Juan in a Million
The Yankees may have missed out on the Yoshinobu Yamamoto sweepstakes this winter, but they did land a major score by acquiring Juan Soto for a five-player package that included four pitchers. For years now, it's been no secret that the Yankees need a quality left-handed bat to balance out their lineup. In Soto, they didn't just get a quality bat but a transcendant one that could potentially get the Yankee offense back to the top of the American League.
Just how good is Soto? Let's look at this from a number of different angles to put it in perpsective.
For the traditionalists
The 25-year old Soto has played in only six seasons but has already proven to have one of the greatest batting eyes in baseball history in that short time. In each of the past three seasons he has drawn at least 130 walks, leading the majors each time. He ranked in the top ten in the NL in walks for the three seasons before that and since 2018 has walked a total of 640 times. Bryce Harper's 504 in that span sits in a very distant second place among major leaguers.
What's even more impressive about Soto's walk totals is that he combines it with an ability to keep strike outs to a minimum. In that same six-year span, his 577 strike outs ranks just 69th in the majors. For further context, Bryce Harper has struck out 730 times in those six years (ranked 20th) and the strike out leader in this time period is Eugenio Suarez with a whopping 979. When it comes to commanding the strike zone as a hitter, Soto is in a league of his own.
Thanks to that elite batting eye, Soto's on-base percentage and OPS marks are consistently among the league leaders. His .421 on-base percentage since 2018 leads the major leagues and his .946 OPS and 157 OPS+ rank fourth behind only Mike Trout, Aaron Judge and Yordan Alvarez. Despite hitting in pitcher-friendly parks for most of his career, he's also put up impressive power numbers. His 160 career home runs and 1,418 career total bases both rank in the top 20 over the past six years. The Yankees are getting Soto as he's entering his prime where he may continue to separate himself from the pack.
Looking at Soto through a more Yankee-centric lens, he's already in legendary company. Through age 25 only one other player in major league history has drawn as many as walks Soto. That would be Mickey Mantle who walked 670 times, but also had 741 more plate appearances than Soto to do it in. Even more impressive, Mantle had already led his league in strike outs twice by this point in his career whereas Soto has struck out far fewer times (653 to 577) in an environment much more conducive to striking out.
Let's take age out of it and focus on Soto's incredible 2021 season where he walked 145 times. Only two other Yankees of any age have ever have done that - Babe Ruth in 1920, 1921 and 1923, and Mickey Mantle in 1957. Ruth led the league in strike outs with 93 when he walked 170 times in 1923. Soto also struck out 93 times in 2021, but 166 major leaguers struck out more than him that year. The Yankees have simply never had a hitter who could play Jedi mind tricks with the strike zone like Juan Soto.
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As a cherry on top, consider Soto's OPS+ value of 157 thus far in his career. Only three other Yankees have posted an OPS+ value of 157 or better through age 25 - Lou Gehrig (177), Mickey Mantle (175) and his new teammate Aaron Judge (157). I cheated a bit to include Judge here as he had only played two seasons through 25, but it's a neat factoid nonetheless. Should the Yankees find a way to keep Soto around long term, he could find himself on the Yankee Mt. Rushmore before it's all said and done.
For the new wave Savant crowd
OK, so we've established that Soto can discern between balls and strikes at an all-time level, but what does he do when he actually swings? Well, one look at his Savant page reveals a sea of red, and that's a very good thing. In short, Soto hits the ball real hard, but thanks to the Statcast data collected at Savant, we can articulate that better these days.
In four of his six seasons, Soto has been in the top 10% of major leaguers in terms of average exit velocity and hard hit percentage. The good news for the Yankees is that those numbers have been improving recently. In 2023 his average exit velocity of 93.2 was in the 96th percentile and his 55.3% hard hit percentage was in the 99th percentile. When pitchers aren't walking him, he's causing some serious damage.
Luckily, the data at Savant quanitifies that damage further as well. All those batted balls get converted to an expected slugging percentage (XSLG) which tells us what we could expect based on probability instead of what actually happened (which includes good luck/bad luck, exceptionally poor or good fielding, etc.). Soto has finished in the top 5% of the league in XSLG four times in his career.
The picture for Soto is even rosier when it comes to weighted on-base average (WOBA) which is similar to OPS, but does a much better job of estimating the value of extra base hits. Savant also approximates WOBA by converting a players batted balls into XWOBA. In each of the last four seasons, Soto has been in the top 2% of the league when it comes to XWOBA.
What this all means is that Soto is every bit as good as the traditional numbers suggest he is. The underlying data proves that luck has nothing to do with the success he's had in his career so far.
What does this mean for the Yankees?
As with any left-handed hitter that becomes a Yankee, the speculative story with Soto is that his home run numbers will improve because of the shallow right field at Yankee Stadium. While I get that logic, the expected home run data provided by Savant indicates that Soto would actually have less home runs than his current total if he played all of his games at Yankee Stadium. However, that's not to say that he won't or can't take advantage of the dimensions in the Bronx.
Soto has been a very balanced hitter thus far in his career. That is, he's not a pull hitter at all and he hits as many balls on the ground as he hits in the air. A slight change in approach could make him more of a pull hitter that puts the ball in the air more, and it will be up to the Yankee coaching staff to make that happen. Yet what they can't do is ruin a near perfect hitter by changing him too much. It will be a delicate balance.
Even if Soto doesn't change his approach at all, he will benefit from a better run scoring environment in the Bronx compared to where he came from. The two parks he has called home in his career - Nationals Park and Petco Park - offer a significant advantage to pitchers according to the park factors on Baseball Reference. For the last few years, Yankee Stadium has been at least slightly favorable for hitters. I can see Scott Boras smiling already.
Last but not least, Soto brings an aspect - other than just being left-handed - to the Yankee lineup that's sorely needed. The 2023 Yankees ranked 11th out of 15 AL teams in runs scored mainly because of their anemic marks in on-base percentage (.304, ranked 12th), and slugging percentage (.397, ranked 11th). Those paltry numbers stand to improve by adding the active career leader in on-base percentage (.421 for Soto) who also happens to have a very healthy .524 slugging percentage for his career.
The mere presence of Soto also means that teams can't be as careful with Aaron Judge as they were last year when he was the only guy in the Yankee lineup worth worrying about. So not only does he offer instant improvement as by far the best bat available in baseball, but he also potentially makes the Yankees' own in-house superstar a more valuable asset. This kind of opportunity to improve comes around only Juance in a generation, so us Yankee fans should be excited for what's to come in 2024.
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