When right-hander Michael Soroka met with the Nationals, he quickly sensed a fit: A young team on the rise with whom he could return to the starting rotation and provide veteran leadership at age 27, while still continuing to develop himself.
“There's a lot of youth, a lot of guys coming up that are looking to prove themselves, and that's an exciting place to be,” Soroka said in a Zoom call on Friday.
Soroka agreed to a one-year contract with the Nationals on Thursday. The deal is worth $9 million, a source told MLB.com's Mark Feinsand.
Soroka, a 2015 first-round pick out of high school by Atlanta, returns to the NL East. He played with the Braves from 2018-23 and the White Sox in ‘24.
“This is an organization that's always wanted to win, and obviously in a difficult division, it makes it that much more important to have that good culture,” Soroka said. “... Almost betting on myself for that one year, making sure that I got out there to a team that was going to give me the opportunity and was going to be a lot of fun to be with all year, it makes a big difference. I’m looking forward to that, for sure, with the Nats.”
Soroka is excited to get back to a starting role after pitching the majority of 2024 out of the bullpen. Last season, he went 0-10 with a 4.74 ERA in 25 appearances, including nine starts, with the White Sox. But he thrived when he moved to Chicago’s bullpen in mid-May. As a multiple-innings reliever, he posted a 2.75 ERA, held opponents to a .189 batting average and recorded 15.0 strikeouts per nine innings.
“You get a little bit more aggressive and punch first before you get punched,” Soroka said. “… The pitch mix is a little different when I went to the bullpen. That's something I look to move forward on. The two-seam and the changeup are still there, it's just a matter of what's going to get prioritized. I think I found a lot of good ways to get good hitters out on a consistent basis.”
Soroka, who started in 43 of his 44 appearances with Atlanta, is 17-13 with a 3.76 ERA in 52 outings (287 innings) as a starter. (He did not pitch for the entire 2021 and ‘22 seasons because he tore and re-tore his right Achilles tendon.) Soroka looks forward to taking the work he did in the ‘pen and carrying it to the mound every five days.
“The velocity spike and all that, I think was more attributed to mechanical adjustments that I've made,” Soroka said. “I started moving a little faster, especially in the back end of the season -- stuff that I've been working on for years and had kind of finally made strides with. … Early on this year, it was a lot of just planning and over planning on my part, and going out there and trying to do too much and not just get out No. 1, pitch No. 1. I think that's ultimately what reset when I went to the bullpen, and that's why I started to get hitters out on a consistent basis again for multiple innings at the time. I'd like to continue that again -- hopefully in the sixth, seventh inning.”
Soroka will join a young Nationals rotation of right-hander Jake Irvin and left-handers MacKenzie Gore, DJ Herz and Mitchell Parker. (Righties Cade Cavalli and Josiah Gray are recovering from Tommy John surgery.) Of his new teammates, Soroka has already played with Juan Yepez and recent Minor League signee Patrick Weigel in the Braves' farm system.
And those conversations in free agency gave him an instant sense of comfort with the rest of the organization.
“First off, they had pretty much everybody on the meeting, which meant a lot to me,” Soroka said. “Manager Dave Martinez was on as well. Getting to hear him talk about how excited they were to get me in there, get me in a Nats uniform and get some big hugs after each game, that obviously gets me to a good place of understanding how this club valued me right off the bat. So I think that was something that was big for me.
“Everybody seemed very confident in what they were looking at and how that would translate back into the rotation. It wasn't so much a conversation of me trying to sell them on that fact; it was more of a conversation that this is what they saw, it was intentional and we're looking forward to continuing that progress. It clicked the whole time and definitely showed me that's where I needed to be.”