Things are bleak for the New York Mets, towering walk-off home runs from MJ Melendez and a three-game win streak aside. The team has under-performed, been bitten by the injury bug, and overall has been abysmal offensively. The boom-or-bust cycle of the Steve Cohen era is trending once again toward bust in 2026. It’s painful for any fan base to accept the idea of your team being a deadline seller before the summer gets going.
Juan Soto’s continued play at an MVP level might ease some of that pain.
Soto’s last few weeks have been some of the best of his career, and he has appeared like an oasis in the desert that is the Mets’ lineup. It took Soto a while to get going after returning from an early-season calf injury that kept him out for most of April, but he has been spectacular since May 14.
Reaching base safely in the 14 games since then, Soto has been the consistent presence that you would expect from someone earning his astronomical salary. He’s has a 1.310 OPS, eight home runs, 13 RBIs, and 15 runs scored. The kind of hot streak where you could tell your friends that a home run is coming before a Soto at bat, and you just might be right.
Soto’s play as of late has been so impressive that he had Joey Votto singing his praises on a recent MLB Network appearance. Votto compared Soto to Hall of Famer Mel Ott and said that Soto is one of the most important players of the post-integration era.
“I would argue that Juan Soto may be among the best three to five best left-handed hitters of all time,” he added. “Juan Soto is playing against the best players of all time. We’re at the peak of baseball, we’re at the peak of drug testing, we’re at the peak of everything…That’s just my take and he’s been quoted saying that he thinks that he’s the best hitter of all time. I don’t think he’s out of school for that.”
Now that Soto appears to have recovered from injuries and is actively producing, the question for the last-place Mets is: Can the lineup around him help with some of the heavy lifting? So far, the answer is clear no.
New York is 22-19 in games Soto has started, but the team somehow struggles to get wins when he has a big day. In wins, Soto has an .810 OPS with four home runs, and he has a 1.162 OPS with eight home runs losses. It couldn’t hurt for the rest of the lineup to pile on in games where Soto breaks through or find a way to make teams pay for pitching around him more often.
It can be hard for Mets fans to be positive, and that’s completely reasonable. But maybe Soto at his best and the nearing returns of Francisco Lindor, Francisco Alveraz, and Jorge Polanco can jolt this lineup enough for the club to at least claw back to .500.
If not, the chance to watch Soto is enough for the price of admission and enough to keep tuning in for the rest of the season.
