With Mets beat reporter Anthony DiComo on vacation, MLB.com writer David Adler is pinch-hitting for this edition of the Mets Beat newsletter. |
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In the batter's box, Juan Soto is one of the very best in the world. Everybody knows that. And then there's the outfield, where he is … not. Now, if Soto just keeps hitting like he did in 2025 for the rest of his Mets career, that would be enough. It would mean the Mets had a Hall of Fame hitter for over a decade. He wouldn't need to be an elite defensive outfielder on top of that. But Soto still wants to improve that area of his game. During an interview with the Dominican Winter League earlier this week, he talked about how hard he's working on getting better in the field entering the 2026 season. "Defense is going to become a cornerstone of my development in the coming years," Soto said in the interview. "People think there’s nothing left to do, but the pride of a true baseball player is to keep showing something new, something different, in comparison to the rest." |
The question is, can he do it? Getting significantly better in the outfield mid-career is hard to do. But Soto has already shown the ability to transform weaker areas of his game with the Mets, so maybe his defense will be next. Soto does have a long way to go. In his first season in Queens, Soto was tied for the worst defensive outfielder in the Majors by Statcast's outs above average metric. Worst OF by outs above average in 2025 1-T. Juan Soto: -12 1-T. Nick Castellanos: -12 1-T. Jo Adell: -12 4. Ronald Acuña Jr.: -11 5. Jasson Domínguez: -10 Costing your team 10-plus extra outs on defense is pretty bad. And not a whole lot of outfielders who've fallen into that territory have ever bounced back to become an above-average outfielder. |
In the decade-plus of Statcast tracking, there are only a few examples of that sort of defensive turnaround in the outfield. But there are examples. Eddie Rosario is one. After several seasons hurting his team in the outfield, including a career-worst -15 outs above average in 2019, Rosario flipped the script with the Braves in 2023, posting a +3 OAA and finishing as a Gold Glove finalist in left field. And Adolis García did it just last year for the Rangers. He went from -12 outs above average in the outfield in 2024 -- second-worst in the Majors -- to +1 OAA in 2025. García, though, had a long track record of being a great defensive outfielder before he had one uncharacteristically bad season out of nowhere in 2024 -- possibly due to a nagging knee injury, or a mentally draining season in which he slumped at the plate. Soto, on the other hand, has a lot more below-average seasons in the outfield. He had -17 outs above average in 2022, for example, and has a career OAA of -41. Soto does have one above-average season, though, in 2021 with the Nationals (+1 OAA), and a couple of seasons where he was a league-average defender, 2019 with the Nats and '24 with the Yankees. |
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The Mets would take that. And Soto at least getting back to being a close-to-average outfielder seems achievable. His old teammate, Bryce Harper, followed a similar path. Harper was generally a slightly below-average outfielder earlier in his career, but he was really bad in 2018, his final season with Washington, when his -14 OAA was bottom-five in the Majors. But after signing with the Phillies as a free agent, Harper worked his way back to being right around an average MLB outfielder for several of his seasons in Philadelphia. (He's also since become a well-above-average defender at first base.) So it can be done. And better outfield defense should be more attainable for Soto, who's still just 27 years old, than it would be for an older player who was slowing down and losing range. This isn't the first time Soto has talked about his desire to get better in the field. When he reported to Spring Training with the Mets last year, he expressed his hope to eventually win a Gold Glove. That obviously didn't happen. But in that same interview, Soto also talked about getting better at something else: baserunning. And that did happen. |
"I have to be better [at] baserunning," Soto said before his first season with the Mets. And what did he do? He went out and led the league with 38 stolen bases, more than tripling his previous career high. That might be the best sign that Soto could do the same thing for his defense. He won a stolen base crown without getting any faster. That means Soto was getting better jumps and running the bases smarter. Maybe that's translatable to the outfield -- if Soto can work on his reactions to fly balls and learn how to track them down better, his defensive metrics will have to get better. This is a player who identified a specific skill that he needed to get better at, and did so extremely successfully from one season to the next. Now there's just one more thing he needs to do that with. Soto probably won't become the best defensive right fielder in the National League, but he might become a better one. Getting a little more well-rounded is really all the Mets could ask from Soto, who's an MVP-level player already. |
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