3 young Angels pitchers with burning questions to answer in 2025

The Angels have amassed a burgeoning young core that they hope to unlock in order to return to contention after years of futility. Coming off a franchise-worst 63-99 campaign in 2024, before contention comes competitiveness. The difference is subtle, but the first step is consistently being in ball games and being a threat to win before springboarding into true contention for the playoffs and beyond.

Much like some of the youth in the batter's box, the young arms on the mound have a ton of potential, but many questions that must be answered in order for that potential to be reached. 2025 will go a long way to providing those answers and should give the Angels a roadmap on how to build their pitching staff in 2026 and beyond.

Jose Soriano has to prove he can be a reliable top-of-the-rotation starter

Jose Soriano, 26, showed flashes of brilliance on the mound last season, his first as a big-league starter. He made 20 starts, logged 113 innings, and pitched to a 3.42 ERA. At times he looked dominant, forcing hitters to beat the ball into the dirt 59.7% of the time with his power sinker that can reach 99 miles-per-hour.

Other times, however, he looked vulnerable. Despite his high-octane stuff, his strikeout rate was a pedestrian 7.73 K/9 last season, which makes his control issues giving up 3.58 BB/9 dangerous. The walks plus some grounders finding holes in the infield can cause the occasional meltdown and lead to a big inning.

Even if you're sold on Yusei Kikuchi becoming the team's ace, he'll need a running-mate at the top of the rotation. Soriano is the most logical contender to be his VP of rotation dominance, and likely should take over the ace-role eventually from the soon-to-be 34-year-old Japanese import.

However, Soriano's journey to this point has been circuitous. He was an unheralded international free-agent signing out of the Dominican Republic in 2017, signing at just 17 years old. He underwent Tommy John surgery in 2020 leading to his selection in the Rule 5 draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates who then returned him to the Angels in 2021 after his second Tommy John surgery.

The back-to-back Tommy John surgeries, even if they were years ago, are cause for concern, and those questions bubbled up again as he was shut down in the second half with arm fatigue, which limited him to those 20 starts.

The 2025 season will be a big one for the hard-throwing righty. This spring, he's been working on his secondary pitches to improve his strikeout rate -- something that will be a must if he wants to vault himself into the stratosphere of quality top-of-the-rotation arms.

Beyond that, he'll need to tighten up his control, especially if that work on his secondary stuff doesn't result in a jump in K's. Lastly, he'll need to put it all together and stay on the mound, proving that he can in fact handle a full starters workload.

If he can do that, he'll be a future star. If not, he could find himself relegated to the bullpen leaving a gaping hole behind Kikuchi atop the Halos rotation.