Juan Soto swung and paused for a moment to admire his 11th home run of the year, a two-run blast off Dodgers legend Clayton Kershaw. He is on a five-game hitting streak, which includes three home runs and a double.
The Mets lost a heartbreaker, 6-5 in 10 innings Tuesday night, with the world champs tying it with a Max Muncy homer in the ninth and winning it when Brandon Nimmo misplayed a fly ball that bounced on the warning track beside him.
But if you are looking for a silver lining, slowly but surely, Soto may be starting to resemble the player the Mets expected to be getting when they signed him to the largest contract in professional sports history.
Or maybe the breaks are just starting to even out.
Manager Carlos Mendoza said last month that Soto was one of the “unluckiest” hitters in baseball and his Baseball Savant page backs that up. He is in the 98th percentile in xwOBA (.429), 95th percentile in average exit velocity (93.6) and 95th percentile in hard-hit percentage (54.5). (He is in the 100th percentile for chase percentage (14.4), one reason he is third in the majors in walks.)
“It’s just baseball,” Soto said in an interview with FOX Sports last month. “It just happens. Sometimes you hit the ball hard and you won’t find it. Sometimes you gonna hit it soft and you gonna find the hole.”
Soto isn’t known for his defense (that Baseball Savant page has him in the 4th percentile for range and 16th percentile for arm value), but he made a backhanded catch over the side wall in foul territory on Tuesday, too, taking a souvenir away from one of the 53,424 in attendance at Dodger Stadium.
The Mets (38-23) have two more games in Los Angeles and maybe more in October.
“We obviously met in the NLCS last year and we would love to do that again,” said Nimmo. “So it’s two great teams going at it. People always love that. I love it. It’s what we play for. It’s really, really fun to play in these games. It’s really fun to watch them I’m sure as well. This is what you want in sports.”
