Michael Soroka exits Cubs debut vs. Reds with right shoulder discomfort

Michael Soroka had cruised through the first five outs of his Cubs debut Monday night at Wrigley Field. His delivery felt timed up, so he decided to put a little extra on his fastball in a 1-1 count against the Reds’ Tyler Stephenson in the second inning.

“[It] grabbed me a little bit and didn’t go away,” Soroka said. “You feel things here and there during the course of an outing, and usually, if you throw another [pitch] and [the feeling is] gone, it’s nothing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.”

Stephenson hit a solo homer to give the Reds an early lead. Soroka reported his symptoms after the inning, and the Cubs pulled him from the game. He’s headed to the 15-day injured list with discomfort in his right shoulder, manager Craig Counsell said after an eventual 3-2 loss.

“You feel bad for Michael first,” Counsell said. “And you just hope there’s just some discomfort there and a couple weeks can take care of it. That’s where we’re at.”

Without further testing, the severity of the injury and the timeline for Soroka’s recovery weren’t immediately clear.

“Obviously, you’re always concerned when you have to come out of the game,” said Soroka, whom the Cubs acquired from the Nationals last Wednesday as their first acquisition before the trade deadline. “It’s never fun. And it’s embarrassing. You come to this org and you hope to hit the ground running, and two innings later, we’re having to pull the plug.”

Soroka struck out three of the four batters he faced in the first inning and retired the first two he faced in the second. But three pitches after that fateful fastball — the hardest pitch he threw, at 91.7 mph, according to Statcast — he surrendered Stephenson’s homer, the only hit he allowed.

Soroka was the Cubs’ first addition of the trade deadline last week. The Cubs acquired him from the Nationals on Wednesday for their No. 13 and 14 prospects, Arizona Complex League infielder Ronny Cruz, 18, and Triple-A outfielder Christian Franklin.

Like other contenders, they opted not to go all-in on a frontline starter, deeming the asking price too high for pitchers of that caliber with multiple years of club control.

Soroka’s velocity has taken a dive over the last couple of months. His four-seam fastball velocity went from an average of 94.4 mph in June to between 91.7 and 90.9 in his last three starts before Monday. It fell in a similar range against the Reds — between 90.8 and 89.3.

Soroka said that despite there being no other red flags beyond the drop in velocity, he underwent testing to rule out a possible injury before his last start with the Nationals.

“We looked in some avenues mechanically, some other things, as to where the velocity could have went,” he said. “And we decided to check that other [medical] box off. And there was nothing that presented to be an issue at the time there.”

He said the Cubs were looped in.

Two pitching changes were in the works simultaneously in the bottom of the second. For the Cubs, right-hander Ben Brown was warming up in the bullpen to replace Soroka. At the same time, the Reds were checking on left-hander Nick Lodolo, who then walked off the field with a blister on his left index finger with two outs and a 1-0 count on Justin Turner. Lodolo had retired five straight Cubs batters to that point.

The Cubs scored their only runs in the third on Dansby Swanson’s towering two-run homer off Reds reliever Nick Martinez. The Reds tied the game in the sixth with Matt McClain’s swinging-bunt single, followed by an RBI double by Elly De La Cruz, the only hits and the only run Brown allowed in four innings.

The next inning, the Reds’ TJ Friedl hit a go-ahead single into shallow right-center field with runners on first and third.