Juan Soto
Juan José Soto Pacheco known as Juan Soto (born October 25, 1998) is a Dominican professional baseball outfielder for the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball (MLB). He has previously played in MLB for the Washington Nationals and San Diego Padres. Soto signed with the Nationals as an international free agent in 2015.
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| Juan Soto | |
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| New York Yankees – No. 22 | |
| Outfielder | |
| Born: October 25, 1998 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic |
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Bats: Left
Throws: Left
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| MLB debut | |
| May 20, 2018, for the Washington Nationals | |
| MLB statistics (through 2024 season) |
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| Batting average | .285 |
| Hits | 934 |
| Home runs | 201 |
| Runs batted in | 592 |
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| Career highlights and awards | |
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He made his MLB debut in 2018 and was the runner-up for the NL Rookie of the Year Award. In 2019, he played a key part in the Nationals’ first World Series championship, earning him the Babe Ruth Award. In 2020, he won the National League batting title with a .351 average. Soto has won the Silver Slugger Award four times and is a four-time All-Star.
Early life
Soto was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, to Juan Soto, Sr. and Belkis Pacheco. He has an older sister and a younger brother. His younger brother, Elian, is a third baseman and outfielder who signed with the Nationals organization as an international free agent once he became eligible in January 2023. His father, a salesman, was a catcher in a local men’s league and encouraged his son to make baseball his passion.
Playing style
Soto is known for his exceptional plate discipline, ranking 5th all-time in walk rate and 10th all-time in career on-base percentage among hitters with at least 2000 plate appearances at the conclusion of the 2021 season. During his 2018 rookie season, Soto became known for his movements in the batter’s box after he successfully takes a pitch for a ball. Dubbed the “Soto Shuffle,” the routine often includes Soto swinging his hips, wiping the dirt with a wide arc of his leg, tapping his leg, hopping, or lowering himself into a squat and staring at the pitcher. As an ESPN writer described it: “He’ll swing his hips or spread his legs or sweep his feet or shimmy his shoulders or lick his lips or squeeze his, um, junk, sometimes all at once”. Soto says he started the routine in the minor leagues “to get in the minds of the pitchers, because sometimes they get scared”. In Game 1 of the 2019 National League Championship Series, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas responded to Soto’s antics by grabbing his own crotch after retiring Soto on a ground out. Soto responded later by saying, “He got me out, he can do whatever he wants.” In subsequent seasons, Soto eliminated crotch-grabbing from the routine.
Soto employs a “two-strike approach” in which he raises his grip along the bat handle and adopts a wider, lower stance, sometimes described as a crouch, in the batter’s box. He is noted for his ability to drive the ball to all fields, even on a two-strike count. At the conclusion of his 2020 season, Soto had hit 69 career home runs in MLB and divided them evenly by direction: 23 to left field, 23 to center field, and 23 to right field.
Although he was a finalist for a Gold Glove Award as a left fielder after the 2019 season, Soto has indicated a preference for playing right field, his main position during his brief minor league career. The Nationals began deploying him as their starting right fielder late in the 2020 season and he became the Nationals’ everyday right fielder in 2021. Soto is statistically a significantly better defender in right field than in left field: in left field he has produced −3.8 UZR per 150 games while in right field he has produced +1.5 UZR per 150 games.
A meteoric rise
The Nationals called Soto up to the majors in 2018 at the age of 19, after he dominated the competition in parts of three seasons in the minor leagues, where he batted .362 with a 1.043 on-base-plus-slugging percentage (OPS)—an important barometer of hitting prowess. In his rookie season in the big leagues, he hit .292 with 22 homers in just 116 games and finished second in the National League Rookie of the Year voting, to Ronald Acuña, Jr., of the Atlanta Braves.
