They called Rafael Zapata crazy.
The owner of a youth baseball academy in the Dominican Republic had an idea. He was going to take a 14-year-old star pitcher and turn him into a position player.
The thing was, this kid couldn’t hit and he couldn’t run.
“I had a meeting with all of my coaches,” Zapata said in Spanish, with MLB.com’s Ricardo Montes de Oca translating. “And I floated the idea of transitioning him from a pitcher to a hitter. Some of them called me crazy. But I didn’t care.
“I told them: ‘I know his bat has money in it.’”
And there was money in it -- $765 million, to be exact.
That 14-year-old pitcher was Juan Soto, who will make his Mets debut when New York opens the season against the Astros in Houston on Thursday. This past offseason, he signed the largest contract in the history of professional sports, a 15-year deal that shattered the previous mark set by two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani just the prior year.
And it was unquestionably Soto’s bat that landed him the historic deal. Had it not been for Zapata, the baseball world might never have known a player who has been compared to the likes of Ted Williams and Barry Bonds.
“He played a big role in my career, in my life,” Soto said. “He began teaching me when I was 10 years old. He was like a mentor to me. More than a mentor, I would say. He was like a dad on the baseball field.”
But even Soto wasn't especially enthusiastic when Zapata shared with him what he wanted to do with his baseball future.
“He didn’t want to give up pitching,” said Zapata, who is affectionately known as “Papé” in the Dominican Republic. “I had to tell him that even though he would be playing in the outfield and hitting, that he could still pitch on some days.”
Juan Soto, the pitcher. In his wildest baseball dreams, he’d be standing on a Major League mound, not in a Major League batter’s box. But sometimes, it takes a “crazy” coach to see what others can’t.
Zapata’s inspiration came from another Dominican pitcher who was transformed into a position player to capitalize on skills other than his arm, eventually leading to a professional contract with a Major League organization.
“There was another guy who came to the academy,” Soto said. “He never hit before, never swung a bat. He was a pitcher. After he threw a bullpen and everything, Rafael sent him to do sprints with the other pitchers.
“And that guy just took off.”
That pitcher with blazing speed was Sauris Mejia, whom Zapata converted to an outfielder starting the very next day. Zapata taught Mejia how to bunt and become a contact hitter in order to leverage his incredible speed. Mejia signed with the Tigers in 2014.
“And then Rafael thought, ‘I have a chance to do the same thing with Juan,’” Soto said.
While it certainly wasn’t speed that stood out in Soto’s case, Zapata took note of Soto’s impeccable pitch recognition in the limited number of plate appearances Soto had. Zapata was also looking ahead and forming a strategy for making Soto as attractive of a prospect as possible.
“In 2013, I realized that in the international signing class of 2015, there weren’t that many left-handed power hitters,” Zapata said. “So that’s when I began the transition for him to become a hitter.”
The transition involved unorthodox training -- leading to the proliferation of that word “crazy” again -- and intense work.
The Soto you see today -- he of the highest on-base percentage among active qualified hitters (.421), the career .953 OPS, 201 home runs, four All-Star appearances, three top-five MVP finishes and five Silver Slugger Awards, all before his age-26 campaign -- is a product of … tennis?
“That’s why you see those mechanics,” Zapata said of Soto’s elite approach at the plate. “I saw that in tennis, the result of impact is always a line drive. There are no fly balls. I taught Juan to look for that impact. We used a tennis racket. I made a drill with the left hand and one with the right hand.
“That’s why you see Juan hitting so many balls to center and right field -- because of that concept I taught with the tennis racket.”
Soto broke it down even further, underscoring the central benefit of all the work he did with the tennis racket.
“That was about how to use your hands,” Soto said. “It was more like how to use your back hand to stay through the ball with the tennis racket. He’s throwing you the ball and you have to make sure you’re not hooking it. You’ve got to stay through the ball because pulling it won’t work.
“Anybody who sees it would probably think it was crazy. But it makes sense.”
You can’t argue with results. Soto is one of only eight batters in MLB history with an OPS+ of at least 160 through his age-25 season (minimum 3,000 plate appearances) -- the others are Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Mike Trout, Jimmie Foxx, Albert Pujols, Tris Speaker and Rogers Hornsby.
And as far as staying through the baseball as if he were swinging a tennis racket instead of a baseball bat, the results also speak for themselves. His career home run spray chart is a thing of beauty, with 58% of his homers going to center or right field. Meanwhile, newly unveiled Statcast data shows that Soto can hit for power at a much wider variety of intercept points – basically, where contact is made in comparison to a hitter’s center of mass – as opposed to your typical hitter, who needs to catch the ball well out in front to launch home runs.
Zapata didn’t stop with this lesson at the tennis racket. While Soto was in the Nationals’ Minor League system after signing with Washington for $1.5 million in 2015, he visited the Dominican Republic and sometimes went to play on a field at Zapata’s academy.
“He homered 60 times,” Zapata said of one particularly significant batting practice session. “Everyone was loving it. It was like a party. They were in awe of him. But all of the home runs were to right field.”
Following the tremendous power display, Soto walked over to Zapata with his countrymen cheering wildly in the background.
“I’m finished,” he said.
Zapata wasn’t having it.
“You’re not done,” Zapata said.
“Why?” Soto replied.
“Because you haven’t hit a homer to left.”
Zapata feared that all those hours with the tennis racket may have gone for naught. But not to worry -- Soto hadn’t forgotten, homering to left multiple times before calling it a day.
The long hours of intense training has paid off, not only for Soto, but for the man who guided him in his most formative baseball years. It’s why Soto’s first Major League home run, which came on the first pitch he saw in his first MLB start, was so special to Zapata.
“The first home run he connected on in the big leagues,” Zapata said, “was to left field. I felt incredible watching that.”
Zapata’s influence in Soto’s life and baseball career can’t be overstated. He saw the potential when Soto was just 14. Now, Soto has procured the richest contract any pro athlete has ever received, and at 26, he’s just getting started.
Perhaps the quintessential example of what Zapata has meant to Soto came early on in the process of Soto’s transition from a pitcher to a hitter.
“During one batting practice when he was 14,” Zapata said, “I saw Juan imitating another player -- he was a teammate who was a little bit older and he was on the market, looking to sign with a Major League team.
“I stopped the batting practice and called Juan over. I told him, ‘You are Juan Soto. You don’t have to imitate anybody. You’re going to be a big leaguer. You’re going to reach the big leagues, but you’re going to do it by being Juan Soto, not imitating anybody else.’”
A dozen years later, Soto may very well be the most complete hitter in the game. But if it weren’t for moments like that one, he might never have reached such heights.
He is quick to credit his mentor from the Dominican Republic, a man who played a central role in making Juan Soto the superstar he is today.
“What a mentor for me,” Soto said. “Just the way he showed me how to play the game. He showed me most of the things that I know. He was always right there for anything and everything. I can’t be more thankful for him.”
MLB.com Mets beats reporter Anthony DiComo contributed reporting to this story.