The Angels are Looking for a Catcher. Can the Cubs Help?

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We're a week out from the August 3 MLB trade deadline. Rumors are churning and some minor trades have been made, but the main story here is the number of teams whose status as buyers or sellers could change between now and next Monday. One team whose status has been cemented since May, however, is the Los Angeles Angels, who are stumbling toward a 100+ loss season, which will be the most in franchise history. As one of the few bona fide sellers, the Angels have a chance to reset their trajectory under John Mozeliak and significantly upgrade a farm system that was always one of baseball’s worst under former GM Perry Minasian.

Jon Heyman of The New York Post reported earlier in the week that the Angels are willing to discuss trade opportunities for Jose Soriano and Reid Detmers. Soriano and Detmers both have two more years of arbitration eligibility left, making them two of the higher-end starters on the market due to the team control and lower cost.

Soriano was one of the brightest spots on a competitive Angels team through the first month of the season, wherein he won AL Pitcher of the Month honors. In his first seven starts, he went 5-1 with a 0.84 ERA, with 49 strikeouts. He only allowed three home runs in 42 2/3 innings pitched. If you remove his last start of April (in which he allowed three earned runs against the White Sox), he had a 0.24 ERA, allowing only 1 earned run through his first six starts of the season. Since then, Soriano has not been more than a back-end starter. In his last 15 starts, he has a 4.93 ERA, but a slightly more encouraging 4.60 FIP. With the Cubs’ stellar defense behind him, these numbers should improve. He has been a terrific ground-ball guy (52.1% of his batted balls), and he's done well at keeping the ball in the yard, allowing less than one homer per nine frames. He has a career ERA of 3.77 and has been the Angels’ most consistent starter since 2024. While he’s not a No. 1 kind of guy, he will greatly impact a Cubs rotation that cannot afford to keep trotting out Jameson Taillon and Colin Rea.

Detmers is the even more exciting name. He's made his return to the rotation this season after spending all of 2025 in the bullpen and has been the Angels’ best pitcher, unless you're on the Walbert Ureña train. The health issues seem to be behind him, as he's made 21 starts with an xERA of 3.32 and a 1.10 WHIP. His .214 opponents batting average is eighth-lowest among qualified American League starters, and his 136 strikeouts are the eighth-most in baseball. He currently has the lowest walk rate of his career and has eclipsed 3.0 fWAR, a number that he has not hit yet over a full season. As far as controllable starters go, Detmers is the top guy on the market. The Angels certainly don’t have to trade him, but this is probably their best opportunity to bring in a major haul. Even with team control through 2028, that very well might not be enough time for the Angels to return to contention, considering the state of their roster. This is certainly why Detmers and Soriano, as well as Zach Neto and Jo Adell, are on the market.

What could the Cubs do to acquire one of these arms? On Friday, Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon of The Athletic reported that the Angels are hoping to add a young catcher. It looked like the Angels had one of the best all-around young catchers in the game with former top prospect Logan O’Hoppe, but since his breakout in 2024 where he hit 20 home runs and played solid defense, he has produced a total of -1.6 fWAR. Even within that 2024 season, after (ironically) the Cubs' pursuit of him at the trade deadline went nowhere, he fell apart. To make matters worse, his -16 DRS in 2026 is the worst mark in baseball.

What you’re probably thinking is that Moisés Ballesteros is the young catcher the Cubs can trade, but another one has emerged this season: prospect Owen Ayers. Drafted in the 19th round of the 2024 draft out of Marshall University, Ayers has done nothing but rake this season. He began the year in High-A, mashed to the tune of a 1.008 OPS in 65 games with Double-A Knoxville, and is now with Triple-A Iowa, where he has collected 11 hits in eight games. A 25-year-old would normally be considered an older prospect, but catchers tend to need more time to develop defensively, and he didn’t even become a full-time catcher until his final season in college. His emergence this season gives the Cubs options in regard to their future catching situation and could take pressure off Ballesteros to emerge as the backstop of tomorrow.

Ayers could conceivably be one piece in a trade for Soriano, which would net the Cubs a controllable starting pitcher who'd also bolster their chances this fall. He would give the Angels a catching solution for the near future, as their top catching prospects Garrett Wright and Juan Flores are not even 21 years old yet. Ayers (along with, say, Jefferson Rojas) for Soriano moves the needle, but not enough to consider it their “big” starting pitching move.

Detmers is a guy who can go in Game 1 in a playoff series, but he is going to be much harder to acquire. For example, Jeff Joiner of Sports Illustrated proposed a trade with the White Sox where they would acquire Detmers for lefty starter Hagen Smith and shortstop Billy Carlson, two of their top three prospects per mlb.com. If the Cubs wanted to mimic a package like this, top pitching prospect Jaxon Wiggins would have to be involved, as well as Ayers and another high-end prospect. The Cubs will refuse any request for Josiah Hartshorn, but they might have to give up either Ethan Conrad or Kane Kepley to round out a package for Detmers.

It’s hard not to prospect hug, but the Cubs’ window is open now, and they currently have one of the weaker starting pitching units in baseball. It would be malpractice to not bring in a high-level arm, and for what it's worth, a 2027 rotation including Detmers and Edward Cabrera as well as (hopefully; gulp) Justin Steele, Cade Horton and Ben Brown sounds pretty good, too. Ayers could be a very useful little linchpin in a trade. It might even be the Cubs' only hope for the kind of upgrade they need to make this week.