This Juan Soto guy is going to be alright, after all, much to the relief of baseball fans in Queens. Maybe just ignore those across town in the Bronx, punching the air.
The 26-year-old superstar hit two more home runs and drove in three in the Mets’ 7-1 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday afternoon to continue a torrid stretch. In his last seven games, he is slashing .346/.455/.885 (1.339 OPS) with four home runs and five RBI. He also has six walks compared to just four strikeouts.
Soto broke a scoreless deadlock in the sixth inning when he launched right-hander Merrill Kelly’s 1-1, inside fastball 427 feet to dead center over the 25-foot wall and out.
Splits do not matter, either, when he is going like this. In the eighth, he took lefty reliever Jalen Beeks 380 feet the other way over the left-field wall, which left the bat at 105.7 mph and went 380 feet. The left-handed Soto is batting .379 against southpaws this season.
“That’s what makes him a great hitter. It doesn’t matter if it’s a righty or a lefty,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “I feel like against lefties, I don’t know what it is, but he’s been locked in. His at-bats, the way he controls the strike zone, or doing damage, hitting line drives, using the whole field, he’s a special hitter.”
Soto is understandably under the microscope after signing the richest contract in North American sports history, and a slow start to the season raised some alarm bells from some of the more impatient corners of the game, particularly those who yell into a microphone on the radio or social media for shock value.
In his first 31 games as a Met, he batted just .241 with a .752 OPS, three home runs, and 12 RBI. But the underlying analytics were still quintessential Soto, even if they did not reflect on the stat sheet. Through April 24, his walk rate was still elite, his average exit velocity of 92.4 mph ranked within MLB’s 85th percentile, and he had squared up 34.8% of his balls put in play, which was in the 95th percentile.
Soto, however, does not feel any different at the plate despite this scorching stretch.
“I feel the same,” he said. “I’m seeing the ball well, and I’m making good decisions. Now, I’ve been squaring up a couple more balls and finding a couple more gaps.”
How about that? One of the best hitters in baseball is starting to live up to that moniker with his new team. Only 14.75 seasons to go.
As you were.
