24/07/2022
Genius may be most familiar under arc lights and with an audience, but it is here, in a batting cage an hour past sunup on a quiet March morning in West Palm Beach, Fla., where it has its foundry. With beautiful violence and the same 75-swing legato, Juan Soto starts every baseball day since he became a professional at 16 years old.
There is no technology. No cameras. No Trackman. No accoutrements. It is just a bat, a bucket of baseballs, Nationals hitting coach Joe Dillon and, when it comes to master levels of power, patience and contact, the greatest hitting prodigy since Ted Williams.
Soto, the Nationals’ right fielder, is 23 years old, the same age Frédéric Chopin, another prodigy, was when he published his first set of Études in 1833.
An études is a batting drill for a pianist. It is a short work written as a teaching aid. But from the hand of Chopin, études elevate to concert repertory. So it is with the Études of Soto: Utilitarian practice becomes artistic masterwork.
Not once in his 75 swings off various types of flips from Dillon does Soto hit a ball off the top net. Most swings produce line drives toward left center, the favorite direction of his left-handed swing. In one sequence Soto doesn’t swing at the flips but knocks them straight down with the end of the bat k**b.
