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There are a number of great young players in the game today, but Soto is different. They did make some prescient moves late in the 2021 season but that could make the next domino to fall a Soto mega-contract. The Nationals have yet to lock up Soto for the long haul, and the clock is ticking. That happened, and Soto’s current profile is substantially better than early Yelich. Many years ago, when Christian Yelich was a Marlin, I predicted he’d eventually overcome his extremely low average launch angle, take advantage of his extremely high average fly ball and liner exit speeds, and eventually win an MVP award. A handful more hitters had a higher average fly ball exit speed than Soto, but they had more unbalanced overall batted ball profiles. had average overall and line drive exit speeds harder than Soto’s. 61 players accumulated enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title in the NL last season, and a grand total of five of them (David Peralta, Josh Bell, Starling Marte, Eric Hosmer and Raimel Tapia, in descending order) had lower average launch angles.Īmong 2021 NL qualifiers, only Fernando Tatis Jr. Soto hit “only” 29 homers in 654 plate appearances in 2021, but he did so with an incredibly low average launch angle of 5.8 degrees. Though the leagues are twice are large now, making it unlikely that Soto will do so quite as often, the power component of his game is set to explode. In his next seven seasons, Ott led the NL five times, and in his next six seasons, Mantle led the AL four times. Through their age 22 seasons, neither Ott nor Mantle had yet led their respective leagues in home runs. In terms of relative SLG, Soto ranks 6th out 8, ahead of only Ott and Mantle. Their mastery of the strike zone at such a young age sets them apart more than anything else. Interestingly, of these eight players, Soto and Williams are far ahead of the others in terms of relative OBP. That’s the same situation that exists with Williams, whom I would submit is the only player in modern baseball history to be a more prodigious young hitter than Soto.
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Trout rates slightly ahead of Soto, but remember, Trout’s age 23 season is included in his four-year sample, while Soto’s age 19 season is included in his. Cobb and Soto are almost in a dead heat, interestingly with Cobb the better power guy relative to the league and era and Soto the better OBP guy. They are not in Soto’s class offensively. Jimmie Foxx - 5.55 OBP + 7.24 SLG = 12.79įirst off, we can place Ott, Mantle, Hornsby and Foxx - inner-circle Hall of Famers all - on a separate, lower tier. Now let’s include some players who were high achievers through age 22 with three years of experience, and add their age 23, 4th year into the equation: Soto - 11.17 career standard deviations above league average OBP + 6.73 career standard deviations above league average SLG = 17.90 Through age 22, with four years of experience, there are only three players that can be mentioned in the same breath as Soto: Once you account for his level of excellence, his group of peers gets awful small. Before even bringing performance into the equation, that’s a pretty exclusive club.
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Soto has been an MLB regular for four seasons now, back through his age 19 season. I have no problem penalizing Albert Pujols for the last several years of his career - not just the last couple. While replacement level is a better baseline for performing seasonal evaluations, league average is a better baseline for ranking the all-time greats. I also maintain a ranking of hitters in that era by cumulative standard deviations above average. I have a database going back to 1901 that tracks the number of standard deviations above/below league average OBP and SLG for all MLB regulars.