Cincinnati Reds battle Washington Nationals for Wild Card positioning

Soto making fans forget about Harper

Atlanta’s Ronald Acuna Jr. deserves all the praise he receives, however, Washington’s Juan Soto has been nearly every bit his equal. Slashing .288/.402/.540 with 24 homers and 77 RBIs, Soto ranks in the NL Top 10 in walks, OBP and OPS.

The left-handed hitting slugger is pulverizing right-handed pitching. Producing a .291/.413/.571 slash line with 19 round trippers, Reds starters Anthony DeSclafani and Trevor Bauer will need to treat Soto with kid gloves. By the way, the young Dominican loves hitting at Nationals Park.

Soto has been a much more dangerous hitter at home as opposed to the road. Even though he’s hit a couple of more homers on the road, Soto is hitting .318 with a .413 on-base percentage in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial.

You want speed? Soto can provide that as well. He’s been successful 10 times in 11 stolen base attempts and according to Baseball Reference, his 14.1 power-to-speed (an advanced metric that rates power and speed based on home runs and stolen bases) ranks 10th in the league.

It’s obvious the Nationals front office places great emphasis on this combination. Juan Soto is joined by teammates Victor Robles and Trea Turner in the Top 10 in this category. Nick Senzel‘s 9.5 is the best among the Reds in that category.

If you’re looking for weakness in his game, there isn’t one to be found. Perhaps the worst thing you can say about Juan Soto is that he’s an average fielder, but take that with a grain of salt. His range factor in left field pegs him as average, but even with that being said, he leads NL left fielders in putouts and has yet to make an error in 2019.

As a late note, Soto was removed from Sunday’s game with New York Mets in seventh inning. He’s been diagnosed with mild right ankle sprain after rounding third base awkwardly. Currently, the Nationals have listed his status as day-to-day.