Juan Soto’s Awful Weekend Early Evidence Red Sox Dodged Bullet

Look, had the Red Sox signed Juan Soto in the offseason, it would have been pretty awesome from a box-office standpoint.

There’s no more than a handful of players in the entire sport who are borderline household names, and even that might be stretching. We’re talking the likes of Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, maybe Ronald Acuña Jr. and Mookie Betts. Maybe. Soto, one could argue, should be on that exclusive list, especially after securing a $750 million bag.

On the field, though, it might be a different story, as it is for just about everyone who signs that sort of deal. Soto is in Year 1 of a 15-year pact, and he’s already showing some signs that the Red Sox — and the Yankees, for that matter — might have dodged a bullet by losing out on the outfielder to the Mets.

The Mets lost three of their last four, including Monday night’s defeat to the Red Sox at Fenway Park, but it’s been an otherwise strong start to the season for New York. The Mets have done that even though Soto has yet to be the supposed modern-day Ted Williams. After a 1-for-4 showing with a lone single (more on that in a bit) Monday night, Soto is hitting .246 with eight home runs and 20 RBI for the Mets this season. He’s on a pace that would have him ending the season around 30 home runs and 70 runs driven in.

That’s not bad, per se, but it would also represent his worst run-production season since his rookie year (when he was 19!), and the Mets aren’t paying him $51 million per season for Brandon Nimmo numbers.

Soto has a decade and a half to figure out the production, and it’s foolish to believe his best production is behind him. But the more concerning issues are the things that haven’t shown up in the scorebook.

For starters, the dude sounds miserable. Yankees broadcaster and radio host Michael Kay made some interesting comments Monday on his show.

“People that I have talked to on the Mets side, and they can deny it publicly, because, of course, that’s what they have to do, (but) he is very, very glum around the clubhouse,” Kay revealed, as transcribed by Awful Announcing. “He does not have a hop in his step. He does not smile much. I’m not gonna say he is unhappy. Because how can you be unhappy with a $765 million contract? But money is not a guarantee that you are gonna be comfortable somewhere.”

If that is the case, and only Soto knows for sure just how happy he is in Queens, then just imagine how miserable he could be living and playing outside of New York. Clearly, he loves New York and was OK staying in The Big Apple, but just playing in another borough.

Kay, however, insisted Soto’s pout-pout face comes from the belief he wanted to stay with the Yankees. In the end, Kay believes Soto’s family nudged him toward Steve Cohen’s money.

That’s what made this weekend so fascinating — and borderline uncomfortable. Yankees fans roundly booed Soto every chance they got over the weekend Subway Series. Things got especially ugly for Soto, though, by his own doing. One small thing was Soto’s flip-flop on being mic’d up for ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball.”

That ended up being the least of his concerns, too, as Soto looked lost at the plate Sunday night, going 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. One of the times he actually put the ball in play was in the eighth inning of a 2-2 game, when an ugly check swing produced a ground ball up the middle. Yankees second baseman DJ LeMahieu had to make a sliding stop to the right of the bag and throw from his knees going away from first base. He got Soto by two steps because the Mets star wasn’t running hard out of the box. Then, in the bottom half of the frame, Soto lollygagged after an Austin Wells line drive and, after gathering it, mindlessly threw it back into the infield, missing the cutoff man by about 50 feet. Luckily for Soto, Francisco Lindor was able to corral the ball at second base and keep runners from advancing any farther before shooting Soto a glance.

“That could have been disastrous for the Mets on where Soto threw that baseball,” ESPN’s Eduardo Pérez said on the broadcast.

All told, it was a 1-for-10 weekend with three strikeouts for Soto.

“And then to come into Yankee Stadium with three straight sellout crowds, at a place that was his Field of Dreams,” Kay said, “it became his Field of Nightmares over the weekend.”

Kay, by the way, wasn’t the only one playing armchair psychologist. NJ.com columnist Bob Klapisch said he thinks Soto is “downright miserable,” claiming he was “shell-shocked” by the weekend reception, and Yankees fans “broke him.”

Clearly, given his first chance to make amends after escaping the Bronx zoo, Soto would do just that, right? Well, on a play in which he showed everyone why he would have been a good fit in Boston, Soto simultaneously displayed why it might have gone poorly. Soto’s syrupy-smooth swing sent a ball flying toward the Green Monster on Monday night. He thought it was gone. Instead, it caught tin. A sure-thing double turned into a long Fenway single.

Soto disagreed with any notion that he’s not giving it 100%.

“I think I’ve been hustling pretty hard. If you see it today, you could tell,” a defensive Soto told reporters after the game, per SNY.

One person he might need to convince, otherwise? His boss.

“We’ll talk to him about it,” Mets manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters after the game. ” … He thought he had it, but with the wind and all that, and in this ballpark and, you know, anywhere, but in particular this one with that wall right there, you’ve gotta get out of the box. So, yeah, we’ll discuss that.”

(The New York Post isn’t buying it, either, unsurprisingly.)

It’s not entirely fair to judge Soto on one bad week, of course. Chances are, he’ll continue on his Hall of Fame path, as soon as Tuesday night in Boston. The Mets aren’t likely to have any sort of regret about committing nearly a billion dollars to him over 15 years … at least for the better part of the first decade of the deal. And, quite frankly, it’s an entertainment business, and Boston — just like New York — would have had a field day with everything that comes with the Soto experience.

But Soto is making it easier to wonder whether the Red Sox or any of his other suitors might have dodged a bullet by not making baseball history to sign him.