Juan Soto

Soto is known for his exceptional plate discipline. During his 2018 rookie season, Soto became known for his movements in the batter’s box after he successfully takes a pitch for a ball. Dubbed the “Soto Shuffle,” the routine often includes Soto swinging his hips, wiping the dirt with a wide arc of his leg, tapping his leg, hopping, or lowering himself into a squat and staring at the pitcher. As an ESPN writer described it: “He’ll swing his hips or spread his legs or sweep his feet or shimmy his shoulders or lick his lips or squeeze his, um, junk, sometimes all at once”. Soto says he started the routine in the minor leagues “to get in the minds of the pitchers, because sometimes they get scared”. In Game 1 of the 2019 National League Championship Series, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Miles Mikolas responded to Soto’s antics by grabbing his own crotch after retiring Soto on a ground out. Soto responded later by saying, “He got me out, he can do whatever he wants.”[60][61][63] In subsequent seasons, Soto eliminated crotch-grabbing from the routine.

Soto employs a “two-strike approach” in which he raises his grip along the bat handle and adopts a wider, lower stance, sometimes described as a crouch, in the batter’s box. He is noted for his ability to drive the ball to all fields, even on a two-strike count. At the conclusion of his 2020 season, Soto had hit 69 career home runs in MLB and divided them evenly by direction: 23 to left field, 23 to center field, and 23 to right field.

Although he was a finalist for a Gold Glove Award as a left fielder after the 2019 season, Soto has indicated a preference for playing right field, his main position during his brief minor league career. The Nationals began deploying him as their starting right fielder late in the 2020 season and he became the Nationals everyday right fielder in 2021.