Juan Soto’s hustle, or lack thereof, was the conversation for a second-straight night after the Mets’ 3-1 loss to the Boston Red Sox on Monday at Fenway Park; discourse only magnified by New York’s current run of poor form.
Leading off the sixth inning, Soto socked a deep fly to left field that hit two-thirds up the Green Monster. The 26-year-old thought it was a home run, and he took a few extra beats to admire it, taking a step back before slowly making his way up the first-base line.
What should have been at least a double was only a single, though Soto ultimately stole second to cushion the mistake.
“I hit it pretty hard,” Soto said of the shot that left his bat at 102 mph and would have traveled much farther than the 347 feet had it not been impeded by the Monster. “It’s a really short Green Monster. I tried to get to second, but it wasn’t enough.”
Just one night earlier against his former team in the Bronx, Soto’s hustle was called into question when he did not bust it out of the box on a grounder up the middle, which gave Yankees veteran second baseman DJ LeMahieu enough time to make a sliding play and throw the right-fielder out from his knees.
“We’ll talk to him about it,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “If someone gets a hold of one and knows when he gets it, it’s Juan. He thought he had it. With the wind and all that, in this ballpark… you’ve got to get out of the box.”
Soto played a different tune when asked about his hustle, particularly out of the box.
“I think I’ve been hustling pretty hard,” he said. “If you saw it today, you could tell.”
That answer is simply disingenuous, though Soto has shown far more aggressive tendencies once he’s on the basepaths. His six stolen bases are already just one fewer than he had all of last year in 110 fewer games.
But this has always been Soto’s M.O., and to think that an enormous contract would change that would be foolhardy. Not consistently busting it down the first-base line is simply the bad that one has to take with the impending, overwhelming good that the generational superstar carries in his bat.
It is the same sort of questionable aspect of his game as his defense in right field. It could very well lose a game or two, but Soto’s offense is going to win far more than that over the life of this 15-year contract.
The problem is that the box score is not reflecting the usual sterling analytics, and that is felt especially when the Mets have lost four of their last five. Entering Tuesday night’s matchup in Boston, he is slashing .246/.376/.439 with eight home runs.
