The Gospel of Juan Soto
Juan Soto is a tricky player for me to write about, because the numbers speak for themselves — no literary flourish needed. Trying to get cute while writing about a guy performing miracles isn’t baseball blogging, it’s the Gospel of John.
Nevertheless, Soto is operating on such a level (he’s hitting .316/.421/.559 through the weekend — all stats are current through Sunday’s games) that it begs examination. Soto has the best batting eye of his generation; therefore, for him, every year is a walk year. But this season, specifically, is his final one before he hits the open market in search of a record long-term contract.
It’s been a complicated couple years for us Soto zealots. How can this player demand more money than the (deferral-adjusted) Shohei Ohtani deal? He’s never won an MVP and only finished in the top three once. He’s never recorded a 7-WAR season, never hit 40 home runs. He’s a bad defender, and in the past two seasons, he hit .242 and .275 respectively. If he’s such a uniquely valuable player, how come two teams gave up on him before he turned 25?
Soto suffers slightly in the public estimation because his greatest skill is invisible. Soto has posted a .400 OBP in every season of his career; since he debuted in 2018, nobody else has done that more than twice in a full 162-game season. He is the active leader in walk rate by 3.3 percentage points and the active career OBP leader by 27 points, both over Aaron Judge.
Soto is still one of the most selective hitters in the majors — out of 171 qualified batters, he has the fifth-lowest overall swing rate and chase rate — but by his standards, he’s been quite aggressive this season. Soto is currently running, albeit by a tenth of a percentage point, the lowest walk rate of his career. That’s accompanied his lowest-ever strikeout rate. And when he makes contact, he’s doing more damage; Soto currently has the highest wOBA and xwOBA of his career, with the exception of his 47-game 2020 season.
This past winter, it was fashionable to suggest that Soto would adapt his game to playing in the Bronx. After all, this is a very strong left-handed hitter who’d just come from San Diego and its famous pitcher-friendly ballpark. Now, Soto would be playing his home games at Yankee Stadium, an edifice whose dimensions were built to suit 100 years’ worth of pull-happy lefty power hitters.
Soto might not be as big as Judge or as thirsty for home runs as Babe Ruth, but he can count to 314 — the distance, in feet, from home plate to the right field foul pole at Yankee Stadium. That’s not very far.
I was skeptical; when Soto puts a charge into the ball, he can hit it out. Soto is currently eighth in career HR/FB%, leading — among others — Bryce Harper, Pete Alonso, and Austin Riley. But he’s traditionally been rather groundball-happy. We’re into year three of international forehead-smacking over Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s inability to do anything but smash the ball incredibly hard right into the dirt in front of home plate. Soto and Guerrero actually have identical career groundball rates, and Soto’s GB/FB ratio is a couple hundredths higher.
Changing that part of his game would carry great risk for Soto; terrestrial as his batted-ball profile might be, the 25-year-old is working on his seventh straight season with a wRC+ over 140. It is most decidedly not broke. Soto is, in fact, pulling the ball slightly more than he ever has, and running his lowest GB/FB rate since 2019.
But this early-season explosion is not the result of Soto hunting Ruth’s short porch. He’s hit eight home runs, which puts him on pace for 36 over a full season — exactly one more than his previous career high. Only two of Solo’s dingers have gone out to right field at Yankee Stadium, and both of them would’ve gotten out of every stadium in the majors. Soto’s pull rate of 41.7% is just 68th out of 171 qualified hitters. And as a matter of fact, Soto’s pull rate on fly balls is the lowest it’s been since his rookie year, as is his fly ball rate on balls hit to the pull side.
