The New York Mets got Juan Soto back yesterday, and he jumped right back in and delivered a key hit.
The New York Mets have missed the dynamic lineup presence of outfielder Juan Soto, who returned to the lineup yesterday after his latest stint on the IL.
It was an adventurous day for Soto, who had an important base hit that gave the Mets the lead, but he almost had to return to the ranks of the injured after taking a foul ball off his leg just above his right shin guard, according to Anthony DiComo of MLB.com.
The hit was vintage Soto. He ripped a single to right for an RBI in teh Mets 6-2 win over the Houston Astros, as he clearly had no trouble getting his timing back.
“He’s right up there with the absolute best hitters on the planet,” interim manager Andy Green said. “So it’s unsurprising that he finds his timing quicker than the rest of us do.”
Soto has been an iron man until this season, so he’s used to playing 150+ games each season. But this year has been different, with yesterday being his 85th game.
“This is the longest I had ever been out,” Soto said. “Day in, day out, I was just focused to try to come back. And we actually did it.”
The work Soto had to do to get back has been difficult but invisible. It’s happened behind the scenes, as Green noted, and there was plenty of mystery about whether Soto would be shut down for the rest of the season.
“He’s worked incredibly hard over the past couple of weeks,” Green said. “He’s done a lot of it behind the scenes without people seeing it. He’s done it when we’re on the road. He’s pushed himself in a way that frankly you don’t see a lot of veterans push themselves when your team is in this type of situation that we’re in. So I think that speaks volumes to his desire to be on the field, his desire to play.”
The rewards will be somewhere between negligible and non-existent. The best the Mets are going to do is escape the NL East basement and pass the Washington Nationals, and it would take an incredibly run for them to get to .500. They’re playing out the string, but Soto is playing anyway.
“I feel pretty comfortable, definitely with my calf,” Soto said. “But at the end of the day, we’ve got to remember I came [back] a little [quicker] than I expected. I didn’t do any rehab assignment. So my guess is I’m probably going to be DH’ing a little bit more. We’ll see when they decide to let me play in the outfield.”
