Juan Soto, pull-side slugger?
It doesn’t sound right because Soto introduced himself to the baseball world as a pure hitter who routinely smashed home runs to the opposite field. But over the past three seasons, especially in 2024, Soto has evolved into a bigger pull-side threat than ever.
The team that signs Soto is going to get not just the most reliable hitter in baseball. It also will get a slugger who is just now entering the prime of his power.
This season Soto set full-season career highs for home runs (41), slugging (.569), total bases (328), exit velocity (94.2 mph), pull percentage (42.3%) and hits to the pull side (80, a 43% jump over any other season). It would be easy to attribute the increased power to playing his home games at Yankee Stadium.
But that’s not it.
Soto slugged higher on the road (.580) than he did at Yankee Stadium (.559). According to StatCast, Soto’s expected home runs if they were all hit at Yankee Stadium was 46—the same expected total at Citi Field—and far below his expected output at places such as Guaranteed Rate Field (54), Citizens Bank Park (54) and Great American Ball Park (63!).
Yankee Stadium did not cause his breakout power. So, what is going on?
In March I spoke with Soto about how Yankee Stadium might change his approach, the way it did for Jason Giambi, who sacrificed average for more pull power to take aim at the short porch. Soto assured me he would not let the ballpark change him.
What I missed was how Soto was already two years into evolving his approach at the plate. His default method of letting pitches get deep and driving them the other way has evolved into taking more chances hitting the ball out front.
It used to be that Soto, like Miguel Cabrera, rarely pulled fastballs. Look at the spray charts of Soto’s home runs against fastballs from 2021 and ’24. The cluster of homers near the leftfield corner in ’21 (letting the ball get deep) has turned into a cluster of homers in the rightfield corner in ’24 (catching it farther out front).
Soto HRs off fastballs
2021
2024
The change in his game began in 2021. Since then, his overall pull percentage has gone up every year:
There is a clear delineation in Soto’s approach, which you can see here. He went from pulling one out of every three home runs to half of his dingers.
Soto to Pull Field
That last category—home runs on fastballs middle/away—is most telling. It used to be that Soto almost never caught a fastball out front if it was on the outer half of the plate. But over the past three seasons, he is pulling them out of the park.
Here’s the kicker: Despite hitting more balls out front, Soto cut his strikeout rate last year, from 18.2% to 16.7%.
Soto’s evolution is not all that unusual. In many ways, he is tracking the arc of Mike Trout, who arrived in the big leagues as an all-fields pure hitter but since 2019, at age 27, has emerged as a pull-side monster. On lesser levels of power, Jose Altuve, Trea Turner, Ketel Marte and Marcell Ozuna are among current hitters who have followed the path of adding more pull-side power as they age.
Soto is going to sign a contract for more than the $46.06 million present day average annual value of Shohei Ohtani; something along the lines of $611 million over 13 years. Soto will get that kind of money because he is young (26) and durable—he benefits from a rare bidding war between the Yankees and Mets and because his floor is so high. The Mets would appear to have the edge in resources and will to win that war.
Soto has played six qualified seasons. In his worst season (2019) his OPS+ was 142 and he was a top 10 MVP finisher. Only three other hitters posted six qualified seasons with an OPS+ floor of 142 before age 26: Trout, Mickey Mantle and Ty Cobb.
Sure, you can nit-pick about his baserunning and defense, but through age 25 Soto (201 HR, 160 OPS+) is such a dynamic hitter that those issues can be ignored. At this age, he is tracking the careers of the likes of Trout (201 HR, 172 OPS+), Albert Pujols (201, 172), Joe DiMaggio (168, 156), Mel Ott (211, 153) and Henry Aaron (179, 151). That’s not to say Soto is their equal, only that he is off to the kind of career start that suggests he could be an inner circle Hall of Famer.
Since the mound was lowered in 1969 to create more offense, it never was harder to get a hit than it was in 2024 (.243). In this low batting average environment, the home run becomes even more important. Soto is hitting the market just as his power is ascending—whether or not he plays in Yankee Stadium.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Juan Soto Hitting Free Agency at the Peak of His Power.