Pat and Ron were talking about Soto’s had some difficulty with left-handers, but seemed to agree that he’ll be fine, with perhaps a minor adjustment. No big deal.

Yeah, he’ll be fine. Obviously he wasn’t going to be dominant like he came out of the gate; i expect by the end of the year we will all be very happy with his end-of year stats.

it’s not just a regular slump, and I don’t think it takes a scout to see there is something that he can’t do. His problem: he can’t hit the breaking pitch that starts out in the lower strike zone and drops out of it. From the past two days, it has been the same. He consistently swings over the top of the pitch and can’t even seem to connect.

I was actually thinking of posting about this yesterday after the game after the 3 strikeouts because I saw this consistent pattern, and I have watched his at-bats closely since his third strikeout of the seven. It’s really is the same pattern: the ball starts out heading into the strike zone somewhere around the lower thighs, then it drops out into the catcher’s mitt around the mid/lower calves. He swings over the top, as if he expects the ball not to break so sharply. Look back over the footage.

That is the pitch he has trouble with, everything else is fine. However, today he knew he had trouble with that pitch, and thus was much too hesitant. In his second at bat today, he did not swing at any pitches. 3 of them were balls, and were the same type of diving pitch that he swung at. Improvement? probably not. He was just plainly more hesitant. The strikes in that at-bat were not those sharply breaking balls, yet he did not make any motion even to swing. The last one was actually pretty flat, with a little side movement, something that he is easily capable of at least fouling away, but instead he was frozen. This would imply he has difficulty picking up the difference between straight pitches and sharp breaking pitches in that zone, and is possibly overthinking. His last at bat, the pitcher didn’t actually throw the breaking pitches for the first three and threw them mostly straight and up. He was able to foul them away with relative ease. But the last pitch, the ball broke and he swung over the top. All five of the swinging strikeouts, he swung at the same type of pitch.

For those of you saying how it is “just a slump”, it clearly isn’t. I am all about making sure sample sizes are big enough to make judgments on stats, IF there is no other outside information. If I just saw the line, 7 SO 1 BB, i would also say it is a just a fluke. However, this is one specific type of pitch with specific characteristics that he repeatedly does the same thing on.

This is not at all to say he can’t improve. He needs to work with the hitting coach and find whatever mechanical part of his swing or mental part of his pitch selection he is having trouble with. He needs to adjust to this, and he probably can if he works hard. However, just saying that this is a regular slump and waiting for it to pass is not going to work. Until he actually adjusts to the pitching (which is mostly just laying off pitches as they are mostly balls) he will continue to fail with that pitch.

I’m sure he has seen his share of curveballs in his 159 career AB’s. So I can’t imagne big league pitchers are just throwing him curveballs now. I’m sure he has seen curveballs before and has hit them well. So it’s way too early to say he can’t hit a curveball and everybody knows it. It’s very possible this could just be two bad days, and he could be a little tired. Lets not forget Soto has caught a lot of innings in 26 days. Going 0 for 8 with 8 strike outs is ugly, but it’s just two bad games, and only 8 AB’s. In his 8 AB’s before that he went 5 for 8 with a double and HR, so it’s too early to be concerned right now. Soto is gonna get tomorrow off, and we have a off day Monday, if these struggles continue next week then we could start to get concerned. But give the guy a little time, and lets not forget he’s still hitting 316/415/959 with 3 HR and 14 RBI’s.

Lou might move him to #8 and Cedeno to #7. I wouldn’t move the #1 or #2 hitters only because they have a good tendency of getting on base their first at-bats more often than not. Cedeno seems to be more of a late inning hitter.

I think he was just getting TO confident. What I mean is he was doing good and got the idea that I got this down so I can now swing for the fences all the time, he just needs to get back to basics.

everyone hits a slump in his career.hell soriano was hitting 175 and how long has he been playing???