Juan Soto is BRUTAL in the field. It is true that Soto is probably a generational hitter, but he is NOT a generational PLAYER. He is no better in the field than Vientos is. That makes him a one-dimensional player. He hits better than Vientos, but he certainly doesn’t field better than Vientos.
And why did the Mets sign Soto to such a big, and long, free agent contract? The Mets hierarchy, specifically David Stearns, has repeatedly insisted that the Mets ultimate goal is to get younger, become more athletic, and improve defense. How did the signing of Juan Soto fit in with any of that? It didn’t.
Soto being a “generational” hitter could be motivation enough for signing him…believing that his presence in the lineup will deliver a World Series Championship. The odds are…it won’t. Here’s why I say that.
The biggest “generational” hitter this side of Babe Ruth was Barry Bonds. Let’s put the steroids aside just for this instance and look at results.
Bonds was already a great player when he was with the Pittsburgh Pirates. The San Francisco Giants signed him to a big free agent contract and built the team around him in 1993. Bonds performed by putting up record-breaking numbers….numbers that will probably never be recorded again. He put fans in the seats. The Giants sold a lot of tickets. The organization got a hefty return on its investment. But did it?
Bonds played 15 seasons for the Giants. The team finished in first place three times and each time was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. The only other time the Giants made it to the playoffs was when they came in second place, made it through the playoffs via the Wild Card, and lost the 2002 World Series to the Anaheim Angels.
Bonds’ best season was 2004 when he hit a league-leading .362, with 45 HR, 101 RBI, 129 runs scored, and a league-leading OBP of .609 because he walked a record-setting 232 times! Bonds had 612 plate appearances but only registered 403 official at bats.
And ya know what? The Giants didn’t even make the playoffs. Didn’t even qualify for the Wild Card. What does that tell you?
Then…three seasons after Bonds is gone from the San Francisco Giants…the club wins three of the next five World Series. They WON three World Series in five years WITHOUT Barry Bonds. So, again, what does that tell you?
Barry Bonds wasn’t as bad a fielder as Juan Soto is. In fact, for the longest time, Bonds was actually a pretty damn good fielder. But Bonds’ presence didn’t deliver a World Series victory to the San Francisco Giants, nor the Pittsburgh Pirates previously. Building a team around him didn’t work. It didn’t work for 15 years…while he was setting record after record.
Bonds was surly, self-serving, and all-to-often, off by himself, separated from the rest of the team. He was an entity unto himself. It APPEARS that Soto is in that very same mold.
Well, that mold doesn’t always allow a team to have success. A baseball team with 25 or 26 players in a clubhouse will have multiple personalities, and even some cliques of personalities that more closely mesh. There are those who are quiet, those who are more verbose, but in the end, it’s a team of players who are working together for a common cause. You can’t have one player who marches to the beat of his own drum and just expect everyone else to fall into line. The San Francisco Giants proved it can’t work.
But they proved you can win once that player is gone.
Juan Soto never should have been signed in the first place. It was not like when the Mets acquired Gary Carter before the 1985 season as a final piece of the puzzle. Or even in 1969 when the Mets added Donn Clendenon. You had a nice team built and you are just putting the icing on the cake. What the thought process was with Soto is anyone’s guess, but the results are obvious.
Perhaps Soto should go the way Max Scherer and Justin Verlander went? Admit the mistake, eat crow (and a hefty contract) and start over. Or do we have to wait 15 years like Giants fans waited?
