Juan Soto Is Enjoying An Elite Start To His Padres Tenure

 

The San Diego Padres gave up a lot of talent to acquire 23-year-old slugger Juan Soto, a former batting champion and World Series winner.

They surrendered top prospects MacKenzie Gore, Robert Hassell III, C.J. Abrams, Jarlin Susana, and James Wood, plus major league first baseman Luke Voit.

Of course, they expected top production and lots of wins after getting Soto.

They have gotten the former, but the latter is still a work in progress.

Soto has performed admirably since landing in San Diego, but the Padres are 5-5 in their last 10 games and were recently swept by their arch rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, last weekend with Soto in the fold.

The player, however, has played exactly like Padres fans and front office expected him to, at least so far.

“Juan Soto since joining the Padres: — .357/.471/.607 — 1.078 OPS | 210 OPS+ — .460 wOBA | 202 wRC+ — 17.1 BB% | 8.6 K%,” StatsMuse tweeted.

Juan Soto since joining the Padres:

— .357/.471/.607
— 1.078 OPS | 210 OPS+
— .460 wOBA | 202 wRC+
— 17.1 BB% | 8.6 K%@PadresMuse pic.twitter.com/s4EHaKNPvP

— StatMuse (@statmuse) August 11, 2022

 

He Is Starting To Play Like Vintage Soto

After a somewhat rocky start of the season back when he was with the Washington Nationals, Soto had started to turn things around long before the Padres acquired him.

He is now slashing .254/.413/.495 with 22 home runs for the season.

That’s still far from the .313/.465/.534 line he had last year, but the OBP and slugging are starting to creep closer and closer to that performance.

Soto is a unique hitting talent at 23 years old who has accomplished a lot of things on the diamond.

The Padres will have him for three playoff runs: 2022, 2023, and 2024.

At that point, they will hope they did enough to convince him to stay for the long-term, although doing so may be extremely costly (around $500 million, since he already turned down $440 million).

His tenure as a Padre is off to a promising start.