Yankees had better hope they get Juan Soto back soon
Yankees’ Juan Soto looks on from the dugout during a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Yankee Stadium on Friday, June 7, 2024. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Yankees got a 48-hour glimpse of what life would be like without Juan Soto in their lineup.
It went as badly as we anticipated. Probably worse.
Aaron Judge, who’s been in beast mode since late April, did his usual damage, but the other Yankees looked painfully ordinary, scoring a grand total of four runs in 20 innings in a pair of losses to the Dodgers, capped by Saturday night’s humbling 11-3 rout.
Credit the pumped-up Yoshinobu Yamamoto for some of the lineup’s disappearing act in Friday’s 2-1 defeat, when the Yankees needed the aid of a ghost runner to finally cross the plate in the 11th inning. The Dodgers aren’t paying Yamamoto $325 million for his Q rating alone, and his velocity lit up the radar gun like no other start of his rookie season.
But it wasn’t a Yamamoto thing. It’s a no-Soto thing, as the Yankees consistently misfired again in Saturday’s clunker — with the exception of Judge. He blasted a pair of homers, giving him 23 on the season and 19 in the past 39 games. Otherwise, the Yankees went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position and stranded 10 in losing back-to-back games at home for only the second time this season.
Remember all that joy Soto brought to the Bronx? With him anchored to the bench, it’s been a depressing weekend at the Stadium, and Saturday’s ugliness triggered flashbacks to the ’23 misery. When Teoscar Hernandez drilled his eighth-inning grand slam, the large contingent of Dodgers fans made it sound like Chavez Ravine East while nearly everyone else bolted for the exits.
Don’t be fooled. The Yankees didn’t suddenly turn into an offensive juggernaut the past five weeks because Alex Verdugo is happier in the Bronx than he was in Boston, Anthony Volpe finally looks comfortable as a leadoff hitter or Giancarlo Stanton has stayed off the injured list for two months straight. Those are all ancillary factors, but there’s one primary reason for this lineup going lethal, and that’s the Soto Effect.
Yankees’ Juan Soto looks on from the dugout during a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Yankee Stadium on Friday, June 7, 2024. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Sticking Soto in Judge’s old No. 2 spot changed everything. Pitchers are too distracted to deal with Volpe, and after Soto has worked them over, Judge can feast on what’s left of their dented psyches.
“It’s just a presence, right?” Verdugo said of the missing Soto. “Being able to work at-bats, it’s a good way to see all the guy’s pitches early on, and then obviously what Soto does — he drives the ball everywhere. So it’s a big bat out for us right now.”
Which is why Soto sitting again Saturday for the second straight game of this marquee matchup with the Dodgers was a bit worrisome. Not necessarily from a longer-term perspective, as his left forearm soreness appears to be nothing more serious than inflammation. Considering that Soto is one of baseball’s most durable players, to have him sidelined two days in a row is incredibly rare (he played all 162 a year ago), and he sounds questionable for Sunday’s finale, too, despite resuming some of his game prep Saturday afternoon.
“That went pretty well,” manager Aaron Boone said. “We’ll see what we have.”
Soto already had been playing through the forearm discomfort for more than a week before the Yankees decided to pull him after Thursday’s 56-minute rain delay. Without that unexpected intermission — and the impromptu exam by team physician Christopher Ahmad — maybe Soto never winds up on the bench in the first place.
The Yankees don’t want him there for one pitch longer than absolutely necessary, as Soto clearly has been the catalyst to the whole operation. It was Soto who carried the Yankees during Judge’s chilly April, when the captain clearly was not himself, batting .178 (18-for-101) with four homers, 13 RBIs and a .674 OPS through the first 27 games. But once the two caught fire simultaneously, with Judge going nuclear, the co-MVPs seemed capable of doing all the heavy lifting themselves.
This isn’t entirely new for Judge, of course. He’s got a 62-homer season and the 2022 MVP award on his resume. But he seems to be a cheat code now, doing video-game damage during his recent 31-game onslaught. In that stretch, he has been on a Barry Bonds-caliber bender, with a .406/.536/1.028 slash line, 17 homers and 38 RBIs.
“Obviously he’s playing at a really, really high level,” Boone said. “But I also feel like I’ve seen it too.”
Judge’s recent power explosion has put him back on a near-60-homer pace, and he led baseball in just about every major offensive category entering Saturday night — home runs, on-base percentage (.429), slugging (.662), extra-base hits (42), go-ahead RBIs (17) and position-player WAR (FanGraphs 4.4).
Stacked together with Soto, who is right behind him in on-base percentage (.424) and OPS (1.027), Judge probably won’t be cooling off anytime soon.
It’s the rest of the Yankees whom Boone should be concerned about. Consider these two days a taste of a Yankees future without Soto, making it all the more imperative for Hal Steinbrenner to make sure that never becomes a reality.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.