19-year-old phenom rips a homer on his first pitch of first MLB start
Washington Nationals rookie Juan Soto didn’t have a particularly impressive major league debut.
The 19-year-old, who has been ranked by MLB Pipeline as the No. 15 prospect in baseball, was called up just days ago and made his debut on Sunday, striking out as a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning of a loss to the Dodgers.
“I was really nervous,” Soto said of his first ever at-bat. “I was just saying, ‘Oh my God.’ I was just trying to breathe and do my job.”
But Soto more than made up for that strikeout on Monday, when, in his very first major league start, he came up to bat in the bottom of the second inning against Padres pitcher Robbie Erlin with runners on second and third and nobody out.
Soto must have thought it was best not to wait until there were two strikes, because he made his presence felt very quickly. On the first pitch of the at-bat, he smoked a fastball from Erlin to left field for a long, opposite-field three-run blast that traveled an estimated 422 feet.
The home crowd at Nationals Park went absolutely crazy, as did Soto’s teammates in the dugout. Soto, though, didn’t even know the ball was gone at first, so he sprinted around the bases.
“I didn’t think it was going to go out of the park,” Soto said after the game, per ESPN. “I just run hard, the same I do in the minor leagues. Then I heard the noise, and I know it was gone.”
Soto walked back to the dugout with a big smile on his face, but he wasn’t there for long, as his teammates convinced him to go out for a curtain call.
“The guys, they tell me, ‘Hey, go out! They’re calling you,'” Soto said. “I think it was (Michael) Taylor who said, ‘Hey, go ahead, go ahead.'”
Nationals Park wasn’t the only place where people were celebrating Soto’s first major league home run. The players at the organization’s baseball academy in the Dominican Republic had tuned into the game, and their reaction to Soto’s blast was a sight to behold.
According to MLB.com, Soto, currently the youngest player in the game, is the first teenager to hit a home run in the major leagues since 2012, when his teammate, former National League Rookie of the Year and MVP Bryce Harper, burst onto the scene.
“He’s a special player,” Harper said of his new teammate. “We’ve seen that throughout the minor leagues and we saw that in Spring Training, as well. So we’re all just excited for him to be here and excited for him to help us out and super proud of him.”
Prior to being called up, Soto had just 31 career at-bats above the Single-A level. That hasn’t seemed to matter yet, though, as Soto, went 2-for-4 in his first ever start.
The Nationals won the game 10-2.
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