What Soto is doing is hitting the absolute bejeezus out of the ball, but on a relatively low trajectory. Soto is in the bottom 10% of qualified hitters for fly ball rate on balls hit to the pull side, but he’s in the top 5% in line drive rate. Here’s what Soto has done every year on batted balls to the pull side. The blue line is line drive rate (more is better), and the red line is soft contact percentage (less is better):
This is a specific area of improvement for Soto, but he’s hitting the ball incredibly hard all over the place. What was merely plus or plus-plus power is now among the best in baseball, non-Judge/Ohtani division:
| Year | EV50 | Rank | Out of |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 101.2 | 54th | 249 |
| 2019 | 102.1 | 38th | 250 |
| 2020 | 104.2 | 6th | 257 |
| 2021 | 104.6 | 11th | 232 |
| 2022 | 102.2 | 36th | 252 |
| 2023 | 104.5 | 9th | 258 |
| 2024 | 105.7 | 4th | 270 |
Finally, Soto is making better swing decisions. His O-Swing% is lower than it’s been since 2021, which was his best-ever MVP finish. His swing rate on pitches within the zone is higher than it’s been since before the pandemic. And when he does swing at pitches in the strike zone, he’s making more contact than ever and doing more damage. Soto’s xSLG on pitches in the strike zone is .702, which is his best mark since 2020 by almost 100 points.
Conversely, Soto is making less contact than ever on pitches outside the zone, which might sound like a bad thing at first. But actually, when a batter swings at a pitch outside the strike zone, a whiff is not necessarily the worst outcome. A hitter with limited strike zone judgment might try to square up a pitch outside the zone; a hitter like Soto might just get fooled on a pitch that ends up in an unexpected place and miss it altogether. And if a batter swings and misses, he famously gets two more chances. If he reaches out and rolls over to shortstop, he doesn’t get a do-over.
We think of hitters as following a developmental curve. As they get more experience, they make better decisions. As they get into their mid-to-late 20s, they get stronger and hit the ball harder. And eventually, they get old and their hands or eyes go, and the decline phase starts. A particularly precocious hitter might defy that aging curve; I remember waiting for Mike Trout to make another leap in his late 20s, but he was never really better than he was in his rookie year.
And it would’ve been fair to expect that of Soto. This guy was the best position player on a championship team at an age when most big league All-Stars are losing their shoes at a Chi Omega mixer. You want maturity? Soto came out of the womb with the discernment you’d expect from an ancient, serene god. Even as a 20-year-old, Soto hit like he’d been taking that borderline slider for 500 million years. How could he possibly get smarter and stronger?
We’re only six weeks into the season, but it looks like that’s exactly what happened. Soto has always worked miracles. Now he’s working better miracles.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
He’s been a 5 WAR player with what used to be termed “old player skills”. Does that merit a $500 million contract? Not if he’s going to age like a typical 30 year old. But he’s so young and healthy that he could age like Derek Jeter, with superior bat to ball skills and more power and walks but worse defense. It seems logical that line drive hitters would age better than fly ball hitters but I’ve no data to support that. I’m guessing he does get Ohtani money
To be fair, he’s so young that the first five years of that contract would be 26-30. Ohtani was 29 when he signed this deal. Soto came into MLB as a teenager and just never slowed down at all. His ISO is kind of hidden next to his insane batting eye, but he’s always hit the tar out of the ball (career .240 ISO, which is nuts for a guy with his contact rate). The fact that he’s doing it more now, still only 25, makes him look like even if he ages on a pretty normal curve, he’ll remain productive even in the later years of a long-term deal.
The Rafael Devers contract is a useful comp here. Like Soto, his value comes almost entirely from his bat. And like Soto, he was set to hit free agency at a very young age. The differences being:
Devers got 10/$313 mil for ages 27-36. That certainly makes $500 mil for Soto’s age 26-37 seasons seem more reasonable.
Of course, that’s just one player. But the contracts for Judge, Bogaerts, Machado, Ohtani, Yamamato, etc. tell a similar story.
So Ohtani is a bargain!
Ha ha, I guess?
