There's a self-awareness that kicks in with the very best hitters, Nationals hitting coach Kevin Long says, so that no matter the achievements and the adulation, they can feel they're in trouble at the plate, vulnerable to the first flicker of a slump. They want to extinguish that as soon as possible, and so they go to work, get into the batting cage.
The Nationals' Juan Soto bears this trait already, and when he drifted forward in his mechanics early last season, struggling against breaking balls, the discomfort he felt triggered him into action. He went to Long and asked for help, and every day he was force-fed curveballs by a machine. One hundred breaking balls.
"What are you doing today?" Long would ask. "I've got to get in my 100 breaking balls," Soto would say.
Soto has told Long repeatedly that he doesn't want to be good, he wants to be great, and he already qualifies. Soto has three World Series home runs, two of them off a man who just became the highest-paid pitcher in baseball history. Soto went 9-for-27 in the Fall Classic, swinging so well he compelled Houston manager AJ Hinch to issue his first and only intentional walk of 2019 to him.
Soto has already had a season with 100 runs scored. His on-base percentage in each of his first two years was over .400. He'll get a World Series championship ring at the outset of the 2020 season. Only 11 hitters in the majors swung at a lower percentage of pitches outside the strike zone last year.
The first time Albert Pujols drew 100 walks, he was 28 years old. Joey Votto was 27. Alex Rodriguez got to that mark once in his career, at age 24. Mike Trout got there when he was 21. In Ted Williams' age-20 season in 1939, he drew 107 walks in 149 games.
In Soto's age-20 season last year, he compiled 108 walks in 150 games. He celebrated his 21st birthday during the World Series, which makes no sense because of how advanced he already seems to be in his understanding of the craft of hitting.
"He is fearless at the plate," a rival evaluator said. "He does not give in, and he's not afraid to hit with two strikes. He makes good adjustments at the plate, and his power is just starting to come on."
Long believes Soto will hit for a higher average as he refines his ability to hit breaking balls, as he more consistently takes the ball to left and left-center field while also capitalizing on the moments when he can pull the ball. Soto's challenges are the same ones every great young player faces: how to cope with success, attention, celebrity, contentment.
If Soto stays focused, Long said, "This kid, he's so special. He has Hall of Fame-caliber potential all over him."
On the Baseball Tonight podcast, Eduardo Perez recalled a story about how Soto went to a minor league hitting coach and asked how he could get better, and he took the advice -- swing at strikes -- to heart. "He's going to get better," Perez said, "and one of the reasons we're so certain about it is his discipline at the plate."
Baseball humbles even its greatest players, and the game will challenge Soto in different ways. Soto will probably get his first full dose of passive pitching in 2020, with opponents refusing to throw the ball over the plate in the most critical moments -- the Bryce Harper treatment. Harper loves to hit, and the pitchers' refusal to throw him strikes seemed to really bother him, driving him into slumps. With Anthony Rendon off to Anaheim and the middle of the Washington lineup thinned out, Soto will probably have a lot of days when he gets only one or two or three pitches to hit in his plate appearances.
"I think he's going to handle it just fine," Perez said. "All he is, is a baseball player. He lives across from the street from the baseball stadium. This kid has access to go into the stadium anytime he wants. There's no noise around the ballpark for him; it's strictly baseball, and he's loving playing it."
Soto is just getting started, and he's already the best player at his position. Here are the top 10 left fielders, based on input from folks around the industry. (By the way: Giancarlo Stanton is bundled with the left fielders.)
1. Juan Soto, Washington Nationals
There is a wide range of exceptional Soto numbers from which to choose, and here are a few: In late and close situations, per Baseball Reference, he hit .349 to go with a .500 on-base percentage and a .683 slugging percentage (82 plate appearances).
In the ninth inning of games, Soto had an OPS of 1.075, with 11 walks and seven strikeouts. Eleven of his 34 homers during the regular season were pulled, 16 were hit to center field and seven were hit the opposite way.
Chipper Jones would approve of this: Soto's career slash line in Citi Field, so far, is .361/.451/.639.
2. Michael Brantley, Houston Astros
Brantley couldn't have been a more perfect fit for the Astros, in his personality and production, and the fact that by signing him Houston dropped an accomplished left-handed hitter amid their long line of right-handed bashers. With runners in scoring position, Brantley hit .343 with a .612 slugging percentage, taking advantage of how opposing pitchers were continually backed into a corner facing the potent Astros lineup.
3. Tommy Pham, San Diego Padres
Among the National League's teams, no club is in win-now mode more than the Padres, and the acquisition of Pham from the Tampa Bay Rays should make San Diego better immediately. The veteran outfielder is disciplined in his at-bats, takes walks and will improve the top of the lineup, in front of Manny Machado, Eric Hosmer, et al. Hunter Renfroe, for whom Pham was acquired, is the better defender, but Pham is solid.
