{"id":637128,"date":"2026-03-22T12:22:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T12:22:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/637128\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T12:22:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T12:22:21","slug":"mets-juan-soto-predicted-to-lead-mlb-in-brand-new-stat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/637128\/","title":{"rendered":"Mets’ Juan Soto predicted to lead MLB in brand new stat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mets’ Juan Soto predicted to lead MLB in brand new stat<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Juan Soto is believed to have one of the best batting eyes in baseball.<\/p>\n

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That could result in him leading MLB in a brand new statistic for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

As you’re likely aware, there’s a strike-zone challenge system coming to the majors for the new campaign. Which means that there will be statistics on who challenges the most and least successfully.<\/p>\n

MLB.com’s Jared Greenspan<\/a> surveyed players on who they think will be the best hitter at challenging calls, and Soto was the resounding winner.<\/p>\n

He got 33 votes in the survey. The next closest was Aaron Judge with nine.<\/p>\n

“Known for having one of the best eyes in the game, Soto was the overwhelming winner here: He received a vote from at least one player on 27 of the 29 opposing teams,” Greenspan writes. “That’s not surprising, because Soto commands the strike zone like few others: His 15.9%\u00a0chase rate\u00a0in 2025 ranked as the lowest in the Majors among qualified hitters, and he set a new single-season Mets franchise record with 127 walks.”<\/p>\n

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There could only be one mechanical thing that potentially works against Soto here, and that’s his vision itself.<\/p>\n

If home plate umpires are more likely to assume a pitch is a ball because Soto takes it, then there could be less for him to challenge.<\/p>\n

But it does seem like from a percentage perspective, he’ll get a good amount of his challenges right, even if the overall quantity doesn’t get a chance to match the quality.<\/p>\n

Regardless, it’s fun to think about this stat. It may take a while for it to normalize and paint the full picture. But it’s a brand new thing to keep track of, which is really cool.<\/p>\n

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More MLB news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mets’ Juan Soto predicted to lead MLB in brand new stat originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619672,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[106,5,55477,33244,47710,134,4,89],"class_list":{"0":"post-637128","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-aaron-judge","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-big-papi","11":"tag-challenge-system","12":"tag-jared-greenspan","13":"tag-juan-soto","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-red-sox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116272807583711937","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}