Until after 2033, that is.
a 15% walk rate and a .240 ISO are not “old player skills”
Yes they are. A greater dependence on walks and power at the expense of speed, defense and bat to ball skills are the definition of old player skills
Is it “at the expense of speed and defense” though? He’s not a great baserunner but he’s not some enormous liability there (career -6.7 BsR, so roughly -1 per season, swipes a bag here and there at about a 70% clip). As for defense, he’s a corner guy but he’s only really graded out as a really bad defender once, and at least by the eye test and small sample numbers he seems to have improved that part of his game a bit this year.
Power and patience are classic old player skills but that doesn’t automatically mean you put every player who has elite patience and power in the “old player skills” box.
True. I also think he might age well in the Votto mold because of bat to ball skills.
Yankee Stadium’s cozy right field helps Soto more in the field than at the plate. He’s not a good defensive outfielder, but his biggest weakness is range.
I don’t think anyone would ever call him a good defensive outfielder, but when I hear “old player skills” I think of guys like Mo Vaughn and Travis Hafner (and David Ortiz, who, to be fair, aged better than just about anyone).
Soto may eventually move to 1B, like Bryce Harper did, but he’s not some plodding statue who’s a good bet to break down at 30.
What “bat to ball skills” is Juan Soto sacrificing, mate?
Also, Jim Thome (who walked less, struck out more, and was less athletic through age-25) put up 53 WAR from 25-40.
He isn’t. That’s why he might age well. That’s why Votto is a good comp also.
Votto’s one of my favorite hitters of the last 20 years.
The issue with Votto as a comp is that he doesn’t have Soto’s power, patience, contact, defense, or speed.
When Soto was 23, his BB% was 8 points higher, his K% was 4.5 points lower, and his ISO was 27 points higher than Votto’s was…in AAA.
2022 was, of course, the worst full season of Soto’s career to date.
Thome was an underappreciated bat control monster. His career BABIP being .322 is insane. Soto’s is only .308!
Love Thome, but I do think that high BABIP is tied to his willingness to trade a few Ks to make sure he absolutely smoked the balls he did hit, a la Judge and the good version of Stanton.
Someone having those”old player” skills doesn’t mean they also don’t have skills elsewhere. Those skills also generally age well.
The Ohtani contract really needs to not be a comp for anyone. So much of that contract is for non-baseball value – jersey sales, attendance boost, marketing, a bigger slice of the Asian market, etc.. There’s a very real chance Ohtani is never a good pitcher again, which would leave him as a defensively unknown (8.1 innings in the outfield) bat. Without the pitching, what really separates him, Soto, and Alvarez in terms of on-field value?
Frankly I think if Ohtani insists on pitching it might actually have a higher chance of messing up his value because why wouldn’t he tear his arm to shreds throwing 506 mph? At a certain point that’ll mess up the hitting too. He got real lucky this time around.
And yes, without pitching he’s a great hitter but not one in a million.
Especially since he could take a little off and still throw 497 MPH.
Well he might be one in 5,000 as a hitter like say Stan Musial or Jimmie Foxx or Aaron Judge
For age 26-29, Ohtani’s wRC+ is 162, tied with Aaron and 1 point ahead of Mays.
(Ohtani’s still working on his age 29 season but it looks pretty good.)
For age 24-29, it’s 150, which ties him for #49. I think you may be right that he’s pretty great.
Re: Ohtani not one in a million at the plate, we’ll have to see how this season goes, won’t we? If taking pitching off his plate results in Ohtani being far and away the best hitter in baseball–and he has been so far–then the Dodgers may have to reassess. Given that hitters typically hit even better when not DH-ing, Ohtani the outfielder who comes to the mound and then goes back to the field might provide enormous, and sustainable, value.
Ohtani’s speed already translates to better base-running value (Alverez is slow and Soto is just not really an adept baserunner) and there is a strong belief that he would be a plus defensive outfielder. There’s a chance that any hurt pitcher doesn’t recover, sure, but if you had a free agent pitcher who was 29 and had Ohtani’s career to date, he would get a decent contract. Sure, the majority of Ohtani’s contract was for his offense and also the intangible factors, but it’s not as if the potential value from his pitching is negligible.
