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Juan Soto is on an all time baseball list with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Barry Bonds

By Chris Cerullo

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October 2, 2021 5:56 pm

When you think all time greats in the game of baseball you think of names like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and for better or worse Barry Bonds.

Well, Washington Nationals outfielder Juan Soto can now say he is a member of a list with just those three other names.

As you can see, Soto is getting on base at a rate the game hasn’t seen in quite some time. With his unreal sense of the strike zone, he has walked 144 times this season at the time of posting. Only Bonds has drawn that many free passes in a season in the 21st century and Soto is the first to record that many walks before the age of 23 since Ted Williams did so in 1941.

In a recent stretch, Soto reached base in twelve consecutive plate appearances which left him five shy of Piggy Ward’s all-time record from 1893 and four shy of Williams’ modern record set in 1957.

Soto has been on an absolute tear in the second half of this MLB season, thrusting himself into the conversation for National League MVP even though the Nationals as a team gave up on this season in late July. In September alone, Soto had a combined 73 hits and walks which is the most a player has had in a single month since 1960.

The 22-year-old also set an Expos/Nationals franchise record this season when he recorded his 131st walk, topping the mark Bryce Harper set in 2018. At one point last week, Soto could have made an out in 45 straight plate appearances and still led the entire league in on-base percentage.

Soto is currently slashing an absurd .317/.470/.541, with 29 home runs, 94 runs driven in, and leads all MLB hitters with a 6.7 fWAR (Fangraphs’ calculation of wins above replacement).

Headline photo: Ian Oland

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