The Angels may have traded Jose Soriano to Toronto at the deadline, but they still get a little shine from what he’s doing on the mound.
Soriano is one of three American League pitchers named Wednesday as a finalist for the 2026 Rawlings Gold Glove Award, MLB’s annual honor for the best defensive players in the game. The announcement marks the 60th straight year MLB and Rawlings have teamed up for the awards.
For Soriano, it’s the first Gold Glove nomination of his four-year career. It also comes after a season that put him squarely in the mix when the Blue Jays dealt for him on Aug. 3, sending a package of prospects that included Double-A shortstop Arjun Nimmala, who was Toronto’s No. 2 prospect and the 35th overall prospect at the time, according to MLB Pipeline.
Toronto’s decision made plenty of sense based on what Soriano brought at the time. He was 9-6 with a 3.29 ERA, 127 strikeouts, 22 starts and 123 innings pitched, and the Blue Jays also controlled him through the 2027 and 2028 seasons.
The trade was part of a deadline haul for the Angels that drew strong reviews and helped freshen up a farm system that had lingered in the bottom tier among MLB’s 30 organizations in recent years.
Soriano’s case for the award is built on a clean defensive résumé. In 32 starts in 2026, he handled 39 chances, posted an MLB-best 21 assists and didn’t make an error, good for a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage.
That followed another spotless year in the field. In 2025, he made 22 assists without an error in 31 starts for the Angels.
The numbers stack up well against the rest of the league, too. Other MLB starting pitchers averaged a .943 fielding percentage in 2025 and .949 this year. Soriano also limited runners to six stolen bases in 11 attempts, a 45.5% caught-stealing rate that more than doubled the league average of 22.7%.
He also grades out well in Range Factor, the metric that looks beyond error-free plays and tries to measure how many outs a fielder helps create.
Soriano is joined on the AL Gold Glove shortlist by Tanner Bibee of the Cleveland Guardians and Jacob deGrom of the Texas Rangers.
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