The Los Angeles Angels are hoping starter Jose Soriano makes a big jump this season, and so far he's up to the task.
One of the biggest reasons the Lost Angeles Angels collapsed in the second half of last season was their poor rotation, but the Angels may have found their new ace in Jose Soriano, who shut out the Chicago Cubs with six strong innings as the Angels beat the Cubs, 2-0, to level their record at 3-3.
Soriano pitched sleeveless on a night that featured a 15-mph wind to go with a game-time temperature of 44 degrees, but that didn’t stop him from allowing just two hits to go with four strikeouts and a pair of walks.
“I was nervous watching him with no sleeves on tonight,” said manager Kurt Suzuki said after the game in a piece written by Andy Martinez of MLB.com. “It was freezing.”
Pitchers have an advantage in these kinds of games, though, as they’re the only ones constantly working on a night when the most of the Wrigley crowd looked like they were dressed for a Bears game. Soriano, however, looked locked in regardless of his garb, and as a result he was strike-throwing machine.
“[To] be honest, I feel more comfortable without sleeves, so that’s why I took it off,” Soriano said after the win. “You see the results, so I feel more loose. I feel my shoulder is more free to work.
“I think today everything was working, especially because I was pounding the zone. I can throw a lot of strikes. [I] think all of my pitches are in a good place.”
It was a night when offense went on holiday due to the wind and frigid conditions, but catcher Logan O’Hoppe supplied all the runs Soriano needed when he laced a two-run single in the sixth inning that ate Cubs third baseman Alex Bregman alive.
O’Hoppe also talked with today’s starter, Yusei Kikuchi, about two long fly flay balls from Michael Busch and Bergman against Soriano that might have gone out on a different night.
“I joked with [left-hander Yusei Kikuchi] after they hit those deep fly balls in the sixth that maybe we should just pitch into their plan and let them hit the ball in the air,” O’Hoppe said. “But there was none of that tonight. I didn’t call any pitch expecting them to put the ball in the air. We just attacked the game plan, stuck to it and did a good job of executing.”
One of the more intriguing pitching aspects of last night’s game was Soriano’s usage. Last year he relied on his sinker for nearly half his pitches, but this year he’s using his four-seam fastball more, and last night he threw his splitter almost 20 percent of the time and got three strikeouts with his pitch.
Soriano joined the likes of Nolan Ryan, Tyler Anderson and Ken Hill as the only Angels pitchers to throw six scoreless innings in their first two starts to begin the season.
“It was really impressive,” O’Hoppe said. “I think what’s made it so nasty is that he’s using all his pitches now. He can just get by with a sinker and a curveball, but he’s throwing everything now, and it’s been really cool to watch.”