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We're waiting for Juan Soto to be Juan Soto again

The Boston Red Sox welcomed the New York Mets for three games this week, an intriguing encore to this past weekend’s Subway Series between the Mets and the Yankees. It’s strange to watch the Mets battle the Red Sox and Yankees before the AL East rivals have even played each other, but such is life with the new balanced schedule featuring fewer divisional games. Boston heads to the Bronx to face the Yankees for the first time this year in a couple weeks.

The Mets dropped two of three against the Red Sox this week, extending what has been a difficult stretch in recent weeks after surging to one of baseball’s best starts. Boston meanwhile, managed to claim the series but still seems magnetically tethered to .500 or close to it, a frustratingly similar trend to what we’ve seen from the Red Sox in recent years.

Here are five takeaways from this week’s three-game set at Fenway Park and what to look at the rest of this month, including the upcoming series for each team as the Mets face the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Red Sox get the struggling Baltimore Orioles:

Juan Soto is ice cold … but don’t expect it to last much longer

Allow me to skip right past any lingering drama — manufactured or otherwise — involving Soto and his former team across town and strictly focus on how he is actually performing on the field, because that alone is plenty worthy of contemplation. Take a quick glance at Soto’s Baseball Savant page and it would seem laughable to suggest he has been struggling: he ranks in the 99th percentile for xwOBA, 97th percentage average exit velocity, 96th percentile in hard-hit rate and maintains the lowest chase rate of any qualified hitter at just 15.1%.

These sterling underlying metrics indicate Soto’s elite offensive process is generally still intact, which lends optimism that another hot streak could be right around the corner.

At the same time, it’s fair to point out that Soto’s recent at-bats have hardly looked like those of one of the best hitters of a generation. He struck out looking in his first two at-bats Wednesday without swinging once, and then struck out swinging in his third at-bat when he flailed at a Garrett Crochet sweeper low and away. It was an awfully uncharacteristic chase of a pitch nowhere near the zone.

A more generous interpretation of Soto’s discomfort early in Wednesday’s game would consider the fact that it was his first time ever facing Crochet, and Crochet isn’t exactly a run-of-the-mill southpaw. But time and again we’ve seen Soto step up in big moments, often looking his best when he’s facing the best, and that hasn’t been the case over the past week, first in the Subway Series and then Wednesday against a Cy Young contender in Crochet.

This is far too small of a sample of struggles to consider Soto to be meaningfully worse. And it was refreshing to see Soto square one up in his fourth at-bat Wednesday, launching a deep fly ball to left center field for a sacrifice.

Still, when we’re talking about baseball’s highest paid player, one who boasts an extensive track record of offensive brilliance, it’s reasonable to acknowledge when Soto is failing to reach the lofty standard he has set for himself. And Soto’s past 10 games — a 5-for-35 stretch with zero extra-base hits — do not resemble the supersonic talent he possesses.

Garrett Crochet has been as advertised

While the Red Sox rotation on the whole has largely disappointed due to a combination of injuries and volatile swings in effectiveness, its headliner has thoroughly lived up to the hype following his trade to Boston in December and subsequent $170 million extension signed shortly after Opening Day.

A year ago, we were still in the early stages of collectively comprehending the kind of pitcher Crochet appeared to be evolving into with the lowly Chicago White Sox. For as good as his numbers were, it was hard to know how much to buy into his ability to sustain considering how sparse his track record was as a starter. As a member of the losingest team in baseball history, Crochet’s starts rarely attracted much attention, a stark contrast to the role he plays now as the ace for one of the sport’s highest-profile teams.

Now, there is no doubt: Crochet is one of the best pitchers on the planet, and firmly in the inner circle of the AL Cy Young conversation. His 1.98 ERA ranks fifth among qualified AL starting pitchers, and his 2.0 fWAR is tied with Hunter Brown for fourth. Only Tarik Skubal has struck out more batters than Crochet among all MLB arms.

As he did with Chicago, Crochet still relies primarily on a high-90’s four-seamer and low-90’s cutter as his go-to weapons, but he has also incorporated a mid-90’s sinker that gives him an additional avenue to leverage his elite velocity at the expense of opponents.

Interestingly, Crochet’s placement near the top of the strikeout leaderboard is mostly a product of his gaudy innings total. His 28.7% strikeout rate is comfortably above league average, but it’s also notably down from the 35.1% mark Crochet registered in 2024. While Crochet may not be racking up the whiffs as frequently as he did a year ago, pitching more to contact with purpose can enable him to go deeper into starts with more efficient pitch counts.

Wednesday’s 5 1/3 inning, 85-pitch outing was an abbreviated one for Crochet based on a predetermined plan by Boston to be mindful of his workload. That workload is the ultimate wild card for the large left-hander, just as it was last season under vastly different circumstances. Currently MLB’s innings leader at 68 1/3, Crochet is on pace to set a career-high in frames completed for the second straight year after throwing 146 innings in 2024. How high the Red Sox will allow that number to climb this year — while also weighing potential starts in October — will be crucial to monitor as the season progresses.

