Among Many 2026 Complaints, NY Mets Can Still Be Grateful That Juan Soto Remains Historically Great

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The 2026 campaign was kind of a mess for the New York Mets, but Juan Soto remained highly effective at the plate even while playing through many maladies that robbed him of several games and could have affected his performance. For reference, here’s a list of some of Soto’s 2026 injuries: an illness, back tightness, two different left calf strains that required trips to the injured list, an ankle injury after fouling off a ball in the area, and forearm tightness. Yes, that’s just in one season. The fact that he played 111 games was nothing short of amazing.

Soto’s 3.1 fWAR represented his lowest output since the pandemic-shortened campaign of 2020. However, he was far from a bad player, even in a mediocre collective season for New York. The All-Star outfielder hit .275/.393/.515 with 27 home runs, a 147 wRC+ that’s right on par with his career mark of 150, a 16.2 percent walk rate, and a 13.5 percent strikeout rate in 482 plate appearances.

No matter how you slice it, he remains the same historically great hitter he was before joining the Mets.

Juan Soto Is A True Statcast Darling

Per Statcast, Soto placed in the 96th percentile in Batting Run Value, but was in the 25th percentile in Baserunning Run Value, and even worse in Fielding Run Value, in the 15th percentile. He actually improved his defense in comparison to 2025, but his contribution on the basepaths fell off a cliff, probably a direct consequence of all the lower-body ailments and a desire to preserve his health when he was playing.

Soto is so consistently good offensively, even in an injury-riddled year, that his Statcast profiles from 2025 and 2026 look awfully similar, baserunning drop-off notwithstanding. By now, the book is out on him as a hitter: bat-to-ball skills, power, elite discipline, and the consistency to contend for All-Star games and Silver Sluggers every year.

Unless he dramatically improves his defense, an MVP seems to be a difficult proposition in a league that seems to value WAR more and more every season, competing with unicorns like Shohei Ohtani and two-way monsters like Pete Crow-Armstrong. However, there's an awfully good case to be made that, as far as pure hitting ability goes, he remains in a tier of his own.

Mets Have An Elite Offensive Performer In His Prime

Since the start of the 2020 campaign, only Aaron Judge (187) and Yordan Alvarez (165) have a higher wRC+ than Soto’s 160 mark. He has been even better than Ohtani, who is fourth on that list with a 158 wRC+.

Back to the 2026 Mets, Soto’s 111 games were still enough for him to rank second in fWAR behind Carson Benge, as well as first in home runs, wRC+, and walk rate. For good measure, he also finished fourth in stolen bases (nine), second in batting average (.275), first in OBP (.393), first in slugging percentage (.515), second in RBIs (68), and first in OPS (.908) among his teammates. No other Mets player finished with an OPS higher than .794, which shows you the kind of lineup protection the future Hall of Famer was working with.

At 28 years old, Soto remains in his physical prime, and his offensive game hasn’t slowed down one bit. In 2027, if and when baseball gets going again, we should all witness even better numbers if health is on his side.