MLB Rocket Award Goes to Juan Soto

Major League Baseball recently announced its 2018 Rookie of the Year Awards. For the National League, the winner was Atlanta Braves star Ronald Acuna. Of course, Acuna is one of the most talented and promising young players in the game today. He had a great first year in baseball. I cannot argue with the choice; no one deserved to win the award more than Acuna did.

However, there is another player, also in the National League East division, who had an incredible freshman year. His journey in one season was nothing short of historic. From start to finish, it was one of the most amazing seasons that any professional athlete has ever had. He deserves an award (if only there was another one to give).

Juan Soto in a minor league at bat. Source: MiLB.com.

Juan Soto of the Washington Nationals was a teenager for the entire season, not turning 20 until after it had finished. Beginning the year in low single-A ball in the minor leagues, Soto was promoted all the way through high-A, AA, and (skipping AAA) for a call up to the major league Nationals team in one calendar season.

Here is an amateur video of one of his minor league at bats before the call up:

And that was all by mid-May, less than two months into the season. With an injury on the Nationals roster, the hot hitting youngster got his chance to crack the major league lineup.

“He’s passed all the tests that we’ve thrown at him,” Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo said at the time. Later, Rizzo added, “Performance dictates if he’s here to stay or not.”

He came up in May and stayed all year. So Juan Soto still had ample time to prove that he could rake against the world’s best pitching. Over a period of months in 2018, he hit like a young star at the major league level. He accumulated more than 400 at bats, hitting .292 with 22 home runs and a .923 OPS. He generated more offensive runs than any teenage hitter in MLB history with the highest OPS, most walks, and only teenager ever with an OBP above .400.

But that wasn’t all. Soto’s approach to hitting with two strikes is one of the best I have ever seen. Ever. From any player, young or old. Entire teams may use him as a model and assign their hitting instructors to teach young players to hit the way that Soto does.

Juan Soto. Source: NBCsports.com.

While this approach is most noticeable with two strikes, Soto is equally patient in hitter’s counts. When the pitch count is 3-1 or 2-1, and there’s a high likelihood of a fastball, most young hitters are ready to crush the next pitch. Soto watches and waits. He’ll lay off a bad pitch. He’ll foul off an imperfect one if it’s not what he wants. But it’s not a Tony Gwynn or Ichiro Suzuki ability to foul off pitches until he can stroke one for a base hit. He’s not a pure hitter in that mould; there’s something different going on with Soto.

If he doesn't simply crush the ball, he appears to have the innate ability to make a late decision, lay the bat on the ball, and knock it to the opposite field for a base hit (or more if he gets under it or places the ball down the line). When you watch slow motion replays of his at bats, it’s almost as if he has enough time to watch, recognize, and adjust his swing mid-pitch. When others are just guessing, he sees what’s coming and decides just how to whack it.

Check out this video of his hot July highlights, not just the home runs but the way that he seems to adjust with each pitch, even though these are coming in at nearly 100 miles per hour. It’s even better if you can find some video of entire at bats from start to finish, but stay patient through this highlight reel and you can see his approach also.

"I really think he actually processes things really really fast," Nationals manager Dave Martinez told MLB.com. "That's what makes him who he is. And when he does that, he'll go through moments or a day where he's 0-for-4, and the next day he'll say, 'Hey, I really got to stay up the middle,' or 'My head's flying,' and he'll make those adjustments like that.

"I'm sitting there listening to him, and I'm thinking to myself, '[At] 19, he has a plan every time he goes up there.' It's not just throughout an at-bat, it's almost every pitch, and it's pretty impressive."

Soto was still just 19 years old when the season ended. If you watched him hit, you’d think he was 29. But no, this teenager plays like a veteran with 10 years of MLB experience. The guy was born to hit.

Juan Soto of the Washington Nationals deserves an award that doesn’t exist. That is why I am hereby creating and awarding him the “Rocket Award”. Soto had what we’d call a meteoric rise, but that’s not the best term because meteors fall rather than rise. Juan Soto basically fit the first few years of his professional development into a shortened time span, excelling at every level. It was an impressively fast and successful rise. So let’s call it the Rocket Award.

High fives for Soto. Source: Washington Post, washpost.com.

References:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/affiliate.cgi?id=WSN
https://www.mlb.com/player/juan-soto-665742?stats=career-r-hitting-minors&year=2018
https://www.sbnation.com/2018/11/12/18085546/juan-soto-rookie-of-the-year-tennager-mlb-history
Source of Rizzo quotes: https://www.federalbaseball.com/2018/11/16/18097323/washington-nationals-best-decision-2018-calling-juan-soto-up
Source of Martinez quotes: http://wap.mlb.com/wsh/news/article/20180820291126436/?locale=es_CO