Juan Soto Is Ridiculous, and He Doesn't Make Any Sense | Baseball Bits

hey shout out to seat geek for sponsoring this video seat geek is the best place to buy tickets online use my promo code foolish for $20 off your first purchase you ever noticed how Juan Soto is 20 years old and his career on-base percentage is about 400 405 at the time of writing this getting on base 40 person at the time when you can't legally drink in the United States seems pretty good to me after a historic rookie campaign at age 19 the Nationals outfielder is now doing what I would call a victory lap picking up right where he left off and putting up similar numbers to show his 28 team wasn't just a weird glitch in the matrix do you want to know what hitters have had at least 500 plate appearances and a 400 OBP through their age 20 season well since integration in 1947 the answer is only Juan Soto that's right no one has come along in the last seven decades with his combination of youth and on-base skills the next best hitter with at least 500 plate appearances through their age 20 season has a 393 OPP and I'll shake your hand through the internet if you can tell me who he is without looking it up if we shift the parameters back to the formation of the American League in 1901 Juan Soto gains 3 peers in the form of Ted Williams Mel OTT and Jimmie Foxx three of the best hitters in the history of the game so how is it possible that an accomplishment like this is flying under the radar there are plenty of great young talents in Major League Baseball but there's only one that plays like Juan Soto and I think the most appropriate question we have to answer first is where the heck did this guy come from what you're currently watching is a pretty common sight for scouts you're at a showcase of international free agents just a few months before the July 2nd signing day and there's a dominican teenager doing his best to impress in the hopes of earning a large signing bonus in this case that teenager is Juan Soto MLB pipeline ranked him 22nd overall in his 2015 signing class but they also write Fernando Tati's jr. 27th and Vlad Guerrero jr. 4th it's almost like 16 year olds are really tough to project the Washington Nationals splashed 1.5 million dollars on him a fair price for someone who clearly had a lot of potential but wasn't the number one prize either pipeline scouting assessment of Soto started with five words that pretty much sum him up put simply Soto can rake and he did just that SoDo made his pro debut in 2016 and decimated the lower levels of the minors batting 368 and ending the season in a - ball sadly he missed the majority of 2017 with injury but he took care of business in the 32 games he played after getting his legs back with another stint and rookie ball he went to single a Hagerstown and shredded older competition as an 18-year old and his advanced discipline started to appear as Soto walked more than he struck out for the sake of comparison an 18 year old Bryce Harper put up similarly great numbers at that level albeit over a much larger sample size after 2017 ended Soto had become a consensus top 100 prospect but much like his ranking within his international class he was just shy of being the real cream of the crop the fact that he had only played 83 games as a professional surely played into this but it did set up for a legendary 2018 campaign they returned both the minors and majors upside down not everyone knew if Juan Soto is prowess at the plate yet but they soon would [Music] Juan Soto 2018 is one of the most unlikely stories in recent baseball history and I think what makes this story great is that it took two to tango so do I obviously brought his a-game and his double A game but the Washington Nationals deserve a lot of credit for recognizing the caliber of player they were dealing with 99% of players will have to grind through and re-establish himself at each level of the minors but then that's abandoned those pretenses when it became apparent that they had an MLB ready player right on their hands let's start the season back in single a pretend you're Nationals GM Mike Rizzo a scout comes to your office one day and says hey I I know it's only been 16 games but I can't help but notice that once though it was slugging 800 and a ball is that good so you promote him to eight plus ball and a few weeks later that same Scout comes by and says hey I know it's only been 15 games this time but it's it's happening again is that good you meditate for a bit and ultimately decide to send him to double-a where he'll surely get tested the jump to double-a is considered the most difficult promotion in the minors and teams like to have players really take their time and hone their craft at that particular level Fernando Tati's student played a whopping 103 games in double a while Vladdy junior hit 400 and they still made him play 61 before his eventual promotion to triple-a so with all that in mind it's trivia time how many games have won so to play at double-a now the wisest among you may have noted that you can't play infinity games at double-a although I think Tim Tebow would if he could however were you to rotate that infinity sign 90 degrees you'd find that becomes the number 8 as in yes Juan Soto played eight games at double-a at the big league level at Howie Kendrick injury had opened up a roster spot and the Nationals decided to give the kid a shot keep in mind he'd only played a hundred and twenty two professional games at this point including a grand total of eight above the lower levels of the minors but the next thought they might have something here so they fast-tracked to the 19 year old Juan Soto to the big league squad and then the weirdest thing happened he played really really really well which isn't something you frequently see from nineteen-year-old don't get me wrong Ronald Acuna jr. Carlos Correia Giancarlo Stanton and perhaps most notably Mike Trout have set the league on fire as youngsters they were 20 we're talking about 19 years old here a liberal of teenager slashing 292 406 517 with 22 homers against the best the game has to offer one of the coolest facets of this campaign was his consistency there were no real rookie ups and downs statistically his worst month was August but he still had a 400 OBP and 800 o-p-s we know it's rare for a teenager to play in the majors at all much less play well but Soto took it to another level in fact I believe that