ST. LOUIS -- The Nationals signed right-hander Michael Soroka to a one-year contract on Dec. 19 to make his return to the rotation after having moved to the White Sox bullpen last season.
Soroka concluded the first half of his 2025 season with his 13th start on Thursday night in the Nats’ 8-1 loss to the Cardinals at Busch Stadium.
Soroka is 3-7 with a 5.35 ERA in 67 1/3 innings. He was sidelined from April 1 to May 7 because of a right arm biceps strain he sustained in his March 31 season debut.
“I really do feel like, for the most part … we threw the ball pretty well,” Soroka, 27, said of his first half of the season. “I felt like we executed all the plans and just didn't quite get the results early on. The last couple of games have not been very good. So obviously, there's going to be some work to do during the break.
“I think I know the way forward, I think we know what to work on and get rid of. I think moving forward, we take the good and leave the bad. I think early on, I was in a good place, and we’ve got to get back to just trusting that process and not worrying too much about the result.”
Soroka heads into the All-Star break with his second consecutive start of 90 or more pitches and four innings. On Thursday, he allowed two runs off four hits, two walks and four strikeouts before exiting after 91 pitches (57 strikes).
“Obviously, they get a vote, too,” Soroka said of the Cardinals’ offense. “But there's a lot of pitches I made today that were just too far outside the strike zone, especially with two strikes. … It felt like there was no in between tonight. It was either things were thrown really well and either they missed it or fouled it off, or it was just bad, uncompetitive pitches. So I think I shot myself in the foot a little bit. I think they caught me in defense mode, in damage-control mode in the first inning. I thought we did a good job of doing just that, but unfortunately, just couldn't quite find the rhythm and they got me out of there.”
Soroka has posted an identical 2.77 ERA in the first and third innings this season. In the eight games in which he pitched into the sixth inning, his ERA rose to 18.56 in that frame.
“I feel like everybody can say this in baseball, and it's just a higher rate of execution,” said Soroka. “Especially pitching, that’s how it goes. I think when I can stay away from those yanks, I believe that I can be as good as anybody in this game. I think it's just a matter of eradicating those and making sure that I can get deep in games and I'm not asking for four, five, six innings out of a bullpen every night. That's unfair to them, and they've had to do that quite a bit.”
Soroka has plenty of experience to reflect on. He was a first-round pick in the 2015 Draft by the Braves, and he has been pitching in the Majors since 2018.
“I don't think your work's ever done in this game,” Soroka said. “The people that have been around the longest can tell you that the best. There's always things to improve on. I feel like that’s the one thing a lot of those veterans have imparted on me, even when I was really young, was if you're not getting better, you're getting worse. I think there's always things to improve on, but I think knowing that there is more to give is exciting. But I want to make sure that I don't exactly press to do that and let it happen. Just go have fun and play the game.”
This time last year, Soroka was just about two months into a multiple-inning reliever role in Chicago. Now, he is looking ahead to how he can deliver quality starts for the Nationals in the second half of the season.
“I thought I could do it, that’s why I wanted to do it,” Soroka said of rejoining the starting rotation. “I felt like I could have done a better job of it, to be honest with you. I think that there's definitely some things I've left on the table and [things I’ll] look to prove in the second half. ...”
“This org’s been really supportive of me, and I've been very thankful for the amount of people that have given me that chance and believed in me. They still do, and I’m very thankful for that. And I look to prove them right pretty soon.”