As for Soto, I think the disconnect is that because he was so good at 19 and 20, and his skills were so refined, that comps to Ted Williams came rolling in, with the expectation that he’d be a generationally elite hitter in his prime. That he’s merely regular elite is not a bad thing and shouldn’t have been surprising. But he’s not Williams and he’s not Pujols. He’s more like Joey Votto but with an early start instead of a late-ish start to his career. It’s possible that he could find another level, but it’s not likely at this point. He’s not going to do the Ohtani deferred money thing, so the headline number won’t be remotely close to Ohtani, but I also think any team that gives $460m in NPV to Soto will be a bit foolish, though it’d just money and he should be one of the better players and among the very best hitters for at least another 5-7 years.
At $10m/WAR $460m is 46 WAR which is 5 WAR for 9 years. Votto got almost exactly 46 WAR ages 26-34. It’s a pretty good starting point for a big budget team
I did make the Votto comp myself, so I can hardly blame you for…comparing him to Votto.
I will say that when Fangraphs did his projections after his age-21 season, he was right around 45 WAR for age 26-34. By the next season, that projection was down to ~37 WAR. I’m not sure how anything in the past two years would suggest a rebound to the earlier projections. You could argue there is less uncertainty simply because we are now closer to the beginning of that timeframe, but on the other hand Soto, while very good, actually has not hit his projections from earlier in his career, which says more about how lofty they were than any suggestion he’s not great. There hasn’t been another longterm Soto projection here since.
Then there’s also the fact that Votto and other OBP-centric players simply haven’t gotten the boost in contracts that they deserve.
Of course Cohen will probably just give him $500m and then he’ll immediately tear both of his ACLs.
Ya I was basically saying that $500m is defensible and that it only takes one person to want to pay it. It might not be a good deal at all.
It’s worth noting that Soto has quite a bit more power than Votto – .240 on his career, while Votto only cracked that number twice, despite spending that entire time in Cincinnati.
Four times.
Though the larger point does stand. As you said, Soto is a better player in terms of power, on base, defense, and speed, though only by a little bit in each category.
What he definitely doesn’t have yet, and we’ll have to wait practically until the Sasha Obama Presidential Administration to find out about, is the graceful first half of his thirties, which Votto has in the bank. But who knows? Maybe he’ll exceed it and have more like an Aaron 30s. Time will tell.
Excellent point – crazy the kid’s at the point where Dick Allen’s career WAR would have us all asking what went wrong.
The Teddy Ballgame comps were never fair…but I can think of another RF who “only” put up a ~150 wRC+ and 30 HR/650 through his age-25 season, on his way to 30+ WAR.
He kept, ahem, <i>hammering</i> baseballs for quite a while, with a ~160 wRC+ through age-40…even though he only managed the 1 MVP for his career.
If Soto were coming off a 4-year stretch averaging 7.4 WAR per season then I’d give him well north of $460m.
Whatever he’s paid, if he’s 80% of the player Aaron was age 26 onward, it will be worth it. That’s of course a very demanding standard to be putting on him.
In fairness, I’m honestly not sure how to weight 2022, when it comes to his defensive true talent…and I doubt there’s a consensus among teams.
But yeah, definitely agree it’s an absurd standard…but it’s still a more appropriate standard than the Splinter, who put up just 6 fewer “post-26” WAR than Aaron in 2900 fewer PA, including the entirety of his age-26 season (not to mention the time he lost to Korea).
There just aren’t too many non-absurd comps for a man who’s pretty firmly on a path too being one of the Top 5 most productive hitters through age-25 since Integration…and that’s with the COVID year.
Maybe Frank Robinson?
MC Hammer?