he had the greatest age 19th season a hitter has ever had so let's see if I can prove it Ty Cobb Mel OTT Tony Conigliaro these are the only three hitters who can compete with sodas age 19 campaign in terms of performance at the plate keep in mind we're excluding defense and base running the first two names won't surprise you but Conigliaro may as his story is a tragic one if a promising career cut short one thing that's very convenient is if they had very similar amount of plate appearances ranging from cops 394 dots 500 that means we can pretty comfortably look at both rate and Counting stats you should all know by now that I love a good triple slash and you can see that Soto fits it quite nicely it shouldn't be a surprise that he leads it on-base percentage as he's the only candidate above 400 in this case I'm not opposed to looking at traditional counting stats either Soto finishes second in homers behind Conigliaro and second an RBI behind odd but with these players having played in radically different eras there's a need for a stat that can adjust for different run environments Cobbs age 19 took place in 1906 back when the average slugging percentage was just 314 don't discount connect the hours difficulties as well as this 1964 campaign came just four years before the famous year of the pitcher then there's Mel OTT who played as a lefty pull hitter in the Polo Grounds which had a ridiculously short porch if you want to learn more about that aberration of a baseball stadium I'd recommend checking out my Willie Mays video so we're going to use weighted runs created plus a stat that accounts for all these run environments where 100 is average this is probably the best chance we have at comparing these great seasons from disparate eras and would you lookie there Juan Soto comes out on top that's how insane is for my money that's the best hitting season a 19 year old has ever had in the big leagues and he did it right under our noses keep in mind I said best hitting season in recent years Bryce Harper put up an age 19 season that was on par with Soto's once you account for defensive base running but if you're talking strictly about what they did with the bat in their hands soto is the clear winner I know that on-base percentage has been a weird fixation for this whole video but what it really demonstrates is so does advance discipline for someone his age he played 122 games in the minors and mastered the major league strike zone from day one it's frightening really it leads me to a huge point of this video which is that Juan so does emergence doesn't actually make any sense Mike Bryce glad you could make it these two were the perfect archetypes for a young superstar hitter they made a huge impact on the league before they even turned 21 and they actually have quite a bit in common so we'll put them in column a and it's our good friend Juan Soto who is still tearing it up to his age 20 season we'll put him in column B so we'll just be looking at career stats through their age 20 seasons what do fun young players do well they sure like to use their athleticism in the field so young and so spry through their age 20 seasons harper and trout were both terrific defenders in the outfield Juan Soto maybe not so much young superstars will also use that use that athleticism on the base pass by swiping bags trout stole 54 bases through his age 20 season while Harper added 29 of his own Soto however is solid but lags behind it's 17 statcast sprint speed has him at the 58th percentile which is a tad above average but not what you'd expect from a 20 year old phenom in the outfield so let's get to this whole plate discipline thing it's the reason we're here Juan Soto is a freak at drawing walks but is he really that much better than young Harper and young trout oh good lord he actually is a 15.8% career walk rate at the age of 20 and he's been consistent to posting 60% and 15.6% in 2018 and 2019 to start his career there are only four hitters who have posted walk rates of 50% or higher in both 2018 and 2019 and near the affirmation trout in Harper as well as Carlos Santana one funny thing about those guys is that they aren't twenty years old think about it they have 4,000 5,000 6,000 plate appearances in the majors but Juan Soto just gets to the big leagues after rocketing through the minors and decides hey I'm walking here it doesn't make any sense you know who makes sense Fernando Tati's jr. he's 20 which is Soto's agent and he's amazing he's tearing it up but he tears it up in a way that makes sense he strikes out a ton and he doesn't walk much he attacks the ball it's a bunch of dingers plays a premium defensive position in shortstop and he's an absolute maniac on the base paths he's just a freak athlete we've all seen free Catholics there's a handful of those guys in any given sport in any given moment but what's even freakier is the rapid emergence of a Dominican teenager who was apparently grown from the frozen DNA of Ted Williams himself hey Juan Soto why don't you make any sense and why are we talking about you more right now in 2019 Juan Soto is putting the finishing touches on his victory lap if you'll recall the closest person DeSoto's 405 career on-base percentage to age 20 as a 393 OPP and that was actually none other than Jason Heyward Hayward's problem of course is that he struggled to follow up on that massive campaign but Soto is doing just that he's following up in fact he has shown areas of improvement such as a power increase his base stealing and defense are progressing as well making him more well-rounded and he's 20 by the way not sure if you noticed 20 years old 22 zero how do you even project a future for a guy like this the three members of the 400 OBP before age 21 club consisted of Ted Williams Mel OTT and Jimmie Foxx are these really Soto's peers we'll just have to find out so let's give him his due Juan Soto is an amazing young player doing extraordinary things he's not a tools e freak athlete he can't buy a drink at a bar but he gets on base 40 percent of the time and he still doesn't make any sense but you know what does make sense using C key to see your favorite team in person this is what we call it segue in the biz see peak is an app that makes ticket-buying ridiculously easy they rate each deal on a scale of one to ten and show you pictures from each vantage 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Channel: Foolish Baseball

