{"id":105547,"date":"2025-08-05T18:12:27","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T22:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=105547"},"modified":"2025-08-05T18:14:44","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T22:14:44","slug":"cubs-pitcher-lands-injured-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/08\/05\/cubs-pitcher-lands-injured-list\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubs Newly Acquired Pitcher Lands on the Injured List"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">One of the Cubs&#8217; four deadline acquisitions was RHP Michael Soroka. <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/07\/30\/cubs-acquire-michael-soroka-trade-nationals\/\" target=\"_self\">He was traded from the Nationals<\/a> for Chicago&#8217;s number 13 and 14 prospects. Although his 4.86 ERA in 83.1 innings pitched may not look very appealing, his expected statistics are much better. And with the Cubs&#8217; top-end defense, they thought Soroka could succeed in Chicago as a back-end starter. He made his first start on Monday vs the Reds and pitched 2.0 innings with 3 strikeouts and 1 run before getting pulled. He was pitching well, but said a fastball, &#8220;grabbed me a little bit,&#8221; after putting a little extra on it. Counsell spoke on it after the game and said, &#8220;It&#8217;s an IL, and we&#8217;ll see what the next steps are.&#8221; This is not a good look for a recently acquired trade piece, and it will put the Cubs in a difficult spot going forward.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Cubs&#8217; Newly Acquired Pitcher Lands on the Injured List<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Michael Soroka is heading to the IL, per Craig Counsell. <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/VDWsZRvpdx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/VDWsZRvpdx<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Marquee Sports Network (@WatchMarquee) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WatchMarquee\/status\/1952564357168070761?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">August 5, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p>&nbsp;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Were There Signs?<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">When the Cubs traded for Soroka, some worries were going around that were ultimately brushed off. <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">People started to notice that <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">all season,<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> Soroka&#8217;s fastball <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">sat<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> around 94-95 mph, but around June 28th, this velocity <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">started<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> to drop.<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> This dip in velocity wasn&#8217;t minuscule either, as in his last three starts, he has averaged 91.7, 90.9, and 91.4 mph, respectively. This was never a good sign, but it didn&#8217;t seem like too big a problem when they traded for him. Everyone assumed the Cubs wouldn&#8217;t have traded for him if this were an issue. While this may not be the reason for his shoulder injury, it is concerning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Additionally, this is the most innings that Soroka has pitched since 2019. The 2019 season was the only one in his career in which he pitched over 100 innings. Although he isn&#8217;t very old at 28, he may not be used to this much workload, considering it&#8217;s his most since 2019. Soroka pitched 79.2 innings last year, which he has already surpassed this year with 50 games left in the season. Soroka&#8217;s injury may be one of these things, a combination of both, or completely unrelated. No matter what it is, the Cubs would love to have him back soon and healthy.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The Cubs Best Next Step<\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The Cubs now have a spot to fill in their rotation, and they have a few options. <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Both Javier Assad and Jameson Taillon are <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">rehabbing right now<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> and are expected <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">back<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> soon.<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> Either one of these pitchers would be great to fill the spot, but they may not be back in time. In the meantime, they only have two options. First of all, they could go back to what they did a few times with bullpen games. They were forced to go to this due to injuries, which is never ideal for any team. <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">But<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> the Cubs recently released Chris Flexen, who was a <\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">main<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> component of bullpen games.<\/span><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\"> So, their best option is <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/06\/13\/ben-brown-start-cubs\/\" target=\"_self\">putting Ben Brown back into the rotation<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">This year, Brown has a rough 6.04 ERA through 19 appearances. On the bright side, in<\/span> <span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">his last two appearances, he has gone 9.0 innings with a 2.00 ERA and 9 strikeouts. So, while he probably isn&#8217;t their guy for the rest of the year, he is the best pitcher available right now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Main Photo Credits: David Banks-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the Cubs&#8217; four deadline acquisitions was RHP Michael Soroka. He was traded from the Nationals for Chicago&#8217;s number 13 and 14 prospects. Although his 4.86 ERA in 83.1 innings pitched may not look very appealing, his expected statistics are much better. And with the Cubs&#8217; top-end defense, they thought Soroka could succeed in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5567,"featured_media":105571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,1071,35],"tags":[5881,5020,1060,28469,28382],"class_list":["post-105547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cubs","category-mlb","category-news","tag-ben-brown","tag-chris-flexen","tag-jameson-taillon","tag-javier-assad","tag-michael-soroka"],"modified_by":"Evan Mazza, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5567"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105547"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105573,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105547\/revisions\/105573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}