No relation to Harmon Killebrew, the Hebrew Hammer, or Greg “The Hammer” Valentine
Weirdly Ohtani has been a terrible baserunner so far this year. Like 12th percentile. Doesn’t mean he’s slow, to be clear. But if we’re saying his elite hitting thus far is significant, that matters too.
Maybe he really IS Ruth and he’ll stop pitching, and running well, and get fat and hit 700 hr.
Has he been a terrible base runner? His BsR is 0.8 – which is pretty solid, and he has 9SB with 0CS. He’s run into a few outs – I think in the first homestand – might even have been in the first game against the Cardinals – he smacked a double, and assumed Betts was going to score easily from first – and without looking headed to third where Mookie was stood.
His sprint speed is 28.0ft/s – which puts him in the company of Michael Harris II, Kevin Pillar, and Jackson Merrill.
On statcast it seemed when I looked that he was in the 12th pctile for value. IDK.
Statcast doesn’t include steals. If you’ve been thrown out once trying to advance (as Ohtani has) you are pretty much screwed in the rankings this early, unless you have been uber aggressive taking extra bases (Ohtani has been exactly average in his aggression).
Not sure if “active” is supposed to preclude anyone on the IL (I’ve never heard anyone mean it that way), but Mike Trout has a .410 career OBP, which is comfortably ahead of Judge.
Good catch – just checked the FG leaderboards, and the “Active Roster” filter must be filtering out anyone on the IL.
He’s also put up .400 OBPs in more than 2 non-2020 seasons since 2018…. granted he did miss time in all 3 seasons.
I mean, the Nationals didn’t give up on him – Soto rejected a substantial (and maybe, likely sub-market) contract offer and left the team to wonder if they shouldn’t instead extract value in a trade…
I know.
There was also high demand from the Padres and Yankees to get him. If he was so bad, why did the Padres trade two of their best prospects at the time? Why did the Yankees trade a starting caliber C, one of their more consistently good pitchers, AND several prospects to get Soto for a year?
Patient sluggers who can also hit for a solid average will always be in demand, especially those as young as Juan Freaking Soto.
Career OBP ranks (min. 3000 PA) post-WWII:
Three observations:
1) This isn’t entirely fair since there are a few guys pretty close behind him whose career OBP reflects their decline phases and Soto hasn’t had one of those yet
2) There are only a few such players, all HOFers. If you arbitrarily cut it off at .415 you add Mantle, Thomas, Edgar, Musial, and Boggs.
3) Holy crap. Some may feel like Soto’s batting eye gets a lot of attention, but if anything we don’t talk enough about how historic it is to see a guy do something like this. Among all active players only Trout and Votto spent any amount of time up in this batting eye tier.
Ted Williams’s era was already vastly different from Bonds’s era and is especially different from the Trout/Soto/Votto era, but it’s just insane there was a damn near 50/50 chance that Williams was going to get on base somehow. There are tough outs, and then there’s Ted.
Agreed, but Williams’ career number just makes it even more absurd what Bonds did from 2001-2007.
He was pretty widely regarded as a shell of his former self when he came back in 2007, and the .480 OBP he put up that year hasn’t been equaled since in a 162-game season (Soto beat it in 2020).
The Splinter was so bonkers.
I will add that I prefer ‘47 as a demarcator to ‘45 who knows if Ted would have been allowed to play before then, if his father had been the one named Venzor.
I think the most amusing thing to watch with Soto is the absolutely dumbfounded look on a pitcher’s face when Soto jumps a first pitch and does damage. Like a “you’re not allowed to do that” stare.
Very much enjoyed this read!
For those who don’t speak Spanish, he’s talking about John Bush.
The Lord, the Lord Jehovah has given unto you these fifteen…
Oy! Ten! Ten commandments for all to obey!
“Hi, I’m a once in a generation, multi lingual, super personable position player who is beloved by other players and fans with zero baggage. My defense is now above average and I played in all 162 games last season. I’ve thrived in small markets and big; during no stakes seasons and playoff chases. Oh, I’m only 25, healthy, and hitting the ball harder than ever, so a 10+ year deal for me carries less risk than it does for someone like Ohtani.”
