Cubs Need Soroka To Meet Expectations

The Cubs sit just one game back of the Brewers in the NL Central, but the two division rivals exist as almost perfect inverses of one another when it comes to on-field performance. Chicago ranks second in wRC+ at 117 and 15th in ERA- at 98, while Milwaukee ranks 13th in wRC+ at 102 and fifth in ERA- at 89. Their common ground is on defense, where both teams are top three in defensive value.

Coming off a series loss against the Brewers and with the trade deadline bearing down, the Cubs added some depth to their weaker side of the ball on Wednesday by acquiring pitcher Michael Soroka from the Nationals. Soroka will be a free agent at the end of this year, after signing a one-year $9 million dollar deal with the Nats last December. In return, Washington received Triple-A outfielder Christian Franklin, Chicago’s fourth-round pick in 2021, and 18 year-old shortstop Ronny Cruz, whom the Cubs selected in the third round of the 2024 draft.

Entering this season, the Cubs starting rotation had Justin Steele and Shota Imanaga sitting at the top, with Jameson Taillon, Matthew Boyd, and Javier Assad filling the remaining three spots, and Colin Rea ready to step in as needed. The plan seemed reasonable enough, but with the exception of Boyd, every starter on the depth chart has struggled with injury, uneven performance, or a combination of both. Steele underwent season-ending elbow surgery in April. Imanaga’s elevated HR/9 from the second half of 2024 followed him into this season, and he missed most of May and June with a hamstring strain. Taillon had also been struggling to keep the ball in the yard prior to hitting the IL at the end of June with a calf injury. Assad has yet to make his season debut, but he has begun a rehab assignment as he works his way back from an oblique strain. Rea’s best ability has been availability. He’s logged the team’s second-most innings behind Boyd, but he’s pitched to a 105 ERA-, placing him slightly below league average.

Given all the injuries, the Cubs have also relied on an injection of youth to cover innings. Ben Brown debuted in 2024 and pitched well in a 55-inning sample, but his performance across 88 innings this season has dipped well below average. Rookie Cade Horton, however, has produced solid results over 68 innings, despite his strikeout rate shrinking from roughly 30% in the minors to 17% in the majors. Instead, he’s keeping the ball on the ground and letting the defense behind him take it from there.

Now Soroka is joining the fold, but with his career track record and production so far this year, it’s unclear how exactly he fits into this pitching staff. He made his major league debut in May of 2018, but since then he’s pitched only one full season, and that was all the way back in 2019, when he finished second in the NL Rookie of the Year voting and sixth in the Cy Young race. Shoulder issues have haunted him across multiple seasons, an achilles surgery took him out for most of 2021 and 2022, and this year his season was delayed until May due to a bicep strain. Needless to say, there’s some injury risk here. And given that Soroka’s velocity has dropped a couple of ticks during the month of July, perhaps there’s more injury risk than a team already awash in pitching injuries should really be taking on.

But then again, it’s also entirely possible Soroka finishes the season healthy. Despite the diminished velocity, Soroka’s FIP and wOBA allowed in July were lower than in any other month this season. It’s also not unusual for Soroka’s velocity to fluctuate; the same thing happened around this time of year in his last season with a full workload, when he was the no. 1 pitcher for the Braves. That dip in velocity didn’t correlate with an obvious dip in production either. So if Soroka does stay healthy, what will his actual pitching look like?

Soroka has evolved over the years from relying primarily on a sinker/slider combo to a four-seamer paired with a slurve. He still throws the sinker to righties, but he swaps it out for a changeup when he’s facing lefties. In de-emphasizing the sinker in favor of the four-seamer, Soroka has sacrificed his extreme groundball rate in favor of more strikeouts. And though strikeouts are good, the trade-off hasn’t actually led to improved run prevention. Now, with the four-seam approach, any hitter that doesn’t strike out is more likely to get some lift on the ball and do some serious damage. And that is part of why Soroka is allowing a wOBA of .309 this season, compared to a mark of .272 when he was a sinkerballer in 2019. However, his expected stats this season pretty strongly suggest that his batted ball luck has been quite poor. Or perhaps the defense responsible for fielding those batted balls has been quite poor. (The Nationals rank 29th in defensive value.) Consequently, his xwOBA allowed this season sits at .295, down from .305 in 2019. Comparing the actual outcomes on Soroka’s four-seamer to the expected stats highlights the disparity even further.

