FanGraph projections, they see Soroka as a starter going 116.0 innings with a 4.50 ERA and a 1.0 WAR. Obviously that is not a full season. That is just 21 starts.
Many analysts thought that the Washington Nationals needed a fifth starter from the outside — of course many didn’t consider Soroka as the guy. Again, the Nationals could sign other starting candidates and have a more robust competition in training camp — but as of now, Soroka is penciled in as a starter on the Spring Training roster.
“When he was a starter with the White Sox, he had to use the arsenal they made him use. When he went to the bullpen, they let him use what he wanted, including his 4-seam fastball that has rise on it and that got him back on track.”
— Murray wrote after the signing
A National League All-Star for the Atlanta Braves in 2019, Soroka went 13–4 with a 2.68 ERA in 29 starts en route to finishing second in the National League Rookie of the Year voting in his first full Major League season. Then Soroka had a blowout of his achilles and re-injured it and missed two seasons.
Soroka was selected by Atlanta in the first round (№28 overall) of the 2015 First-Year Player Draft out of Calgary, Alberta. He was acquired by the Chicago White Sox as a part of a five-player trade on Nov. 16, 2023, and then became a free agent in the offseason. Soroka is repped by the ISE Agency and agent Mark Pieper. Coincidentally, Pieper is also the agent for Patrick Corbin who just finished his six-year contract in 2024 with the Washington Nationals after a first-year deal that helped the Nationals win the World Series in 2019.
The Nationals 40-man roster is now at 38-players with two open spots. We project with the Soroka signing the Nationals CBT payroll is at $101 million, and that projection includes Stephen Strasburg‘s retirement payroll of $35 million which puts the Nationals at $66 million in active payroll.
