day since he became a professional at 16 years old.
There is no technology. No cameras. No Trackman.
No accoutrements. It is just a bat, a bucket of baseballs,
Nationals hitting coach Joe Dillon and, when it comes to
master levels of power, patience and contact, the greatest
hitting prodigy since Ted Williams.
Soto, the Nationals’ right fielder, is 23 years old, the
same age Frédéric Chopin, another prodigy, was when
he published his first set of Études in 1833.
An études is a batting drill for a pianist. It is a short
work written as a teaching aid. But from the hand of
Chopin, études elevate to concert repertory. So it is
with the Études of Soto: Utilitarian practice becomes
artistic masterwork.
Not once in his 75 swings off various types of f lips
from Dillon does Soto hit a ball off the top net. Most
swings produce line drives toward left center, the favorite
direction of his left-handed swing. In one sequence Soto
doesn’t swing at the f lips but knocks them straight down
with the end of the bat knob.
“I never want my bat to get away from my head,” he
explains. “I want to feel it real close to my body. This
reminds me to be quick to the ball and always work a
little bit down to the ball.”
The session ends with Dillon mixing the speed andlocation of the f lips. From 15 feet away, Soto must decide
whether the ball is a strike or not. He is never wrong
with his swing decisions. He has been using the same
training program since minor league hitting coaches
Troy Gingrich and Jorge Mejia showed him on his first
day at Instructional League camp in 2015. This session
goes especially well.
“My bat,” he says, “is flying right now.”
What makes a hitting genius? The fundamentals
of études, for one. Also, at 6' 2", 224 pounds, Soto is a
physical marvel. With his strong glutes and thighs and
wide stance, he is the Colossus of R hodes in the batter’s
box. Only an earthquake could topple him from his base.
Such steadiness enhances his extraordinary vision. And
if he decides to swing, Soto fires his powerful hips to
unleash his quick, f lat stroke.
There is another tool that makes Soto such an outlier:
his mind. His ability to decode pitchers and the spin
of a baseball is so unusual that Johnny DiPuglia, the
Nationals scout who signed Soto, calls it “UFO stuff.”
Soto has played 464 regular-season games. At that
juncture, only Ted Williams also had 90 homers and
350 walks—and their totals (Soto has 98 and 373;
Williams 99 and 375) are eerily close. As with Williams,
Soto stands apart because of how well he sees the base-
ball and the game.
One afternoon after a spring training workout, Soto
explains in detail how the genius of his hitting mind
works. The stories are so amazing that when he is done,
even Soto realizes they sound so preposterous that he
needs to add something.
“I mean, people are going to think I’m lying through
all this!” he says with a laugh. “They’re going to think it’s
all lies. I hope they don’t. I don’t lie at all. It’s all true.”
Indeed, the legend of Soto is all true. How DiPuglia
signed him out of a urine-soaked batting cage occupied
by a homeless man. How one muddy day in Class A ball
Soto, with his shuff le, turned the mundane of taking
a pitch into a signature move. But especially how he
conquers some of the best pitchers by seeing the game
on a higher level.
“I don’t keep notes. It’s mostly in my head,” he says.
“It can be a move, sometimes the way they throw a
pitch, or the way they might miss with a pitch and go,
Oh, that’s my fault. It can be any move they make that
makes me go, That’s something.
“Justin Verlander. Game 6. World Series.”
And we are off. Confessions of a hit man begin.52
THE SOTO SHUFFLE
It began as a way to keep his spikes clean. Now
it’s his signature—a way to mark his territory,
notifying pitchers that he’s the one in control.