Though Soroka has pitched to a 4.87 ERA and 118 ERA- thus far this season, a 4.11 FIP and a slew of expected stats clocking in well below his actual numbers leave room for plenty of upside over the final months of the season. And getting to pitch in front of one of the best defenses in the league rather than one of the worst is sure to improve his batted ball luck.

From one perspective it might seem like the Cubs are adding another shaky starter with injury concerns to their stable of shaky starters with injury concerns, in the hope that if they put together a large enough collection, then at least three or four of them will be serviceable and healthy come October. But from another perspective, Chicago may have identified a down-on-his-luck pitcher in line for some positive regression.

Whether Soroka makes nine starts for the Cubs down the stretch and pitches to a 3.20 ERA, or he gets pulled early from a game in August with the dreaded forearm tightness, he’s more of a depth addition than a meaningful upgrade. And given the patchwork precarity of the Cubs rotation, it could really use an actual upgrade (like maybe someone Craig Counsell could confidently hand the ball to in Game 1 of a playoff series). So while bringing in Soroka is a good first step, without taking additional ones, the Cubs will still be standing in the middle of the street waiting to get run over.

As for the players heading to the Nationals, Franklin is 25, but he lost a season to a torn patellar tendon. Since returning to the field, he has steadily progressed through the Cubs system. Eric Longenhagen’s most recent report on Franklin grades him as a 45 FV with a profile as a fourth outfielder who can play all three positions, with plus defense in the corners. As for his future at the plate, here’s the breakdown directly from the report:

He hits with his feet very close together, and his swing is handsy, geared for low-ball contact, and produces an extreme opposite field fly ball tendency. Though Franklin’s hands are authoritative and his hard-hit rate (54%) is comfortably plus (it was 41% last year), he probably won’t actually hit for much power with this swing, except against lefties. He’s an OBP-driven fourth outfielder who should play a role mashing lefties and upgrading the defense late in games.

And then there’s Cruz, who is just 18, so there’s still a lot of variability in his profile. He left somewhat conflicting impressions at the 2024 Draft Combine: He displayed impressive raw power, especially given his wiry frame, but then landed among the event’s slowest runners. Since then, he has already begun to get stronger and develop more power, according to Longenhagen’s most recent report, which goes on to underscore the added power with batted ball data and elaborate on the rest of Cruz’s skill set:

Cruz’s peak exit velocity (110 max, 105.5 EV90) and hard-hit rate (43%) are all in the ballpark of the major league average already, and he isn’t done growing. We didn’t know a ton about Cruz’s contact ability entering the year because he wasn’t a showcase fixture in high school, and the timing of the draft and earlier end of Complex ball means Cruz didn’t play affiliated pro games in 2024 after he signed. What we learned this summer was that Cruz is most comfortable covering the down-and-in portion of the strike zone, and shows some ability to get extended and cover the up-and-away quadrant with oppo doubles power. A looming issue is Cruz’s plate discipline. He has poor ball/strike recognition and was swing-happy all summer. Defensively, Cruz has soft hands on the dirt and enough arm for the left side of the infield, but he’s not a quick-twitch athlete and his lateral range might deteriorate as his frame continues to mature. There’s sizable power-hitting upside here, but also risk that Cruz’s hit tool bottoms out because of his swing decisions.

Given his current trajectory, Cruz grades out as a 40+ FV.

Because Soroka’s contract expires at the end of this season, the Nats were never going to get a huge haul in return. They executed a nice hedge by getting one player who is close to big league ready (even if his ceiling is relatively low) and a young, lottery-ticket type of player to dream on. If either player works out even a little bit, it’s a win for Washington — it’s not like the loss of Soroka can meaningfully make things worse for the 2025 Nationals.