Nationals: Juan Soto Has Big Saturday Night in Los Angeles Against Dodgers


[Box Score]

Without question, Saturday night games in Los Angeles always bring about a special aura and always will. While it seemed on Friday in the Dodgers’ home opener 1-0 win that they would opt to pitch around Soto, they went a different route on Saturday night.

Surely, the Dodgers won the game 9-5 with Julio Urias on the mound. The game will hardly be a memorable one from any angle other than what Soto did. Indeed, Soto could end up making the case for himself in 2021 that he’s the finest pure hitter in all of baseball.

Off a pair of lefties, Soto smashed home runs one and two of the year. First, he had a great at-bat that ended with an explosive conclusion against Urias.

Next and with the game already decided in favor of the Dodgers, Soto took reliever Scott Alexander deep.

Already, if you’re someone that is a Dodgers fan, you remember the damage young Juan Soto can do to you in big spots. Indeed, it was Soto who homered off Kershaw the year the Nationals won the World Series, ending the Dodgers 2019 season.

However if you have forgotten what kind of firepower Soto has, Saturday night was a reminder that he’s still the class of elite young hitters in the game, although Washington figures to have a little bit of an underwhelming year in 2021.

Right now, Soto is a career .297 hitter with 71 career home runs and an OPS hovering around the .975 mark at just 22 years of age. He’s building a Griffey Jr. like resume in terms of baseball-reference similarity scores at that age. Perhaps this was just another chapter early on in the book of what will be a Hall of Fame career on a Saturday night in Los Angeles.