The Juan Soto sweepstakes are over as the 26-year-old signed a historic 15-year, $765 million deal with the New York Mets. The best free agent on the market — and perhaps the best free agent the sport will see for years — will continue his Hall of Fame trajectory with one team after playing for three different clubs over the past three seasons.
Soto has already been to two World Series. He has been compared to Ted Williams and has 40-home run power. He is one of the best hitters of this generation. He doesn’t turn 27 until October.
So, how did Juan Soto become Juan Soto?
The Signing
Soto was hardly the biggest star the year he was eligible to sign with pro teams as an international player. In fact, he didn’t crack MLB Pipeline’s Top 20 International Prospects in the 2015-16 class, which was led by Cuban right-hander Yadier Alvarez’s $16 million deal with the Dodgers and also featured Lucius Fox ($6 million, Giants), and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. ($3.9 million, Blue Jays).
The Nationals signed Soto for just $1.5 million in 2015, a coup pulled off by former assistant GM of international operations Johnny DiPuglia who had extensively watched the teenager in his native Dominican Republic. During a showcase teeming with other scouts in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., DiPuglia pulled Soto off to the side.
He paid a homeless man who was sleeping $20 to leave the rundown batting cage and watched Soto effortlessly launch ball after ball. That eye, that power. DiPuglia had seen enough. The pair came to a verbal agreement on the spot.
Soto could have gotten more money from other teams and DiPuglia knew it. He also had come to know the close-knit Soto family and that once they shook hands, they meant it. Other teams’ efforts were futile.
The Shuffle
Soto’s father, Juan José Soto, used to take his son to winter league games before he could walk. The elder Soto also played in a local league and they’d toss the ball back and forth for hours after. As his son became old enough to play, Soto constantly ran into the same problem: He was too advanced for his age. So he’d play up, facing kids two or three years older nearly his entire youth career.
Soto’s dad made one thing clear to him: The batter’s box was his space, not his opponent’s. Don’t let them intimidate you, he would tell his son.
Soto has always had that bulldog mentality, the mental part of The Soto Shuffle. But the actual shuffling didn’t happen until he was in A-ball and jumped with excitement after laying off a pitch. What was that, teammates asked him later.
Soto realized how much he liked the move, giving a physical tic to what had long been going on in his mind. He started moving in the box each time to help better decipher strikes and balls, and the shuffle was born. Over the years, it’s gotten more outrageous. Soto will swing his hips, stick out his tongue, spread his legs, sweep his feet or shimmy his shoulders in the batter’s box. Sometimes he’ll do a combination of a few things.
It helps with his timing. It can also grate on opposing pitchers.
Just like his dad wanted, Soto owns the batter’s box.
Juan Soto immediately made an impact on the Nationals after debuting in 2018. (Mitchell Layton / Getty Images)
The Drive
Soto’s parents insisted he take English classes growing up, saying that if he wanted to be a baseball player it was an important skill to have. Soto often resisted. When he signed with the Nationals, he was required — like all their players at the Dominican academy — to practice at least an hour a day of English with the team-provided Rosetta Stone software. This time Soto welcomed it. He saw the requirement as a challenge. He would practice one hour, then do another hour every night while his teammates slept. Soto became the first to graduate from the program.
Soto kept refining his English the following season, 2017, at Low-A Hagerstown. When he hurt his ankle, Soto used the extra time to immerse himself in the language, often going to a local McDonald’s to practice.
When Soto made his MLB debut in 2018, he told Nationals manager Dave Martinez — who is bilingual — to only speak English to him. He was fluent by then. Just 19, Soto conducted big-league media interviews in English, using slang and nuance with the confidence of someone who had spoken the language for years.
The way Soto attacked learning a new language in a year is the same meticulous ferocity with which he approaches his swing.
During Washington’s World Series run in 2019, Soto grew dissatisfied with where his swing had been since his bat propelled the Nationals in the NL Wild Card game. The night before Game 4 of the NL Championship Series game, he was in the cages with hitting coach Kevin Long past midnight. Hours later, he helped the Nats clinch the pennant, going 2-for-4 with an RBI and a run scored.
In 2020, sidelined with a positive COVID-19 test, Soto stood with a bat in front of the TV in his D.C. apartment to ready himself for a pandemic-shortened season. Over and over he practiced swinging. Last spring with the Yankees, Soto declined to go to the team’s exhibition game in Mexico City because he wanted to stay back in Tampa and work in the cages. His swing needed more refinement before Opening Day.
Hitting is a craft and Soto takes it as seriously as anyone. Teammates, coaches and opponents alike all marvel at the same thing: Soto never takes a pitch off. It’s exhausting and impressive to watch. He is relentless.
The Star
When the Nationals called Soto up as a teenager, they needed to be sure of one thing: Could he handle the spotlight? This was no brief cup of coffee. Soto was coming up to play every day in place of a mid-May injury to Howie Kendrick.
The reports in the minor leagues, not just of his bat but of his confidence, left little doubt. Soto once told a teammate at Double-A when he found out a roster crunch would result in a shared locker not to worry because he wouldn’t be there that long. He was right. And the Nationals were right to place their faith in the teenager.
Soto played in 116 games and posted a .292/.406/.517 line, placing second in Rookie of the Year voting. He earned MVP votes the following year.
Soto will likely go down in history as one of the best on-base percentage players to ever play the game. He silenced any doubters about performing on the big stage by turning in one of his best offensive seasons with the Yankees, recording a career-best 8.1 fWAR and propelling them to the World Series with his game-winning extra-innings homer in the AL Championship Series.
There is no question Soto is a generational talent. There’s little concern that Soto will let the pressure of this mammoth contract change anything. This is a guy who turned down $440 million guaranteed from the Nationals in 2022 to bet on himself and who eschewed attempts to stay in San Diego or with the Yankees before he hit free agency.
Soto wants records, on and off the field. He has never lacked confidence and if that attitude or the Soto Shuffle comes across as brash, so be it. Soto doesn’t apologize for playing the game loudly and full of emotion.
He is a star and has been performing like one for years. Now, he will be paid like one.
(Top photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
