John Soto He is almost nine months younger than Adley Rutschman, a receiver who hits with both hands with power and averages on which the Orioles design their return to competition and which Baseball America places him as the number one prospect in baseball without having debuted in the MLB.
However, at 23, Soto shares his statistics with Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Hank Aaron at his age; he has a batting title, 98 home runs and almost 500 hits, a World Series and was second in the MVP voting, all this five years before the age at which position players touch their performance ceiling.
Facts that feed the projections to touch the sky and allow them to affirm, without flinching, that he rejected an extension of US$350 million, a fortune that less than a dozen baseball players have earned in baseball.
But already Soto, like other phenomena such as Fernando Tatis Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Rafael Devers o Eloy Jiménez had to face a season as abnormal as that 2020 where COVID-19 caused that harvest to be 60 games, 102 less than a normal course.
It is March, when they should be in Florida and Arizona closing the preparation for the 2022 campaign, this quintet of precocious stars can be seen training in the country, coinciding with them in shopping malls, concerts, beaches and offering interviews to local media without have to take a plane.
How many hits of all kinds, how many strikeouts, how many leads, awards, how much would these players have inflated their statistics and value if those 2020 games had not been suspended? How much can be lost if the union and the league delay in reaching an agreement? Two series have already been cancelled. An explanation that will be necessary to remind the youngest in two decades when they sit down to carry out the complicated exercise of comparing players.
to the veterans
The work stoppage that started on December 2 and has no date for owners and players to resume negotiations is once again vicious against the pockets and statistics not only of the generation called to command this time, but has also affected the options of another retreating group and can round up their runs with fat numbers.
In February 2020, when Albert Pujols showed up for his penultimate year with the Angels, he had 656 home runs and had just hit 23 the previous year, a reasonable scenario to flirt with becoming just the fourth man in history with 700 home runs.
In fact, Career Assessments, the algorithmic formula developed by Bill James and used by ESPN to project brands, gave him a 24% chance of achieving it. But Pujols only hit six homers in 2020 and 17 in 2021 with a role off the bench.
Pujols finished the course with the Dodgers and has not said that he wants to retire, but the lockout that reached three months yesterday has prevented any team from negotiating with him, who needs 21 home runs to achieve his goal, already 42 years old. age.
Nelson Cruz will turn 42 in July and, after hitting 208 four-base hits in the last six seasons, he hopes to convince a club that his swing has the speed to hit the 51 he needs to reach 500. He makes sure that the public and the teams are up to date with the routines he performs by flooding their networks with videos of his daily work.
