Juan Soto is having a career year, even if Yankees teammate Aaron Judge is overshadowing him

By almost any measure, New York Yankees star Aaron Judge has been the best hitter in baseball in 2024. Entering play Tuesday, Judge is hitting .322 and has eight more home runs than any other player. He has a 19-point lead in on-base percentage, a 70-point lead in slugging percentage, a 122-point lead in OPS, and a 32-point lead in OPS+. Judge is 1 of 1.

One of the few hitters comparable to Judge these days is his teammate, Juan Soto . Soto is the only other qualified hitter in baseball whose on-base percentage starts with a 4 (.437), and he's top five in batting average (.310), slugging percentage (.598), OPS (1.035), and OPS+ (187). Soto is having one of the best offensive seasons by a Yankee in the Expansion Era (since 1961):

1. 2024 Aaron Judge: 217 OPS+
2. 2022 Aaron Judge: 210 OPS+
3. 1961 Mickey Mantle: 206 OPS+
4. 1962 Mickey Mantle: 195 OPS+
5. 2024 Juan Soto: 187 OPS+

"He's been carrying this team all year," Judge told ESPN about Soto in June . "And anytime you go up against good teams like this and fans pay to come see us do our thing, they want to see the best out there."

Judge is the greatest offensive force in the game, so much so that he was intentionally walked with the bases empty in the second inning this past Saturday. Soto, despite being so good and such a high profile player, is playing second fiddle to Judge. I can't imagine there have been many times in Soto's life when he's been the second-best hitter on his own team.

With seven weeks and change remaining in the regular season, Soto has essentially tied his previous career high in WAR -- 7.0 WAR in 2024 vs. 7.1 WAR in 2021 -- and he's doing it at the right time with free agency looming. Soto is still only 25. He won't turn 26 until October. As good as he's been in his career to date, Soto is just now entering what should be his prime years.

Here's what you need to know about Soto's monster season as he gets ready to head out into the free agent market.

The best Soto has ever been

This is shaping up to be the best season of Soto's career. He's played 109 games in 2024 and what he's done in those 109 games is better than anything he's done through 109 games in any other season of his career. We're going to ignore 2020 because that was a bizarre 60-game season we all want to forget. Here are Soto's best marks through 109 games otherwise:

Soto's ahead of the pace on everything except on-base percentage, and in most cases his far ahead of his previous career best. We're talking more than 50 points of slugging even though 2019 was the Year of the Home Run . Twenty-five more total bases. Fourteen more times on bases. These are not small differences! This is the best Soto has ever been through 109 games.

Furthermore, Soto is also running the highest average exit velocity (94.7 mph) and hard-hit rate (58.2%) of his career, and the second-lowest ground ball rate (44.0%). It's not close either. Soto's previous career bests came in 2023: 93.2 mph exit velocity and 55.4% hard-hit rate. No hitter in baseball combines elite bat speed with elite contact rates and elite plate discipline like Soto.

Other than stealing bases, there is nothing Soto does offensively at less than an elite level. He's an elite power hitter, an elite on-base guy, an elite hitter for average, he puts up elite exit velocities and contact rates, so on and so forth. Soto is a precocious hitting talent and he's better right now than he's ever been in his career. He's managed to take his game to another level.

He's not getting much help from Yankee Stadium

Soto is a left-handed hitter and when the Yankees acquired him in December, it stood to reason he would benefit from Yankee Stadium's short right field porch. It's true that Soto is performing better at home than on the road this season, though the difference is only 29 points of OPS ...

... and he's averaging a home run every 18 or so plate appearances both at home and on the road. Of Soto's 13 homers at home, only six have been pulled to right field, and all six of those would have been home runs in at least 27 of the other 29 ballparks, per Statcast. Here is his home run spray chart at Yankee Stadium:

If anything, Soto could stand to use the short porch more often rather than driving the ball to left-center field (i.e. the biggest part of Yankee Stadium) so much. That said, it's Juan Soto. Who am I to tell him what to do at the plate? Point is, what is becoming a career year for Soto is not being fueled by Yankee Stadium's short right field porch. He's mashing everywhere.

Even his defense has been better

If anything, Yankee Stadium's small right field has helped Soto defensively more than offensively. He's not a good defender by any means, but this year his defense falls into the "average to maybe even a tick better" category rather than "dreadful." Every once in a while, Soto does something in the field that makes you appreciate his bat. By and large though, his glove has been solid this season.

Here are Soto's defensive stats, again ignoring the 2020 pandemic season. Note that he's bounced back and forth between right field and left field in his career:

For his career, it's minus-15 DRS and minus-10 OAA in roughly 4,000 innings in left field, and plus-9 DRS and minus-7 OAA in more than 3,400 innings in right. There is reason to believe Soto is more comfortable in right, which is where the Yankees are playing him, and where Yankee Stadium gives him less ground to cover.

This looks to be a career year for Soto in the field as well as at the plate. And again, he hasn't turned into a lockdown defender in right field. He's been an average defender and maybe a bit better than that depending how you weigh DRS vs. OAA. An elite bat with an average-ish glove equals one of the best players in the world, and that's what Soto is.

He's doing it while hurt

Watch the Yankees on a day-to-day basis and you're likely to see two things: Judge and Soto doing something amazing, and Soto grimacing and shaking out his right hand after a swing or a slide. He hurt the hand on a slide at home plate on June 28 and, in his words, has been "grinding" through it since. Soto was in obvious pain following a double Sunday.

"I'm still grinding with the hand. It's definitely still sore to the touch. I slid hard and hit the base. It hurt for a couple seconds and went away," Soto said about Sunday's game ( via New York Post ). "(My mindset is) you forget about it. Just go out there and swing the bat. Worry about the pain after. That's what I've been doing."

The hand injury has not cut into Soto's production even a tiny little bit. He took a .300/.432/.570 batting line into the game that June 28 game (when he initially hurt his hand). In the 28 games since, he's slashing .330/.444/.670. It's easy to see that Soto is clearly not 100% as he grimaces in pain every single game yet somehow he's been better since the injury than he was with a healthy hand.

Soto has been one of the three or four best hitters in the game this season, though he is still only the second-best hitter on his own team. Judge has been that good. Given his age and production and durability, Soto is poised to sign a record free-agent contract this offseason. I don't think eclipsing Shohei Ohtani 's heavily deferred $700 million deal is out of the question. Unlikely? Yeah, probably, but impossible? No way. Special players get special contracts, and Soto is as special as it gets in this game.