Juan Soto’s already absurdly good — and he might be getting better
Except, that is, for Juan Soto, baseball’s joy stick.
At 21, is the Nats’ left fielder improving? Is such a near-fantasy possible? Is the same thing happening to Soto that happened with Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Jimmie Foxx, Ken Griffey, Jr., Joe DiMaggio, Miguel Cabrera, Eddie Mathews and even Mike Trout?
After one, two or three full seasons in the majors, when they were standouts — but also assumed to be rather close to their finished form — those prodigies all got better. In fact, most of them got much better. They didn’t just want to excel, they wanted to bedazzle.
Does Soto have another gear, too, and did we just glimpse it last week as he went 12 for 26 with five homers and 12 RBI?
In a pandemic-mutilated year which could end any week, on a Nats team that seems several bricks shy of another payload, Soto’s been the gleaming light of must-see hope and can-I-play-a-baseball-game-today, please.
Every day for a week, you got to choose what you loved best. Was it the 463-foot home run over the Mets’ huge apple in center field? Was it the 466-foot home run, for now his “longest ever,” that would’ve gone entirely out of Citi Field except it hit a girder supporting the right field roof which, heretofore, thought itself safe?
“I like to watch where they land,” said Soto, who does not pimp his homers but is suitably observant.
Was it the assortment of opposite-field home runs during the week — three of them, averaging 416 feet — that showed how pointless it is to avoid Soto’s power by pitching him away, since his best power, relative to the rest of MLB humanity, is to the opposite field? (He’s hit 22 homers to left since the start of ’18 — more oppo boppo than any hitter.) Was your favorite swing his fourth and final homer against the Mets, the take-that blast he hit in his next at-bat after being drilled with a fastball?
Or did you prefer the subtlety of Sunday when, seeking spark for his hurt, inconsistent team, Manager Dave Martinez moved Soto up from cleanup to No. 2. Maybe get the Juan-derful one just one extra at-bat.
Soto’s reaction? What fun! So, he got two 100-mph hits, two walks and would’ve had a third walk but for a blown full-count call by a havin’-a-bad-day ump. His reaction to the bad call — which got the Nats hitting coach ejected? No reaction at all. Just draw a walk and score the winning run in the eighth to get a 6-5 win for Max Scherzer and end the day with three more runs scored.
These days, I am tempted by the ultimate no-no-never-go-there comparison — that Soto may become the very, very poor man’s version of the greatest pure hitter who ever lived, Ted Williams. Did I say, “very” enough?
In his first two seasons, at ages 20 and 21, Williams slashed .336/.439/.601. As a rookie, at 20, he drove in 145 runs. That made him a household name — the Splendid Splinter. That OPS was 61 percent better than the league average. Wow, what an infant immortal!
But in his next two years, Williams slashed .379/.525/.688 and hit .406 at 22. That’s vastly better. His OPS was 121 percent better than league average. His career: .344/.482/.634 — 91 percent above AL average.
Nobody since has approached that and Soto won’t.
But there’s a huge lesson in those numbers — the same one you can find in all the great names I listed earlier. You can be very-good-to-wonderful and still get better year after year, even if you’re no Teddy Ballgame.
At the moment, Soto is .292/.407/.551. Like I said “very, very poor man.” But at 20, he had 34 homers, 110 runs, 110 RBI and 108 walks and then had five homers and 15 RBI batting cleanup for a World Series winner. His OPS+ was 141 — 41 percent above average. Recall, Ted’s was 161.
Even though Soto, who missed the first eight games of the season with what may have been a false-positive coronavirus test, can only play a maximum of 52 regular season games, we may still get a clear-focus hint of the future.
Yes, we may have to relax and “accept” that, like Frank Robinson, Mel Ott, Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols and Frank Thomas, Soto at age 19 and 20 was basically the finished product. Okay, great!
But, of the prodigies who’ve erupted at anything like Soto’s level, you’re more likely to see one big performance level jump, usually at age 21, 22 or 23 — like Bryce Harper’s MVP year at 23.
Some of MLB’s greatest players have been grim obsessives, like Williams. Soto is joyful. But he is also obsessive — about hitting. He talks it, demonstrates it to his teammates in the dugout, illustrating how to hit to the opposite field by snapping a towel.
Every day in his long pregame practice sessions he strives “to be perfect. We know nobody is perfect,” said Soto last week. “But every day, in all my drills, in everything, I try to be perfect.”
At this point, it’s standard to mention that some careers, dazzling from debut to age 25, taper off and fade after 30.
It’s getting very hard to apply that disclaimer to Soto. Aside from injury — by baseball or life — it’s hard to find a hitter at Soto’s level who didn’t maintain or else improve.
Since he arrived, I’ve tried to remind myself that the reason Soto pops up so high on so many all-time lists of great young players is that he had the good fortune to pile up stats before reaching age 21. To get a clearer view, let’s look at career stats through age 25 — especially numbers like OPS and wRC+ (weighted runs created plus) that show per-game production, not just raw totals.
I ran my finger down the list of “best OPS” through age 25 since 1900 and, yes, there they were — Williams and Babe Ruth at No. 1 and No. 2. No Soto in sight, but here are Mantle (No. 10), Trout (No. 14), then Mays, Ott and Shoeless Joe Jackson at No. 19-20-21.
Then I jumped. At No. 22 was Soto. And he hasn’t even had the chance to get better for the next five years and move up? At .958, he’s ahead of A-Rod, Frank Robinson and a scadzillion Hall of Famers.
If you want a most-favored stat by advanced metrics, among all players through age 25 with 1,000 at-bats, Soto ranks 32nd in wRC+, just behind Stan Musial.
Nobody stays as hot as Soto is now. That’s not the point. However, it’s the torrid streaks, the weeks that hint at legend, which tip us off to players who may still be traveling the high mountain road from better-than-we-could-expect to almost-better-than-we-can-imagine.
All things considered in this housebound, hope-hindered year, we appreciate getting to go along for the ride, for as long as it lasts.
