There are so many numbers that make you appreciate the sweet swinger that Juan Soto is, and that includes the number of times he will take another walk rather than help a pitcher and chase. But now that Soto is on this kind of heater for the Mets, now that he once again looks like the guy who batted like a champ in front of Aaron Judge for the Yankees last year, the number that you keep coming back to is this:
Soto is still just 26 years old.
Oh, sure. This is as much a part of the context with Soto as the $765 million Steve Cohen paid him to come across town. Soto doesn’t even turn 27 until the end of October, when he might be on his way to another World Series unless the Mets continue to lose a starting pitcher every few days.
Did the guy get off to a slow start for the Mets? He did. He was missing pitches he usually hits out of sight, he was hitting in bad luck even if nobody wanted to talk much about that, his batting average was way down there and, oh by the way, last year’s wingman, No. 99 of the Yankees, was still over on the other side of town. And did Soto have a tough weekend when the Mets went into Yankee Stadium for this year’s first Subway Series? It was all right there for the world to see? Did he ever.
And along the way, Soto even committed the mortal sin of telling the truth when telling a reporter that he wasn’t seeing the same pitches he saw when Judge was the one hitting behind him. It wasn’t a knock on Pete Alonso, the guy hitting behind him now, on a bit of a heater himself at the time. Soto was just stating a fact, at a time when he was seeing fewer pitches in the strike zone. Alonso was and is having a terrific season. But he’s not Judge. Only Shohei Ohtani is. And Soto, too, when he’s back at the top of his game.
Juan Soto is absolutely in that class when he’s going good, when he looks like one of the most complete hitters in the game the way he was for the Nationals and for the Padres in his one full year with them and with the Yankees in his one year with them. What he mostly did in the early innings of this season, his first season with the Mets, was look human. Imagine that. Judge came out gangbusters this year and Soto didn’t and that was it, case closed, Soto had needed Judge more than Judge had ever needed him, even with the seasons they both had in 2024.
There was that, and more. Soto even started to hear that he hadn’t really wanted to sign with the Mets, that he really wanted to stay with the Yankees, but that it was his family that wanted him to take Cohen’s money even though Hal Steinbrenner was offering a comparable deal.
Through it all, though, Soto didn’t whine or complain or let the pressure of the contract and expectations and big city bring him down along with his batting average. There was a moment when he didn’t run out a ground ball, but somehow the Earth continued to spin properly on its axis. But by all accounts he stayed with his routines, and simply waited to start mashing again. Which he now has. Even as the Mets had their June swoon, Soto has been the opposite of that. Even when the Mets got thumped on Friday night, he hit home run No. 20, one day sooner on the calendar than he hit No. 20 for the Yankees.
Here is something Judge said earlier in the season when Soto was still scuffling:
“I’ve watched [Soto] in the league for so many years and getting a chance to see him up close — he can look at what I did last April for an example. He just needs to keep being himself. He’s going to be just fine.”
Judge is on his way to having another season for the ages, no matter who hits in front of him in Aaron Boone’s batting order. And Judge isn’t halfway through the $360 million contract that he signed after hitting 62 home runs. For now, that still looks to be a lot more of a sweetheart deal for the Yankees than it does for Judge, not knowing whether he will continue to be blessed with good health, and where he will be physically in three or four years.
But Judge turned 33 in the spring. Soto? He is basically still a kid, the one they called the Latin Mamba when he came up to the Nationals as a teenager, on his way to helping them win a World Series right around the time he turned 21 in 2019. If you are looking for a frame of reference with a New York star from another sport, Jalen Brunson is two years older than Soto at 28.
Just know that the player Cohen and all other Mets fans and the Mets themselves have been seeing lately is the player they thought they were all getting when Soto took the money. Even though this was his second season in New York, Soto happened to get a second chance at a first impression over at Citi Field. Then he seemed stuck in neutral, at least. Just not any longer. He is once again the same kind of tough out that Judge is, and Ohtani, and look out for him the rest of the way.
“He’s human, he’s 26,” Soto’s manager Carlos Mendoza said a month ago. “He’s going to be fine. He’s Juan Soto.”
The other day Mendoza was asked what he likes the best about watching Soto hit. Here is what he said: “Everything. As soon as he steps on the batter’s box, whether it’s the takes, whether it’s the swings. Even when he fouls off some pitches, you see how tight the connection, and how powerful that swing is. … His ability to use the whole field …This is a guy that we’ve seen go deep left-center, pulling the baseball. Like I said, it’s a show.”
Even though the Mets stopped the bleeding across the last two games of their latest series against the Braves, they’re not in the clear by any means. Francisco Lindor hasn’t looked like himself at the plate since he broke a toe. Alonso slumped for a while himself, but seems to have found his footing again; he was at 18 homers and 65 RBI and a .292 batting average coming into the weekend, 50 points higher than a year ago now that he does have Soto hitting in front of him. The bottom of the order has been a dumpster fire lately.
But Soto still makes things easier for everybody when he is doing all those bad Soto things. Mets fans now see it, and in lights, at Citi Field. His manager is right: The guy’s a show. Why he’s making the big bucks.
He didn’t get the big bucks to be Mr. May.
TEAMS NOT LINING UP TO HELP KNICKS, BAILEY IS NO LEBRON & CARLOS GOES FOR ANOTHER WIMBLETON TITLE …
Isn’t it funny how good teams seem to follow Terry Francona around?
A Knicks fan I know asked this question the other day:
What in the world gave Jimmy Dolan and Leon Rose the idea that other teams were just dying to help them out?
And while I’m asking questions, here’s another:
Who told Ace Bailey he was the second coming of LeBron?
At this point, the only conclusion to be drawn is that Bob Myers must really want to be on television.
The Tampa Bay Rays are spending $200 million less on baseball players this season than the Yankees are, and at the halfway point of the season were ½ games behind our kids in the American League East.
So, wait, coaches who got fired by the Kings and the Grizzlies might end up being the end of the star search for the Knicks?
Who knew?
Sometimes I worry that Aaron Rodgers is a lot more fascinating in the darkness than he is when he comes out into the light.
But, you never know, things might work out great for him at his stop after the Jets the way they did for Brett Favre.
On Monday afternoon Carlos Alcaraz will walk onto Centre Court as defending champion — again — and that will be the real beginning of the major championship in tennis that is still one of one.
The Yankees are probably hoping that Giancarlo Stanton is going to hit them a home run or two eventually.
It was hard to tell, just following the coverage from at least one of the other papers in town if Zohran Mamdani just won the Democratic primary for mayor, or tried to steal some of the plaques from Monument Park.
The current Secretary of Defense referred to the bombing of Iran the other day as the “most complex, secretive military operation in history,” and all I could think of was this:
There goes Gen. Eisenhower’s gold medal for D-Day.
You know who we need writing about America right now?
Pete Hamill.
Very quietly, the Astros came into the weekend with a better record than the Yankees.
A.J. Hinch’s kids in Detroit might be starting to think they could be the baseball version of the kids from the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The leaks coming out of the Garden about Tom Thibodeau continue to be predictably cheesy.
I was half-expecting Caitlin Clark to get forechecked into the boards even sitting out her team’s game the other night.
It is always worth pointing out again, here in Mecca-ville, that in the last half-century the Knicks and Rangers have combined to win a grand total of one championship.
And that was 31 years ago.
But who’s counting, right?
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