Soto sparks Yanks as teammates look to hit stride

Juan Soto has been everything the Yankees thought he would be and needed him to be when they made the trade to get him from the Padres. The problem lately -- even as the Yankees were 14-7 after Saturday’s loss to the Rays and still in first place in the AL East -- is that sometimes Soto has looked like all they had, making it look at the same time as if the Yankees could easily be in last place in their division (where the Red Sox and Rays are at 12-10) without him.

On Friday night, Soto hit a rousing three-run homer against the Rays and the Yankees won. He got two more hits on Saturday, and hit a ball really hard in the bottom of the ninth -- with the game still scoreless -- that had Yankee Stadium up and in full voice thinking he’d hit another homer, a possible walk-off this time, before the ball died on the warning track. Soto came out of the loss hitting .354 in his first month in a Yankees uniform, with an OPS of 1.077, an on-base percentage of .469, five homers, 20 RBIs and 28 hits in 21 games. He’s also scored 13 runs.

On Friday night, he’d even heard “MVP” chants at the Stadium, even though he laughed them off afterward.

“I think it’s way too early,” Soto said. “But it feels great. They just support me every day, day in and day out. It just feels amazing.”

And here is what his manager, Aaron Boone, said:

“I mean, it’s April. I imagined he was pretty great. I’ve seen him in small snippets when we’ve had a chance to play him where he’s been pretty great. He’s off to a historic start to his [entire] career. I kind of went into it with that context. The best thing for me is I obviously knew we were getting an amazing player, but I’ve really enjoyed the person and the teammate.”

At the start of the season, it was exactly as the Yankees envisioned after a 2023 when they had one of the most dreary offenses in baseball: The entire batting order organized around No. 22 from where he hits in the No. 2 slot. The Yankees swept a four-game series from the Astros in Houston and won two of three on the road against the Diamondbacks. They came back to New York for their home opener at 6-1. But through Saturday, they had only been 8-6 since.

Listen: The Yankees still have the second-best record in the American League behind the Guardians, from whom they took two of three last weekend. But after Saturday’s loss -- and four more strikeouts -- Aaron Judge was hitting .179 and actually heard boos from the Yankees crowd. Gleyber Torres, hitting .195, was benched for the second game of the Rays series. Giancarlo Stanton started a big rally with a big, long homer against Toronto the other day that prevented the Jays from sweeping the Yankees, but he was at .234. Even Anthony Volpe, moved up to the leadoff spot after a hot start, has slowed lately.

Small sample for all of them, obviously. Still: After the Yankees did roll into April the way they did, now came this stretch over the last week when this year’s offense did look like last year’s offense.

Except for Juan Soto.

Sometimes, even for big stars, there is a period of adjustment when they become Yankees. Not with him. Soto came in hot against the Astros and has stayed hot. He doesn’t just have 28 hits so far for the Yankees. He has also walked 18 times and controlled the strike zone in New York the way he did in Washington and San Diego before this. It is why it is easy for Yankees fans to believe that when All Rise Judge starts to hit -- despite the booing on Saturday -- that the Yankees' offense will once again rise right up with him.

Soto and Shohei Ohtani were the two biggest acquisitions of baseball’s offseason, one in New York, one in Los Angeles. Soto is essentially working on a one-year deal with the Yankees, eligible to become a free agent when the season is over. Ohtani is at the beginning of a 10-year deal with the Dodgers. But Ohtani is basically having the same hot early season on his coast as Soto is having: batting average of .359, four home runs, an OPS of 1.049 and 33 hits in 23 games.

Over the past 15 games for the Dodgers, which means through Saturday’s loss to the Mets, Ohtani has 13 extra-base hits, 25 hits in all. The Dodgers were also in first place in their division, just not by very much at 12-11.

“It’s April,” Boone said the other night when talking about his new star. And just not for his new star, for everybody. But off what he has seen from No. 22 in his first 21 games, maybe the Yankees manager has a right to think that this kind of start from him is only the beginning. And probably doesn’t want to think what April might have looked like without him.