Evaluating Juan Soto's Fit With the New York Yankees
An IBWAA member evaluates how Juan Soto fits with the Yankees
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Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
. . . Despite his prodigious abilities to get on base (he ranks first among all active players with a .421 OBP, nine points ahead of second-place Mike Trout), Soto has never played on a team that led MLB in OBP, with Nationals teams that he played with finishing second in the league twice.
. . . Teammate Aaron Judge is the first player since Alex Rodriguez with multiple 50-homer seasons, but he’s also only had two seasons in his career totaling 150 games played or more - not coincidentally, the same years as his two big home run seasons.
Leading Off
To Soto or Not To Soto
By Ben Abel
When the New York Yankees made the trade to acquire Juan Soto, I must admit I sat back and wondered what the big deal was about Soto.
Rather than take to Twitter to express my lack of understanding about Soto and his career to this point, I thought it best to do some serious research on his play and career to date in Major League Baseball. I was familiar with his play with the Washington Nationals having watched the 2019 World Series where the Nationals beat the Houston Astros. I watch San Diego Padres baseball as much as I can, too, so I remember the 2022 blockbuster trade the Padres made to acquire him from the Nationals along with Josh Bell in exchange for CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, Robert Hassell, James Wood, Jarlin Susana, and Luke Voit.
My lack of interest comes from his time with the Padres in 2022 where he played 51 games with the team, compiling a .236 batting average, 6 home runs, 16 RBIs, and 36 walks. However, digging a little deeper into that season before you realize what the Yankees have done in getting him. According to Wikipedia, overall in 2022, Soto played 152 total games with a .242 batting average, 27 home runs, 62 RBIs, and an MLB-leading 135 walks. He walked in 20.3% of his plate appearances, tops in the major leagues, and had the highest BB/K% in the majors, at 1.41. He swung at a lower percentage of pitches outside the strike zone (19.9%) than any other major league batter.
Translate this for the non-baseball fan and it means he walks a lot and has discipline when hitting, hence why the Yankees acquired him.
Soto played in all 162 games in 2023 with a .275 batting average, 35 home runs, 109 RBIs and an MLB-leading 132 walks.
Juan Soto and Aaron Judge together - another Maris and Mantle in the making?
Aaron Judge, the Yankees outfielder, broke the American League home run record in 2022, beating Roger Maris’ 61-year-old record of hitting 61 in 1961. In 2023, despite running into a fence at Dodger Stadium and missing 42 games, Judge hit 37 home runs.
When the Yankees acquired Soto, he and the team avoided arbitration for the coming season, agreeing to a one-year contract. Soto agreed to a $31.5 million salary for 2024, topping Shohei Ohtani's $30 million record arbitration salary from 2023.
Even if Judge and Soto are only together for one season due to contracts, does the pairing evoke Yankee greats of the past in the same lineup?
The potential is there and SB Nation site Pinstripe Alley does a nice job breaking down the great Yankee duos of the club’s history. Pinstripe Alley has made a forecast on Soto’s and Judge’s stats with the following numbers:
Judge: .270/.386/.563, 158 wRC+, 24 2B, 46 HR, 6.4 fWAR
Soto: .284/.425/.557, 170 wRC+, 26 2B, 38 HR, 6.6 fWAR
What is wRC+? Weighted Runs Created Plus or wRC+, according to Just Baseball, is related to Weighted Runs Created or wRC and Bill James’ original statistic, Runs Created. “wRC is a counting stat and is useful for quantifying a player’s full offensive value over a season, but wRC+ allows us to compare a player with 500 plate appearances to one with 300 plate appearances.”
Fangraphs’ wRC+ chart too gives us a great understanding of this statistic and how it relates to player performance. This is how I was able to understand and give weight to my argument about why Soto would be worth acquiring or not.
The answer is definitely yes. Last season, Soto had a wRC+ of 155 in 708 plate appearances and 162 games. Judge was at 174 for 458 appearances.
Ronald Acuña Jr. of the Atlanta Braves was the top individual player last year for wRC+ at 174 In 735 plate appearances.
Soto had a season, albeit in the 2020 shortened COVID season, where his wRC+ was over 200.
Where does Soto slot into the Yankees’ lineup?
Yankees manager Aaron Boone was on “Foul Territory” and indicated Soto would bat 2nd in the batting order with Judge third, but that the team’s leadoff hitter would also have to be looked at. Boone elaborated that players such as DJ LeMahieu, Alex Verdugo and Gleyber Torres could all bat leadoff.
With this research and writing done, I’d have to say that definitely to Soto is better than not to Soto. We simply need the 2024 MLB season to begin to see what happens.
Ben Abel has been an avid sports fan since the 1980s. He has contributed to Sports Betting Dime and the IBWAA Newsletter and has written about hockey, baseball, and football as well as other sports. He lives in Vancouver, Canada. Contact him on Twitter @lebaneb or via email at info@abelmarketing.ca.
Timeless Trivia
While Soto and Judge will attempt to be an elite-performing pair in 2024, when you look at the fWAR leaderboards from 2017-2023, three sets of teammates are among the top 10 hitters over that time. Can you name all three pairs of teammates?