In a sensational trade with the San Diego Padres for Juan Soto, the New York Yankees thought they were getting a superstar. Considering he was about to enter a walk year, it was obvious that this improved the Yankees’ lineup. His improved game power was on display last season as he blasted 35 home runs, a career high, and played in 162 games for the first time. Soto has looked flawless thus far this season, but he hasn’t been able to replicate his 2021 season, when he finished second in MVP voting.
Despite Juan Soto’s history of sluggish starts, he is currently performing at the level of an MVP to begin the season. His wRC+ has never been higher than 143 by the end of April. Somehow, the 25-year-old prodigy has built upon a fantastic debut, and the underlying numbers reflect this.
With the Yankees, Juan Soto Has Stepped Up His Game
After a disappointing second half in 2022 with the San Diego Padres, Juan Soto rebounded last season to finish with 155 wRC+, good for seventh highest among qualifying hitters. Some of the available stories describe the feelings of a sad Soto, a player who was surprised to learn he was no longer a member of the Washington Nationals, and how his average and power both dropped the same season. In 2023, he had a triumphant return, nearly doubling his WAR total (6.1), but it appears like an even more impressive campaign is about to begin in 2024.
What immediately stands out is the improved Sweet Spot Rate, as Juan Soto has struggled to generate line drives and excellent contact for hits since 2021. After three straight seasons of a BABIP above .300, it slipped below .300 from 2022-2023 a career-worst 28.5% Sweet Spot Rate (5th Percentile). It analyzes the frequency at which a hitter generates batted balls between 8 and 32 degrees and this season that has entirely flipped on its head. He’s presently at a 37.7% Sweet Spot Rate, ranking in the 70th Percentile and resulting in his highest BABIP ever (.368).
There are a lot of difficult terms and stats here, but my goal is to take a complicated topic and reduce it down in an easy digestible form. First and foremost, let’s look at the plate discipline improvements, which I’ve color-coded using an orange-brown typeface to readily identify what we’re going to focus on. Chase% is self-explanatory, as it counts how often a hitter expands the strike zone to swing at a ball, and Juan Soto has an exceptional eye. Still, his 2% gain on that mark for last year is impressive, even more so when we look at Hittable Pitch Take%.
Juan Soto has seen a 3% decline in the rate at which he monitors a pitch to do harm with travel into the glove, and given the increased passiveness out of the zone, this is a rather amazing jump. His pitch recognition has been even stronger than it was last year, and his SEAGER score highlights that shift. SElective AGgression Engagement Rate is a metric devised by Robert Orr of Baseball Prospectus to assess how well a hitter balances laying off pitches out of the zone while still exploiting hittable mistakes in-zone.
For a complete explanation of the metric, you can see right here on MLB Prospectus, but his SEAGER score is the fifth-best number in MLB (min. 50 PAs), and that’s happened while also improving the ability to cause damage to the baseball.
If you’d want to acquire a full leaderboard of that measure and also have access to Hittable Pich Take%, the link is here as well!
The stats in a blue font revolve around the quality of contact that Juan Soto is generating, with the main factor behind his improvement being a 2.2 MPH increase in his bat speed. By swinging harder, Juan Soto can generate greater exit velocities, and that’s resulted to more barrels and a better quality of contact score from xwOBACON, which is short for Expected Weighted On-Base Average on Contact. Hitting the ball harder while increasing your swing selection and launch angle distribution is going to lead to a ton of success, and a lot of these measures stabilize rapidly.
Exit Velocity may stabilize as quickly as 40-50 Batted Ball Events, and Juan Soto has already piled up 61 of those on the season. Barrel Rate doesn’t take much time to settle either, and swing decisions don’t take much time to stabilize either, so we could be looking at a career year in Soto’s walk season. The effects are astounding, cutting .352/.478/.557 with a 210 wRC+ thus far, but the offensive skillset is just one side of the puzzle here. He’s putting up great defensive numbers in the young season, with +3 Defensive Runs Saved and +2 Fielding Run-Value.
Juan Soto profiled nicely for right field, as the Yankees have been able to cover players like Matt Carpenter out there on occasions.
Juan Soto with a ROCKET throw to get Kevin Kiermaier trying to stretch a single into a double! pic.twitter.com/RJ3ZOwS5Eh
— Fireside Yankees (@FiresideYankees) April 17, 2024
His bursts have dramatically improved with his jumps, a product of the work he undertook during the offseason with former Red Sox centerfielder and defensive guru Jackie Bradley Jr. We’re looking at a version of Juan Soto who might very well win the AL MVP, and if the Yankees want to win the World Series, this is the kind of player they’ve desperately needed. The Dominican phenom has confidence and intensity that allows him to rise to the situation, constantly finding himself right in the midst of their most vital rallies.
A guy that can equal the MVP-like stats we’ve seen Aaron Judge put up, he has led the Yankees to a 13-6 record despite the poor offensive production from their skipper. He’s been even better than we expected him to be, and some of the underlying numbers imply he’s made actual skill progressions. He’s a superstar doing every small thing that the Yankees hoped for when they parted ways with numerous excellent pieces to obtain him, and it’s been a joy to watch him every day.
