Soto reminds us he's only in his 5th season

DENVER -- The monster home run he walloped out of Coors Field was a sign of the offensive power 23-year-old Juan Soto possesses. Getting picked off at third base while representing the game-tying run four innings later was a reminder of what he continues to learn in his fifth season.

Soto put the Nationals on the board in their 9-7 loss to the Rockies on Thursday afternoon with the Statcast-projected 411-foot line-drive homer to right field. It was his sixth dinger of the season and his fifth career at Coors Field, where he crushed a 520-foot blast last July in the T-Mobile Home Run Derby.

“It’s a big ballpark and the balls fly,” Soto said. “It keeps everybody on their toes.”

Soto said he has been feeling good at the plate since the Nationals’ previous road series in San Francisco, even though he has been swinging at more balls lately. He concluded the three-game matchup in Denver 4-for-12 with two home runs, a pair of RBIs, one double, two walks and three strikeouts.

“That’s why you always see five at-bats per day instead of two or three,” Soto said. “For me, right now, I’m just trying to keep my confidence up and make sure to swing at strikes.”

Soto’s performance on Wednesday, with two hits and two free bases, was his 17th game with multiple hits and walks before turning 24, putting him in an elite top five (since at least 1901), alongside Ted Williams (30), Mickey Mantle (22), Mel Ott (18) and Buddy Lewis (17).

Whether by connecting for a hit or drawing a walk (he led all of baseball in the category last season), Soto can make getting on base look easy. Another step in his young career is maximizing each opportunity he has on the basepaths.

After getting walked and advancing to third on a Josh Bell double in the fifth, with the Nationals training 4-3, a leading Soto was picked off by catcher Dom Nuñez, who had a clear path with left-hander Yadiel Hernandez at the plate.

“I took my eyes off the third baseman and he took advantage of it,” Soto explained. “For me, I always try to keep the third baseman in my vision, [and] I always keep my eyes on the pitcher so I can see whenever he’s coming back. But on that pitch, I don’t know what just happened. I just looked straight to the plate, and they just made a great play, a great throw.”

Instead of being the tying run, Soto was the first out of the inning that ended one batter later in a double play. The Rockies plated four runs in the bottom of the frame, and the significance of the pickoff resonated.

“I won’t blame anybody -- it was me,” Soto said. “And that’s when the game started and everything changed. It feels really bad because after that, we made a couple runs and it could have been different. But we learn from the failures.”

Manager Dave Martinez noted that Soto is eager when he gets on base, but that scaling back can sometimes be the better move. He pointed to another moment in the game when Soto took a large lead at second base, too.

"Bad play,” Martinez said of the third-base pickoff. “He gets overly aggressive. The infield is playing back, you don't go on the corners. It's no outs. You don't get doubled up on a line drive. You don't have to get that far off."

Martinez deemed Soto’s baserunning a “teaching moment.” He plans to discuss it further, including the value of a secondary lead, with the outfielder on Friday when the Nationals open their series against the Angels.

Don’t expect Soto to shy away from the feedback.

“You never stop learning,” Soto said. “I’ve seen guys that they’ve been in the league for 20 years and they’re still telling me they’re learning things. So for me, it’s just another thing that I’ve learned in my four years in the big leagues, and I’m just going to put it in practice and I’m going to [remember] that every time.”