Soto emerged as a dominant player in 2019, hitting 34 homers and 110 runs batted in (RBIs) while posting a .949 OPS. He was a key cog in the Nationals’ 2019 playoff run: He celebrated his 21st birthday while hitting .333 with 3 home runs and a 1.178 OPS during the World Series. The Nationals beat the Houston Astros in seven games, bringing a World Series title to Washington, D.C., for the first time in 95 years. The New York chapter of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America selected Soto and teammate Stephen Strasburg as joint winners of the Babe Ruth Award as the 2019 postseason Most Valuable Players.
The following year, the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Soto, still just 21, hit .351 to become the youngest player to win the NL batting title. The previous youngest winner was the Brooklyn Dodgers’ 22-year-old Pete Reiser, who hit a league-best .343 in 1941. Soto also led the league with a .490 on-base percentage and .695 slugging percentage. In 2021 he batted .313 with a .999 OPS and finished second in the NL MVP voting to former teammate Bryce Harper.
An April 2022 Sports Illustrated profile by baseball writer Tom Verducci called Soto “the greatest hitting prodigy since Ted Williams” and compared him to the composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin. Verducci wrote that through their first 464 games, Soto and Williams were the only players with at least 90 homers and 350 walks. Other stories likened Soto to Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey, Jr., and Mike Trout. As of the 2023 season, Soto had been named an All-Star three times and had won the Silver Slugger award four times.
A monster trade
The Nationals knew that Soto was a transcendent player, and during the 2022 season they offered him a 15-year, $440 million extension, which would have been the biggest contract in baseball history. But the 23-year-old superstar turned them down, even while insisting that he wanted to stay with the team. “I’ve been a National since day one,” he told reporters on the eve of the 2022 All-Star Game in Los Angeles. “Why should I want to change? I’ve been here my whole life and my career. I feel great where I’m at.” But he also expressed annoyance that the news of the contract extension offer had become public, calling it “pretty tough and pretty frustrating because I try to keep my stuff private.”
The Nationals, fearful of losing him as a free agent with little compensation for the team, traded him and Josh Bell at the 2022 trade deadline to the San Diego Padres for a significant package of prospects that included shortstop CJ Abrams. That deal continued a dismantling of the 2019 World Series championship team, following the trade of shortstop Trea Turner and pitcher Max Scherzer to the Los Angeles Dodgers the previous year. Ten days after the trade, Soto returned to Nationals Park in his new uniform, and fans gave him a standing ovation. Soto admitted that the time leading up to the trade was the most difficult of his career. “I love this game,” he told Sports Illustrated in 2023. “…And there were some days when I felt like it wasn’t fun anymore.” Soto said he had cried when he learned that he had been traded. He also recalled that turning down the Nationals’ contract offer pitted “all the fans, all the Dominicans, even my family against me.”
Soto struggled after the trade, hitting just .236 over the last two months of the 2022 season with San Diego. But after a slow start to the 2023 season, he again put up big numbers, ending the year with 35 home runs, 109 RBIs, and a .930 OPS.
In December 2023 the Padres traded Soto to the New York Yankees, for whom he will play the 2024 season, the last year of his contract.
Professional career
Minor leagues
Soto signed with the Washington Nationals as an international free agent for a $1.5 million signing bonus in July 2015. He made his professional debut in 2016 with the Gulf Coast League Nationals in the rookie-level Gulf Coast League (GCL) and was named the GCL’s most valuable player after hitting .368 with five home runs and 32 runs batted in (RBIs). In September 2016 he was promoted to the Auburn Doubledays of the Class A-Short Season New York-Penn League for the final few games of the 2016 season. Appearing in six games for the Doubledays, he went 9-for-21 (.429) with three doubles and an RBI. He finished the 2016 season with an overall batting average of .368, five home runs, and 32 RBIs.
Promoted to play with the Hagerstown Suns of the Class A South Atlantic League in 2017, Soto got off to a hot start before injuring his ankle while sliding into home in a game on May 2 and landing on the disabled list. At the time of his injury, he was batting .360 with three home runs in 23 games with the Suns. In July 2017, MLB Pipeline ranked Soto the Nationals’ second-best prospect and the 42nd-best among all prospects. Soto did not return to the Suns in 2017, but he had two rehabilitation stints with the Gulf Coast Nationals, one of five games in July 2017 and a second one of four games in September 2017 before injuring his hamstring and finally being shut down for the season. In those nine games with the Gulf Coast League Nationals, he went 8-for-25 (.320) with a double, a triple, and four RBIs, and finished the 2017 season with a batting average of .351, three home runs, and 18 RBIs.
