NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Juan Soto makes perfect sense for the Yankees, and for two big reasons.
Reason No. 1 is obvious. He’s one of the game’s five or six best hitters, a power lefty bat who can now combine with Aaron Judge to form one of the best one-two punches in baseball history.
Reason No. 2 isn’t all that obscure, either, if you really think about it.
Yes, you got it. It’s that the Yankees’ offense stunk this season. And that’s putting it mildly.
I know most enlightened fans don’t pay much attention to batting average anymore. But the New York Yankees, the team built on the Babe and Murderers’ Row, should not be posting a .227 seasonal batting average.
Truly, no one should actually be putting up that sort of number, especially in a year when bases were enlarged and extreme shifts outlawed. The only other team to hit that low was the A’s, and we know they were doing everything they can to show how badly they need to leave Oakland (aside: mission accomplished, as they are well on their way to Las Vegas).
The Yankees, meantime, weren’t trying to underperform. They posted that .227 average while trying. Which isn’t easy.
The amazing thing is their outfield performed even worse offensively, and that’s with Judge playing most months. Overall, the Yankees’ outfield had the lowest batting average (.220) and lowest on-base percentage (.293). Those aren’t numbers befitting a contender, much less a storied franchise built on the bat — from Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.
Now that the trade — sending Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito, Randy Vasquez and Kyle Higashioka to San Diego for Soto and Trent Grisham — is complete, we can’t expect the Soto-Judge duo to match Ruth and Gehrig. But it still should be historically good. Soto took heat for underperforming last year and still posted a .930 OPS (not all that far below his .946 lifetime mark).
Let’s not forget that was in Petco Park, too, which ranks 29th in park factor over the last three years. Moving into Yankee Stadium should be a major benefit for Soto, though we can’t expect him to continue his lifetime .826 slugging average at the Stadium. That’s built on four home runs in 23 at-bats, which is a rate impossible to duplicate, even for him.
It will be fun to see him try. It’s also nice to see the Yankees behaving like the Yankees again. Which is to say they got the biggest basher they could get on the market. (Two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani isn’t coming as word is he just couldn’t see himself in New York.)
Soto will have no issue adjusting. The one blip on his résumé was 2022, after he was traded over from the Nats for five huge prospects, and he didn’t hit like himself for most of the rest of that regular season. He did help the Padres into the NLCS that year after struggling early to live up to the press clippings and the trade.
Soto may not also have favored the idea of going to the West Coast. We heard his parents didn’t love the long distance from their home in the Dominican Republic. This should be more to his liking.
He can’t mind the fact the Yankees are clearly going for it this winter either, having done the two biggest trades of the winter meetings (yes, sadly, the Alex Verdugo deal from rival Boston may be second — a distant second but second nonetheless).
They are also going hard after 25-year-old Japanese pitching sensation Yoshinobu Yamamoto in what may come down to a rare New York-New York battle. As we reported Tuesday, it may cost the signing team $300 million, with or without the posting fee. But since the annual salary is somewhat reasonable and the posting charge isn’t subject to the luxury tax, he makes extra sense for the Mets.
The Yankees probably also have a decent shot at Yamamoto. But it isn’t going to be the gimme the Soto deal turned out to be. The only other team known to be interested in Soto was the Blue Jays, who are waiting on baseball’s Godot — yes, the great Ohtani.
Anyway, the Yankees possessed a nice enough stash of starting prospects with plentiful talent and ample service time to make the Padres concentrate on them.
Yes, I was against the Soto trade early, back when the Padres were asking for Jasson Dominguez and Anthony Volpe — hey, it doesn’t hurt to ask — and way before things got reasonable. While the Yankees wound up relenting on the coveted reliever-turned-starter King and young right-hander Thorpe, who should both help San Diego, they held onto their can’t-miss guys.
King is a nice pitcher who looks like he can adapt to starting, and Thorpe has really come on. But that’s a deal the Yankees can live with. And it’s a deal we all can cheer.
