Juan Soto: A Statistical Anomaly
Washington Nationals Outfielder Juan Soto: Image by Nick Woss via Bleacher Report
Without a doubt, Juan Soto is one of the best young players in baseball. At just 23 years of age, it looks like he will be a face of the sport for at least the next decade. Here is a quick glance at his first four years in the majors:
2018) .292/.406/.517, 22 HR, 70 RBI in 116 games
- NL Rookie of the Year Winner
2019) .282/.401/.548, 34 HR, 110 RBI in 150 games
- World Series Champion
2020) .351/.490/.695, 13 HR, 37 RBI in 47 games
- Batting Champion (League’s highest batting average)
2021) .313/.465/.534, 29 HR, 111 RBI in 151 games
- NL MVP Runner-Up
The numbers in the form (.AAA/.BBB/.CCC) also known as his “slash line” represents his batting average followed by his on-base percentage and slugging percentage, or his total bases per at-bat. Soto has proven that he is one of the sport’s best players, but when taking a deeper dive into his statistics, we can see that he’s quite an unconventional player.
LAUNCH ANGLE
A player’s average launch angle represents the average angle the ball travels immediately after the batter makes contact with the ball. Coaches and players alike try and work on maximizing launch angles for more offensive success. Alex Chamberlain of FanGraphs used lots of recent data to show than an angle of about 19 degrees is where most of the league’s best fall around. Let’s look below at a plot of 2021’s 132 qualified batters and their HR counts vs their average launch angle.
Of qualified hitters with at least 20 HR (qualified = 3.1 AB per team game), Juan Soto had the second lowest launch angle at 5.8 (Josh Bell had an average launch angle of 4.9). He has so much raw power that he doesn’t need to get under the ball to send it out of the yard. According to Baseball Savant, the average MLB player gets under about 24.4% of batted balls and connects the barrel to the ball on only about 6.6% of batted balls. Since Soto doesn’t have the same uppercut swing that many current MLB players do, he is able to connect with more balls for more hits… hence the sky-high batting average. In 2021, Soto got under 17.6% of balls and barreled 12.6%. The way he can put up homeruns with the leagues biggest power threats while maintaining atop the league leaders in AVG and OBP is unbelievable.
SWING %
Soto’s launch angle is just the start of why he is one of the top hitters in the game. He combines his level swing and extreme power with the best eye in the game. Soto is the league’s smartest hitter when it comes to swinging at good pitches. No contest. Below is a visual of all qualified hitters swing%, compared to their O-swing% (percentages of pitches outside of the strike zone that the hitter swung at).
Not only does Soto have the league’s lowest swing percentage at 35%, but he also has the league’s lowest swing percentage on pitches out of the zone at 15.1%. Using a linear regression, we would expect Juan Soto have swung at approximately 18% of pitches out of the zone when rocking a swing percentage of 35. Not only is he patient, but when he does swing, it’s almost always on a good pitch.
BB/K
This final stat is nuts. That is all I have to say. Look at the graph below, and take a guess where Juan Soto falls.
The second highest BB/K in the MLB during the 2021 season came from Yuli Gurriel of the Houston Astros, who recorded a 0.87 mark. That small bar you can see on the far right of the graph comes from league leader Juan Soto, who walked 1.56 times for every time he struck out. It is hard to process how much better he is at limiting strikeouts and drawing walks instead compared to every other baseball player out there in today’s game.
** Credit to FanGraphs for all data and statistics, Figures created with RStudio