Soto entered 2018 as one of the minor leagues’ top prospects. He started the season with the Hagerstown Suns, hitting .373 in 16 games with five home runs and 24 RBIs, before being promoted early in the season to the Potomac Nationals in the Class A-Advanced Carolina League. After 15 games with Potomac, in which he hit .371 with seven home runs and 18 RBIs, he was promoted to play with the Harrisburg Senators in the Class AA Eastern League. He had appeared in eight games for the Senators, going 10-for-31 (.323) with two doubles, two home runs, and 10 RBIs, when on May 20, 2018, the Washington Nationals called him up to the major leagues for the first time to reinforce their outfield after an injury to second baseman and outfielder Howie Kendrick.
New York Yankees (2024–present)
On December 6, 2023, the Padres traded Soto and Trent Grisham to the New York Yankees for Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito, Randy Vásquez, and Kyle Higashioka. Soto and the Yankees avoided salary arbitration prior to the start of the 2024 season, agreeing to a one-year contract worth $31 million.
From March 28 to March 31, Soto went 9-for-17 with a home run, a double and four RBI and also collected an outfield assist on Opening Day by throwing out the tying run at the plate on the penultimate play of the game. On April 1, Soto was named the American League Player of the Week for the first week of the season, collecting his first title since moving from the National League over the winter.
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On June 3, following a week that included Soto slashing .435/.500/1.000, with two home runs in a game against the San Francisco Giants, including the go-ahead runs in the top of the ninth inning, he was named the AL Player of the Week for the second time.
Soto was named as a starting outfielder for the American League in the 2024 MLB All-Star Game. This was Soto’s fourth time being named to an All-Star Game and his first appearance for the American League.
On August 13, Soto hit three home runs in a 4-1 victory over the Chicago White Sox, registering all four runs batted in for the game. It was the first time Soto recorded three home runs in a single game in his career. After grounding out in his first at-bat, Soto went onto hit a home run in the next three consecutive at-bats. He drew a walk in his final plate appearance, going 3-for-4 for the night with home run in 3 straight at-bats intact.
On August 14, Soto hit a solo home run to deep right in his first at-bat and became the 6th Yankee to hit a home run in 4 straight at-bats (joining the list with Lou Gehrig in 1932, Johnny Blanchard in 1961, Mickey Mantle in 1962, Bobby Murcer in 1970, and Reggie Jackson in 1977). He also became the 6th Yankee with at least 6 home runs in 4-game span (joining the list with Babe Ruth in 1921 and 1930, Tony Lazzeri in 1936, Joe DiMaggio in 1948, Mickey Mantle in 1962, and Alex Rodriguez in 2007).
On August 21, in an 8-1 victory over the Cleveland Guardians, Soto hit a two-run home run to deep center in his first at-bat for his 36th of the season, giving him a new career-high in a single season. He became the first Yankee in the expansion era (since 1961), to hit a home run for 8 straight hits (dating from August 11th against the Texas Rangers) and the first player in all of baseball since Joey Votto in July 2021.
On September 17, in a 11-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park, Soto hit a two-run home run in the 4th inning and reached the milestone of hitting a home run in all 30 current Major League stadiums. It was Soto’s career-high 40th homer, which gave the Yankees a 6-1 lead at the time. The drive was also the 200th career homer for Soto, who became the seventh-youngest player in Major League history to reach the plateau, at 25 years and 328 days old.
On October 19, Soto hit a crucial three-run home run in the top of the 10th in Game 5 of the ALCS for the Yankees to take a 5–2 lead over the Cleveland Guardians. This propelled the Yankees to the World Series for the first time since 2009.
