Kent Bewley's News Story Collection

On Mon, Aug 3, the date of the MLB trade deadline for the 2026 season, the Los Angeles Angels traded away one of their best pitchers over the past couple of seasons in José Soriano to the Toronto Blue Jays in exchange for three prospects. Soriano had gone 9-6 over 22 starts and with 127 strikeouts along with a 3.29 ERA, was having a breakout year following an impressive 2025 season. After getting off to a historic beginning with a 0.24 ERA over his first six starts of the season, Soriano fizzled out as high pitch counts and struggles with command caught up to him. Only winning four games over the next three months, Soriano also was plagued by a lack of run support from a substandard Angels offense and a weak and unstable bullpen that blew too many leads, including an 11-4 lead at Sutter Health Park against the Athletics on Fri, Jun 19. Soriano will now join a 52-60 Blue Jays team whom just traded Kevin Gausman to the Chicago Cubs the day before.

In return for Soriano, the Halos received the top-ranked prospect in Toronto’s farm system in shortstop Arjun(pronounced Ar-Juan) Nimmala, who was playing for the Blue Jays Double A affiliate in the New Hampshire Fisher Cats and had produced 21 runs and 34 hits over 33 games along with a .279 batting average. With the acquisition of Nimmala(who is 20 years old and turns 21 in October), there is speculation that Zach Neto could be traded before the 3 pm PDT/6 pm EDT deadline.

Along with Nimmala, the Halos front office also acquired outfielder Eddie Micheletti and right-handed pitcher Angel Rivero. Micheletti was drafted in the eighth round of the 2024 draft out of Virginia Tech and he was a teammate of Nimmala’s on the AA Fisher Cats. With a solid .251 average and 14 home runs and 45 RBIs this season, Micheletti has a chance to fit in perfectly with the Angels Double AA affiliate in the Rocket City Trash Pandas. A 24-year old right fielder, Micheletti’s acquisition could mean that Jo Adell is possibly traded before the deadline.

The last piece of the Soriano trade in Rivero is a young pitcher from Venezuela who has appeared in 34 games in his minor league career and sports a solid ERA of 2.36 so far this season in the Florida Coast League. Rivero could potentially appear with the Arizona Fall League team that the Angels have in Tempe in September/October.

Overall, letting go of Soriano was hard, but it wasn’t the first trade that the Halos made under the direction of interim general manager John Mozeliak. On Wed, Jul 29, they traded Logan O’Hoppe and Chase Silseth to the Texas Rangers in exchange for another infield prospect named Angel Arredondo, who is 19 years old and is currently on the Halos’ Single A affiliate Rancho Cucamonga Quakes roster. So, more trades could be possibly coming, including that of Reid Detmers, who probably made his final start as an Angel on Tues, July 28 against the Houston Astros in a 3-2 loss.

Soriano was scratched from a Sat, Aug 1 start against the Milwaukee Brewers that could have been his final start in Anaheim, but instead his overall final start as a Halo hurler came on Sun, Jul 26 against the San Francisco Giants in a 4-3 win. Soriano made his big league debut for the Angels out of the bullpen as a reliever in the 2023 season before transitioning to being a starter in 2024, where he won six games over 19 starts. For his career, Soriano has a 26-27 win-loss mark with a 3.72 overall ERA and 432 career strikeouts. Now playing in Canada, Soriano leaves behind a hole in the Angels’ starting rotation and he could be supplanted as an ace in the rotation by Walbert Ureña, who was mentored by Soriano and just won a game against the Brewers where Jacob Misiorowski started. With a 7-7 record, Ureña has the possibility of becoming a more dominant starting pitcher than Soriano turned out to be for the Halos. Time will tell if the package that the Angels got in return for a pitcher with only one season of team control left will be worth it in the long run.