Juan Soto Miserable As a Met, Say Yankees Insiders

Juan Soto’s honeymoon in Flushing may already be over.

The $765 million slugger is reportedly unhappy with the New York Mets, according to not one, but two Yankees insiders — and that discontent comes alongside his underwhelming performance at the plate.

Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay told his ESPN-NY radio audience on Monday that Soto appears “very glum around the clubhouse,” citing unnamed Mets staffers who say the superstar “does not have a hop in his step” and “does not smile much.”

“I’m not gonna say he is unhappy,” Kay added. “Because how can you be unhappy with a $765 million contract? But money is not a guarantee that you are gonna be comfortable somewhere.”

Veteran baseball columnist Bob Klapisch went even further, reporting that Soto “is downright miserable,” and that the Mets front office is “concerned about Soto’s lack of enthusiasm for his new team.”

Soto Not Slugging

Soto’s bat hasn’t helped matters. He’s currently hitting a dismal .246 with just 8 home runs and 20 RBIs nearly a third into the season. And over the weekend’s high-profile Subway Series at Yankee Stadium, he went just 1 for 10, though he drew four walks.

The slow start has been jarring, especially after Soto homered in his very first at-bat in spring training.

The frustrations with Soto are now spilling onto the field. On Monday night at Fenway Park, Soto was criticized for not hustling out of the batter’s box, prematurely celebrating a deep shot that went into, not over, the Green Monster, turning out to be a long single. Mets manager Carlos Mendoza didn’t call Soto out directly but made his feelings clear.

“You’ve got to get out of the box,” Mendoza told reporters, adding that he’d be speaking with the slugger privately.

A Loveless Marriage

But Kay suggested the problem runs deeper — that Soto never really wanted to be a Met in the first place.

“I’ll say it now, and it will be denied. Of course, it has to be denied. But I have talked to people I respect,” Kay said. “He wanted to return to the Yankees. That was his preference. His family said, ‘You are going to the Mets.’ His family felt very comfortable around Alex and Steve Cohen. And they said, ‘You are going to the Mets.’ And he is a guy that listens to his family.”

Kay continued, “So I think at this point, he is probably a bit down, pouting a bit. And then to come into Yankee Stadium with three straight sellout crowds, at a place that was his Field of Dreams — it became his Field of Nightmares over the weekend.”

Ironically, it’s not all bad in Queens. The Mets sit second in the NL East with a 29–19 record — just behind the Philadelphia Phillies, though after a recent 5–5 stretch knocked them out of first. They have the same record as the star-studded Los Angeles Dodgers.

But Soto has had little to do with the Mets’ early success. Pete Alonso is crushing the ball — batting .301 with 9 HRs and 37 RBIs.

Yet it’s been the Mets’ pitching — thought at the season’s start to be their weakness — that has carried them so far. While the Mets’ offense ranks in the middle in the majors in batting average and home runs, the pitching staff leads all of baseball with a combined 2.87 ERA, with Kodai Senga anchoring the rotation with a 1.43 ERA in a potential Cy Young year. Griffin Canning, David Peterson, and Clay Holmes are also off to stellar starts.

Now, there’s plenty of time for Soto to return to form. But it’s worth noting his current stat line is consistent with his performance in 2022, which he split with the San Diego Padres and Washington Nationals. He hit .242 that year with 27 home runs and 62 RBIs in 153 games. So we could be seeing another down year for Soto.

Winning may eventually lift Soto’s spirits. But if it doesn’t, he has 14 more years to go in what could be a very expensive, very public, and very awkward marriage with Steve Cohen and the Mets.