FLUSHING, NY — As the first installment of the 2025 Subway Series came and went in the Bronx this past weekend with the Yankees taking two of three on the Mets, the overwhelming story out of it was Soto, Soto and more Soto.
The 26-year-old two-time LatinoMVP Award winner Juan Soto, signing a historic 15-year/$765 million deal with the Mets this past offseason—off to a rough start for his superstar capabilities and standards—has made for a story day-in and day-out across the media scene of Major League Baseball.
Posting a .247/.379/.437 slash line over his first 48 games as a Met with eight HR and 20 RBI, while not ‘Soto Shuffling’ at the plate for the majority of his at-bats, some have started to raise concerns on why the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic native isn’t showing the same excitement level and flare we consistently saw out of him in Washington DC as a National, San Diego as a Padre and across town in the Bronx as a Yankee.
Image Credit: Bill Menzel/Latino Sports
Perhaps, the pressure of the contract is wavering on Soto, which is understandable, or it could just be the elements of baseball. Certain balls landing for hits and others hanging in the air for outs.
The way of the game in other words.
There are several claims and assumptions into why Soto is off to a shaky start for a superstar of his caliber—a five-time Silver Slugger, four-time All Star and 2019 World Series champion—but rather than ‘search for clicks,’ let’s hear from an individual who was once in Soto’s shoes…
“I was once the best paid player in the game and it took me a while to adjust to my team and to the media,” said Hall of Famer Pedro Martínez on TBS earlier this week when asked of Soto’s early struggles as a Met.
The legendary right-hander of Manoguayabo, Dominican Republic, leaving Montreal for Boston in 1997, was awarded a six-year/$75 million deal, resulting in him becoming the highest paid MLB player at the time. What came with that shortly after were several distractions not seen by the public eye, such as mental obstacles Martínez battled through and overcame to make him the man he is today.
Martínez, one of the greatest pitchers to ever toe the slab, and the best from the Dominican Republic, along with Juan Marichal, went on to explain, “When I was coming from Montreal, there was a lot of attention on me and stuff I needed to deal with until I finally made the adjustment. This is an adjustment year for Soto even though he went from the Bronx to Queens—it’s an adjustment year. But no one is stopping to think about the human inside the uniform. There are some stuff that can get your mind distracted. There’s no way a guy like Soto goes from ‘D to Z’ in one night—something probably bothered him, or was not right or not clicking for him.”
“It may have been the (Subway) Series,” he later added. “He may have paid too much attention to what was going on, what was said about him and the Yankees and all that…
He probably got caught up, we forget how young Juan Soto is.”
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