4. Joey Gallo, Texas Rangers
The slugger was on his way to a really nice season in 2019, a year of great progress, before he suffered two significant injuries, an oblique strain and a broken hamate bone, and he was limited to 70 games. But in that much playing time, he demonstrated that he has become a lot more than an all-or-nothing home run hitter, through an improved chase rate.
Gallo's rates of swinging at pitches outside of the zone, per FanGraphs:
2015: 30.3%
2016: 27.3%
2017: 31.8%
2018: 32.2%
2019: 24.2%
His on-base percentage rocketed from .312 in 2018 to .389 last year, and of course, there were the home runs -- he had 22 in those 70 games. He was a first-time All-Star last season.
5. Kyle Schwarber, Chicago Cubs
Schwarber's intense push for improvement has seemingly worked against him in recent seasons. But now that he's 27 years old with close to 2,000 plate appearances of experience, he appears to be settled and is coming off the best year of his career. Notoriously streaky in 2017 and 2018, Schwarber had an excellent second half in 2019, posting a slash line of .280/.366/.631.
With the NL set to use the DH in this truncated season, Schwarber could get a lot of time in that role.
6. Brett Gardner, New York Yankees
When he signed a one-year deal for 2019 after signs of regression the previous summer, it seemed as if Gardner was nearing the finish line of his time with the Yankees. Instead, Gardner produced a season of 3.6 fWAR, mustering career highs in homers (28) and slugging percentage (.503) as he joined the generation-wide trend of lifting the ball more.
Consider the changes in Gardner's ground ball/fly ball rate:
2016: 1.93
2017: 1.34
2018: 1.46
2019: 1.16
Check that -- he's not really part of Generation Launch Angle. Gardner is 36 (he'll turn 37 next month), and just got a raise in his new agreement, from $9.75 million to $12.5 million.
7. Jeff McNeil, New York Mets
The Mets might have felt luckless over the past couple of years, what with wild boars and ankle-breaking holes and the rest, but the baseball gods preserved McNeil for them. If you recall, he was going to be part of the package sent to Seattle for Robinson Cano, but after word prematurely leaked out about McNeil's possible inclusion, the public backlash was loud and McNeil was pulled out of the proposed deal.
And he followed up on his promising 2018 debut by hitting .318/.384/.531 for the Mets, making the National League All-Star team. In 133 games, McNeil generated 4.6 fWAR -- as much value as the Phillies' Bryce Harper and the Braves' Ozzie Albies. He is listed among the left fielders here, given the work he put in at this spot last year, but the Mets are expected to use him at third base a lot in 2020.
8. Andrew McCutchen, Philadelphia Phillies
The Phillies' season of frustration took its first major turn for the worse in June, when McCutchen blew out his knee and was lost for the year. McCutchen had thrived in the leadoff role, posting a .378 on-base percentage, scoring 45 runs in 59 games, including 10 homers.
9. Eddie Rosario, Minnesota Twins
He hit 32 homers and drove in 109 runs for the Twins last year and got some top-10 MVP votes last season, but he didn't fare as well in some of the underlying metrics, almost certainly because of his low on-base percentage (.300 in 2019). His adjusted OPS+ was 106, and he was 15th among left fielders in wRC+. But look, he was an important player on a team that won 101 games and the AL Central.
10. Marcell Ozuna, Atlanta Braves
You could make a strong argument for Eloy Jimenez or Andrew Benintendi or Avisail Garcia in this spot, because while Ozuna is the bigger name, he also had a rough year in 2019. He blasted 29 homers, but then, a lot of people hit a lot of home runs, and Ozuna's adjusted OPS+ was a mediocre 107.
Best of the rest
Eloy Jimenez, Chicago White Sox: Based on what he accomplished in his rookie season, it stands to reason that Jimenez will be closer to the top of these rankings in seasons to come. Jimenez, now 23, mashed 31 homers last season, for a .513 slugging percentage and an .828 OPS.
Andrew Benintendi, Boston Red Sox: There is a working theory among some evaluators that Benintendi will realize his full potential when he moves out of left field in Fenway Park, where his speed is sometimes sacrificed by the cozy dimensions. Like Schwarber, he has a reputation for fretting about his performance, so that part of his makeup is still developing.
Joc Pederson, Los Angeles Dodgers: He has been included in about a billion trade rumors, but the Dodgers have clung to him because of the big damage he does against right-handed pitchers -- 36 homers in 401 at-bats last season (and no homers vs. lefties in 49 at-bats).
Avisail Garcia, Milwaukee Brewers: He had a nice season for the Rays last year, which earned him a two-year deal in Milwaukee.
Bryan Reynolds, Pittsburgh Pirates: The Pirates' trade of McCutchen was unpopular in Pittsburgh, but Reynolds went a long way toward dulling the pain of that deal with an excellent debut season, hitting .314 and generating a wRC+ of 134.
Hunter Renfroe, Tampa Bay Rays: He can hit homers (33 last year) and he is very underrated as a defender.