How much more complicated is the bidding going to be? The bidding’s gotta *start* at $400m and prob over $500m in the end. Whether or not he accepts the deferrals is another story…
Feel like the framework without deferrals is 12/$500m.
Haha, you should tell Boras to save the binder production and just send that Whatsapp to the GM chat group.
His home and away splits last year were a strong indication that he was back to hitting the crap out of the ball away from Petco, and, to me, good reason for SD to trade. It never seemed to me that he was comfortable in SD and he was never going to sign there and see half his season stats suffocated. It’s all my own conjecture, but Soto has always seem acutely aware of himself. He will continue to thrive in the Bronx and Hal will resign him or Yankee fans will draw and quarter him on 161st street.
A pair of equally good options, from a Yankees fan perspective.
I’m hearing rumors (ok starting rumors) that Soto really wants to return to the Nats even if he just Dhs the rest of his career!
It’s a no- brainer for the Yankees to pay Soto whatever he wants. Play up Soto and Judge as the new Ruth and Gehrig. Go wild with it.
Soto has a positive impact on the players around him, and you know who’s gonna be around him soon ? Jasson Dominguez, who has a career 13.8% walk rate in the minors, and could maybe boost that work some training with Soto?
12 years, $550 million, whatever it takes. Figure out how to fit Soto, Judge, Dominguez, and Jones in the same outfield next year. Judge at 1B, whatever.
Gotta be honest – I’ll take the under on the kid with a 106 wRC+ and .25 BB/K in AA being MLB-ready next year
As a Yankee fan I love to get excited about Dominguez. Don’t think he’s close to being as ready as he seemed in the few games he played. Many Yankee fans expect him to pick up where he left off, but he was there because the Ynx didn’t have any other options at the time
Oh, I was very much referring to Jones…whose wRC+ through 34 games at AA is 10 points lower than JD’s was, despite being 3 years older and having a 130 point edge in BABIP during the same timeframe.
JD’s definitely an order of magnitude more MLB-ready – luckily, Verdugo’s current play means that JD can take his time getting back to game speed, but I expect him up the moment Verdugo turns back into a pumpkin.
Except, in early May 2023, Jones is actually ahead of Dominguez in early May 2023. Dominguez started slow and then, after some adjustments, he came on strong. We don’t know where Jones will be in a couple months. That aside, I basically agree! I’m not even convinced Dominguez is ready. We’ll need to see more.
Dominguez’s OPS through 18 games last year was 20 points higher than Jones’, even though his .151 BABIP gave him a .135 BA.
…because his BB% was 20 points higher, his K% was 7 points lower, and his ISO was 34 points higher.
JD is just held to a much (much) higher standard of production than Jones, because he doesn’t look as good in shorts.
Happy for Soto he has started hot and won over New York. Bummed for everyone else because that makes it a near certainty the Yankees will outbid the field to keep him.
Unless he has some desire to play on the West Coast, or return to Washington, then he’s probably on the team he’ll be on for the next 15 years. From what I’ve read, he prefers the East Coast, and he’s on the right team if he’s wants to build a legacy.
Now, if he wants to be the “modern” Ted Williams, then Boston would be a great fit. He would crush it at Fenway far more than Yankee Stadium, but I don’t see the Red Sox outbidding the Yankees. The only owner I can see outbidding the Yankees is the team across town. Cohen has the personal wealth, and Soto would get to stay in NY, but the Yankees would still have to stand down. I can’t see him willingly leaving the Yankees to play for the Mets unless that was his favorite team growing up.
Wouldn’t say Soto’s *that* much of an oppo guy that he’d be better off slapping doubles off the monster.
He wasn’t the best position player on the championship team. Rendon was.
They have had almost the same career since then, too! /s