Christmas came early for Brandon Nimmo and his Mets teammates when the team signed coveted free agent outfielder Juan Soto. What makes him worth the massive contract that he got?
Juan Soto’s Impressive Resume
Juan Soto’s seven-year career has been a climb to superstardom that every 19-year-old, prospect or not, could only dream of having. Only to be followed up with the largest sum of money an athlete has ever been signed for.
In seven seasons, he has won the Silver Slugger five times, been an All-Star four times, and been part of two World Series, winning one and losing the other.
He won the World Series as a member of the Washington Nationals in 2019, defeating the Houston Astros. 2019 was his age-20 season and his first full season as a Major Leaguer. Soto hit .333 with three home runs and seven runs batted in in the seven games.
This past season, Soto played for the New York Yankees, but the Dodgers defeated them in five games. Soto hit .313 with a home run and run batted in. He has had just one season with a batting average under .275 and has never had an on-base percentage below .400. This is extremely impressive stuff.
The Mets will be his fourth team in eight seasons, and now that he got the contract, which was his motivation this whole time, it is safe to assume that this is his last.
The ‘Perfect Swing’
An excited Brandon Nimmo took to “The Show”, a podcast with MLB insiders Joel Sherman and Jon Heyman, to talk about Soto, the “freak of nature physically” as Nimmo put it. He then talked about the ‘precise’ nature of Soto’s eyes, how he always knows what he is trying to do, and how he can slow the game down at an extremely high level.
This can also be attributed to the amount of walks that he takes. He has led the league in walks in three of the seven years he has played.
“His swing mechanics are impeccable, he doesn’t really move forward much at all. It’s almost like he just moves down a little bit.” Nimmo seems impressed as he continues, “That gives him the space to be able to catch them out in front and see the ball a little bit longer without moving in front of it.”
Some of the greatest hitters in the game struggle with mechanics to become consistent and maintain them for a long time, and that ends some really great careers. This is just another testament to how great of a hitter Juan Soto is. There is only one of him, and we may never see this again.
