QUEENS, NY — Juan Soto’s analytics have constantly suggested that his slow start to life with the Mets was just an anomaly. But Sunday further proved to manager Carlos Mendoza that things are going to start turning around for the superstar right fielder sooner rather than later.
Nursing a one-run lead in the bottom of the eighth inning against the historically bad Colorado Rockies, Soto jumped on a Zach Agnos full-count splitter drifting toward the bottom of the zone, dropped to a knee while swinging, and launched it 388 feet over the right-center-field fence to put the Mets up 5-3, a score they would eventually win by.
“We’ve made adjustments. [Agnos] made a great pitch, I tried to get down there and get it,” Soto said. “The one-knee thing, I never think about it. It just happens where I just try to square up the ball, and that pitch just took me there.”
Following a 10-game stretch in which he went a measley 4-for-38 with zero home runs, five RBI, and a .332 OPS, which dropped his season average down to .224, Soto entered Monday’s series opener in Los Angeles against the Dodgers by going 4-for-his-previous-9 with home runs on Saturday and Sunday against the Rockies, breaking a 17-game homer-less drought.
“I think he’s in a really good spot here,” Mendoza said of his superstar slow starter. “Even just some of the pitches that he’s fouling off, just the balance there at the end is a pretty good sign that he’s getting there. We’ve seen that at times, but I feel like the past few games, even when he’s not getting results, there’s something about his lower half… the balance, the conviction, there’s a lot to like.”
Sunday was also the first time this season that Soto, Francisco Lindor, and Pete Alonso homered in the same game — something that Mendoza “envisioned” happening often when the Mets signed Soto to his $765 million blockbuster deal.
If Soto can ride this recent wave, it will happen a lot more.
“I’ve felt good since Day 1,” Soto said. “The results just haven’t been there. For me, I’m finally getting some balls landing, finding some holes and some gaps. I just have to keep working on it.”