Red Sox's bullpen is a mystery box

With a 5-12 record in one-run games and the most blown saves in baseball with 11, it certainly doesn’t feel like Boston’s bullpen is a strength, but it’s a unit that has shown flashes of competence and dominance at random intervals.

This series was another example of the Red Sox relief corp’s hot-and-cold tendencies. The 3-1 victory in the series opener featured 4 1/3 scoreless innings from lefty Justin Wilson, righty Greg Weissert, former Rule 5 pick Justin Slaten, and ferocious fireballer Aroldis Chapman. Tuesday’s game brought an unexpected encore: After Walker Buehler’s ejection in the third inning, six Sox relievers combined to keep the Mets scoreless for the remainder of the game, tying a franchise record for most pitchers used in a nine-inning shutout.

But then on Wednesday in the series finale, Liam Hendriks and Brennan Bernardino struggled in relief, resulting in a 5-1 loss for Boston despite Crochet’s stellar start.

For the most part, the lefties (Chapman, Wilson, Bernardino) have been notably more consistent than the right-handers (Weissert, Slaten, Hendriks, Garrett Whitlock). Overall, the Red Sox relievers rank 12th in ERA and fourth in collective fWAR. Does that mean they are actually one of baseball’s best bullpens? Almost certainly not. But it’s a unit that is doing more right than you might expect based on their lowest moments.

How temporary is the Mets lineup shake-up?

Save for a few days off for their top trio of Soto, Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso, every Mets game this season had featured Lindor, Soto and Alonso atop the lineup in that order — until Wednesday. With a certified ace in Crochet on the mound and amid a prolonged quiet stretch for the offense, manager Carlos Mendoza made his first notable change to the top of the Mets' lineup in the series finale in Boston by dropping Soto and Alonso to the three and four spots while moving Starling Marte up to the 2-hole. Mendoza explained he was looking to add another right-handed bat to the top of the lineup against a tough lefty in Crochet, and opted for Marte over Mark Vientos.

Wednesday’s 5-1 victory was hardly the offensive explosion the team may have been looking for, but it marked the most runs scored by the Mets since their 6-2 victory over the Chicago Cubs on May 11. The Mets had gone seven consecutive games scoring three runs or fewer before Wednesday, and Lindor’s ninth inning homer was New York’s first long ball since Brett Baty’s blast against the Pittsburgh Pirates on May 12.

So, should we expect this lineup alteration to remain permanent, at least against left-handers? Friday’s series opener against the Dodgers could offer insight into that, as Clayton Kershaw is scheduled to take the hill for Los Angeles. That said, it seems unlikely, if not downright unwise to move entirely away from the traditional lineup the Mets had been using. If the Mets had a fourth hitter who was good enough to warrant sacrificing more opportunities for Soto and Alonso, perhaps it would be worth exploring. But the current versions of Marte, Vientos, Brandon Nimmo or whoever are not performing at a degree worthy of taking away at-bats from Soto and/or Alonso.

Perhaps this was merely a one-off vs. Crochet, and Mendoza will return to his more traditional alignment in short order. Either way, it’s something to monitor as New York seeks ways to jumpstart its offense further.

Steve Cohen’s reality check

On April 23, Starling Marte hit a walk-off single to punctuate an emphatic sweep of the rival Philadelphia Phillies and move the Mets to 18-7, the best record in MLB. With impeccable vibes and a five-game lead atop the NL East, the Mets were flying high. Not long after the victory, Mets owner Steve Cohen posted on X in response to the team’s high-level performance:

Cohen justifiably expressed his excitement regarding the Mets’ play, but the enthusiastic post also came with a reminder that the team probably wouldn’t be able to sustain its 117-win pace. Regression to the mean was going to occur some “at some point,” so the Mets should enjoy the hot stretch as long as it lasted.

Funny enough, that reality check appeared to commence almost immediately after Cohen’s post. Since sweeping the Phillies that Wednesday, the Mets are 12-13 — a respectable record against a reasonably tough schedule, but hardly reflective of the juggernaut they looked to be in early April. Philadelphia, on the other hand, went 17-6 entering Thursday since getting swept in Queens, reclaiming the top spot in the NL East standings in turn.

With the Mets at a relative low point in their season following Tuesday’s shutout against the Red Sox, it was only right that Cohen logged back on to chime in again:

Ever the realist, here we have Cohen offering perspective on the other end of the spectrum from his post-Phillies-sweep enthusiasm, reminding fans that it’s a long season and a couple tough games against the Yankees and Red Sox need not doom the Mets’ long-term goals. And sure enough, the Mets bounced back Wednesday to avoid the sweep and recapture some momentum. In an era of “it’s so over / we’re so back” fandom, it’s highly amusing to see the Mets' owner taking it on himself to remind the fan base of this reality.

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