With Juan Soto’s blockbuster trade from the San Diego Padres to the New York Yankees, the Evil Empire regains its strength from years past. Now, the Bronx will feature a lineup with Soto and Aaron Judge presumably batting next to each other, followed by seasoned All-Stars Anthony Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton. It’s a formidable foursome, to say the least, but all eyes will be on Soto and Judge, who've been two of the top ten greatest hitters in the sport since their debuts in the late-2010s. But what if I told you that beating Soto and beating Judge can be accomplished by following the same blueprint?
The obvious juxtaposition between these two behemoths is that Judge has more power, but more strikeouts, while Soto walks more but hasn’t put on as much of a show in the slugging department as some of baseball’s traditional sluggers have. Still, both Judge’s and Soto’s Baseball Savant pages are littered with red, indicating that, by an analytical and physiological standpoint, it’s hard to outsmart them at the dish. Both hit all types of pitches hard, they keep the ball in the air, and they get on base in a gaggle of ways, sometimes without the need for a bat in the first place. And yet, even the best hitters in baseball fail seven out of ten times.
Like I said before, Aaron Judge strikes out a lot, but he can make up for it with his extreme power. One of the reasons he strikes out so much is because he gives up on a lot of pitches that end up down near his knees because he’s so tall that he doesn’t deem those pitches to be strikes. Umpires, on the other hand, would beg to differ. I have a strange theory that, because of Judge’s weaknesses to splitters in the bottom-third of the strike zone, that this is the sole reason why the Yankees traded with the A’s for Frankie Montas at the Deadline in 2022; that’s Montas’s best pitch. Another thing to note about Judge is that he excels particularly at hitting fastballs and sliders. Fastballs are still baseball’s most popular pitch, while sliders have just cracked into the #2 slot in the category in recent years. In other words, Judge’s success is largely built on succeeding off pitchers' comfort with their top pitches and doesn’t necessarily need to smack out the grimy stuff.
The same goes for Soto, although it’s not as easy to see. Soto, as a hitter, truly has no weaknesses, nor has he needed to improve on any one of those weaknesses since the start of his career. And yet, his numbers look a little, shall we say, spunky as you move further down the strike zone. The same is the case for moving from pitch types; his average stats like wOBA and slugging percentage worsen as you move from fastballs to breaking stuff to off-speed. This gives me the inclination that the best way to eliminate Soto’s ability is to get funky, to throw the nastiest pitches in a pitcher’s arsenal at any count. Don’t miss with a fastball over the middle because he will catapult that baby into the upper deck of the Short Porch.
I’ve long said that the modern fastball is dead and that it should be replaced with a mix of fastball-type pitches that are more shape. That theory will be tested as Soto marches his way into New York City’s northern-most borough and starts teeing off on mainly American League competition for the first time in his career. We’ll see if any pitchers heed my warnings and get overtly fancy while facing Soto, but I hope they don’t because, well, I’m still a Yankees fan.
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