Is Juan Soto the unluckiest hitter in baseball? For the Mets star, it’s about ‘staying the course’,See why……

 

 

Fairly or not, Juan Soto’s performance will be judged in the context of his 15-year, $765 million contract for the rest of his career. After all, he’s collecting paychecks on the most lucrative contract in the history of professional sports while competing in the largest media market in the world. It’s an unprecedented situation that comes with the grandest of expectations, and Soto is not yet meeting them.

But he sure looks like he’s getting close.

On Tuesday night, the New York Metsslugger swatted his third home run in four games. But he’s still batting .233 with a .799 OPS through 60 games this year, both of which are below his career averages of .281 and .941, respectively. He’s hitting .140 with runners in scoring position, which is more than 150 points lower than his career average. In those high-leverage situations last year with the New York Yankees, he posted a .345 batting average.

Hold on, though. He’s still getting on base. Soto’s 16.7% walk rate is ranked third in Major League Baseball. His 129 OPS+ indicates he’s 29% better than the league-average hitter. Plus, almost all of his underlying advanced metrics characterize Soto as the elite hitter he’s always been. So, what gives?

Juan Soto has at least two problems: the expectations he’s set for himself, and his bad luck at the plate.

We touched on the former issue, so let’s get into the latter before revealing Francisco Lindor’s take on the Soto situation.

Soto has the largest difference in his weighted on-base average (.348 wOBA) and his expected weighted on-base average (.429 xwOBA) among all major-league hitters with at least 200 plate appearances this season. Combined with Soto’s poor .237 batting average on balls in play (BABIP), how hard he has continued to hit the ball (95th percentile), his sophisticated plate discipline (100th percentile), and several unlikely spectacular defensive plays made against him, the numbers tell us that Soto has been one of the unluckiest hitters in baseball this year.

Soto is aware of his bad luck, perhaps even too aware. The 26-year-old has caught himself pressing at the plate in an attempt to break out of his offensive struggles.

“I’m in a tough spot right now, swing-wise,” Soto told me last weekend at Citi Field. “I just can’t find the holes. I try to hit the ball hard anywhere, and sometimes I try too hard, and then I just roll it over and stuff like that. I’m just trying to get back to where I was and hit those line drives. If they catch it, they catch it. Just get those line drives.”

This season, Soto has had 18 batted balls result in outs that had a Statcast expected batting average (xBA) of .500 or higher. In layman’s terms, that means similar batted balls — in terms of exit velocity, launch angle, and sprint speed — have fallen for hits. If even half of those 18 batted balls had resulted in hits, the conversation around Soto’s start to his Mets career would be very different.

“Every day, I sit here and look at the numbers, he’s going to get going here pretty soon,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza said. “He’s just gotta stay the course. If he keeps doing that, the numbers are going to be there at the end of the year.”

Still, it hasn’t helped that Soto, whose groundball rate is slightly higher than his career norm, has been a double-play machine.

He’s more of a quiet person and he’s a fantastic teammate. He’s always doing his stuff to get better, to be the same person. So a guy like that, you don’t really have to say much. He’s the perfect teammate because you don’t have to worry about him. He’s going to go out there and do his thing.”

From the front office, to the manager, to clubhouse leaders like Lindor, the Mets have made it their responsibility to support Soto through this phase of his career because, ultimately, that’s what they think it is. A phase. That protection hasn’t been lost on Soto during one of the more challenging moments of his career, and it’ll likely mean even more when he’s on the other side of it.

“I think it’s huge when you have a group that sticks together,” Soto said, “No matter what is going on.”