4 days ago
Struggles Of Juan Soto Haven't Slowed Mets Down To This Point
New York Mets' Juan Soto, center, bats during the first inning of a baseball game against the ... More Colorado Rockies, Sunday, June 1, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
All in all, if you would have told Mets fans that on June 1, they'd be in first place in the NL East and tied for the best record in the entire National League, they'd have signed up for it. They also would have assumed that impact offseason free agent signee Juan Soto would have had a lot to do with it.
That hasn't exactly been the case. Through Saturday's games, he was tooling along with a pedestrian .231-.357-.413 line and 119 wRC+. Not a disaster, for sure, for those who don't fixate on batting average, but still not nearly what the club or its fans expected when Soto was inked to a massive 15-year, $765 million pact last winter. He stemmed a recent homerless 7 for 59 (.119 AVG .136 SLG) tailspin with homers on both Saturday and Sunday, but simply hasn't looked himself at virtually any point this season.
So should Met fans be worried? Is he still the same cat that crossed boroughs to great fanfare last offseason, or has he become something else altogether at the tender age of 26?
As typically done in this space, we're going to go to the batted ball data for some answers. But before we delve too deeply into the 2025 season, let's look at the player the Mets thought they were locking up prior to this season.
We all know Juan Soto is great - a career .282-.417-.525 line with a 156 wRC+ speaks for itself. But what does he do at an elite level to enable such production?
Soto's K rate has been over a half standard deviation lower than average in each of the last five seasons, and over a full standard deviation lower in four of them. Pretty special for a power hitter. Oh, and his walk rate has been over TWO full standard deviations higher than league average in ALL of his first SEVEN MLB seasons. Insane.
Big-time power hitters, almost to a man, hit the ball HARD. Soto is no exception. His average exit speed has been over one standard deviation higher than league average in every season since 2019, and was over two standard deviations higher in 2024. And he hits the most important types of batted balls hardest of all - he's hit his fly balls over two standard deviations harder than average in four of six seasons from 2019-24, and his liners over two standard deviations harder than average in three of four seasons from 2021-24. He attained that level in both of those batted ball types in both 2023 and 2024.
The first item above gives a player margin for error with regard to the second item. Margin for error that Soto has historically not needed. Adjusted Contact Score is a metric that I use to estimate the level of damage relative to the league that a particular player should be inflicting based on their individual exit speed/launch angle mix. Once that number is known, a good K/BB profile will nudge a player's 'Tru' Production+ upward, a poor one could cut deeply into it.
In each and every year of his career, Soto's 'Tru' Production+ has been higher than his Adjusted Contact Score, which in most years, has been pretty darned good in his own right. But there are limitations to Soto's offensive game. Let's identify them.
This is the primary one. Soto simply doesn't hit a lot of fly balls. He's only materially exceeded the league average level once, way back in 2019. He also exceeded a 50% grounder rate - over a full standard deviation higher than league average - four times in six seasons between 2018-23. While liner rates tend to be quite volatile for most hitters, Soto has consistently come up short in that area, only exceeding a 20% seasonal rate once in his career, and posting marks over a full standard deviation below league average three times in six years between 2018-23.
Now low fly ball rates have always represented a glass half full/glass half empty paradoxical situation for me. Guys with high fly ball rates who hit the ball very hard in the air are great - but they have little additional upside. Guys with low fly ball rates who hit their fly balls hard have tons of upside. It's why I was so bullish on Christian Yelich, an extreme outlier on both fronts, in his younger days as a Marlin. He eventually hit more fly balls and won himself an MVP award as a Brewer.
Juan Soto with even an average fly ball rate is a monster, plain and simple.
This is a lesser concern, but still bears mentioning. I label any hitter who pulls over five times as many grounders as he hits the other way as an extreme grounder puller, and assess a penalty when projecting their performance on grounders, no matter how hard they're hit. I essentially cap their projection at its actual level, which is often quite low. Soto has been assessed such a penalty in 2019, 2022 and 2023, and narrowly missed getting one in 2024. Soto hits his grounders only slightly harder than league average, nowhere near as hard relative to the league compared to his flies and liners.
So when Soto is clicking on all cylinders, he's amazing. He's already won a batting title (in the shortened 2020 season, at .351), an OBP and two SLG titles, and hit 41 homers in a season (in 2024), and has immense additional upside. But guys with low liner rates who don't hit their grounders all that hard and pull too many of them have more than typical levels of batting average risk. Soto hit only .242 in 2022 and was hitting only .231 this year through Saturday's games. He's also playing in a fairly pitcher-friendly home park in Citi Field (believe it or not, Yankee Stadium, his other recent home, also fits in that same category).
So let's now take a step back and look at his 2025 performance to date through a batted ball-based lens, and see if he's been better or worse than his actual numbers. First, his K/BB profile has moved backwards a bit, with 16.9% BB rate his lowest since 2019. Still easily over two standard deviations above league average, but down nonetheless.
His ball-striking is just as good as it was in 2024. His overall average exit speed is down ever so slightly from 93.5 to 93.3 mph, with his fly ball exit speed up from 96.9 to 99.7 mph and his liner exit speed down from 101.7 to 100.4 mph. Still in the game's top tier on both fronts.
His batted ball profile still has the same warts - a very high 51.5% grounder rate and a career low 16.0% liner rate. And he's drifted back into extreme grounder-pulling status - explaining in large part why he's batting only .130 without an extra-base hit on the ground.
But oh has Soto been unlucky in the air and on a line. Both his actual, Unadjusted Fly Ball and Line Drive Contact Scores are far lower than their adjusted counterparts, by 185 to 278 for the former and 82 to 123 for the latter. Bottom line, he 'should be' batting .257-.381-.497 with a 147 'Tru' Production+.
Now, no one would be saying 'what's wrong with Juan Soto' if he was actually hitting at that level. But that would still match the lowest 'Tru' Production+ level of his career, set as a rookie at age 19.
So he does have some things to work on, and to improve. There comes a time where one has to conclude that those extra fly balls just aren't going to come, and even if they do, they'll be coming over a shorter stretch of time than originally anticipated. I still believe in Juan Soto as a generational hitter, and think that we're basically seeing his floor at this moment. But we need to start seeing signs of growth before too long. An upward trend in his fly ball rate, using the field more on the ground. Major changes aren't necessary, only tweaks around the edges that could have outsized benefits. I'm looking forward to seeing that extra gear that I really believe he has.