Views: 758,078

Keywords: juan soto, juan soto nationals, juan soto minors, juan soto rookie year, mlb best rookie seasons, 19 year olds in MLB, teenagers in MLB, best young hitters, young mike trout, young bryce harper, ty cobb, mel ott, tony conigliaro, juan soto 2018, juan soto 2019, juan soto minor leagues, juan soto walks, baseball bits, mlb, major league baseball, baseball, foolish baseball, juan soto amateur, Juan Soto Is Ridiculous and He Doesn't Make Any Sense | Baseball Bits

Id: kpgZ_BlQLZY

Length: 13min 0sec (780 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 24 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/DecreaseInCeman]

The "rivalry" between he and Ronnie is going to be awesome for the next however many years.

[u/heroicraptor]

I’m so proud of my son

[u/Coop1534]

Still feel like he doesn’t get talked about enough, even on here

[u/Quople]

I love it when Braves fans give props to my son

[u/childishbambino2222]

Soto Pacheco

[u/totentanz_]

When it comes to evaluating players, it’s all about consistency. Soto’s .404 career OBP (1013 plate appearances) is remarkable, I mean he’s only 20 years old. His plate discipline makes him an outlier. This kid is good at baseball.

[u/JoeyVottoFacts]

juan soto is pretty cool

[u/CrowTR2]

Love Yoshi's Island and it's soundtrack

[u/ShaneNelson123]

How dare he throw shots at 2020 NL ROY Tim Tebow