2011 Season in Review: Neftali Soto

Neftali Soto came into the 2011 season as an interesting prospect, but one who had plenty of questions around him. The Reds had experimented with him at catcher the season before and it was unknown coming into the year whether that would continue or be put to a stop. Despite having his hamate bone removed in the spring of 2010, Soto showed very good power. A full year removed from the injury that usually saps a players power, there were hints of what could be on its way for Soto.

April answered one of our questions for Soto as he spent the first nine games of the season at first base with no inclination to believe that he would find himself behind the back stop. Over that time he would hit .276/.300/.552 with a walk and six strikeouts. However, nine games would be all that Soto would play in April as he broke a bone in his left wrist.

The wrist injury kept Soto out of the month of May until the 21st, missing nearly 5 weeks with the injury. He came back strong though and through 44 at bats in May the first baseman would go on to hit .318/.362/.568 with 3 walks and 10 strikeouts. In the limited time he would also add 5 doubles and 2 home runs on the month.

The month of June began quite slowly for Soto as he went 6 for his first 38 (.158), but he ended the month almost in the exact opposite way. He had a 10 game hitting streak to end the month, going 15-38 with 5 long balls over that stretch. Overall, the month was solid, producing a .272/.323/.544 but it was a tale of two stretches within the month.

Soto extended his hitting streak to 11 games with a hit to begin July, but had a hitless game to follow to see his streak end. The month was big from a power standpoint with 10 more home runs added to the ledger, but only 17 other hits on the month led to a .255 average to go along with a .301 on-base percentage thanks to 7 walks and 32 strikeouts over the 113 plate appearances. He would slug .604 on the month.

Heading into the month of August, Soto was trailing the league HR leader by 10 HR’s who had been called up the the Majors (but had a full month in the league advantage on Soto due to his injury earlier in the season). It was a long shot for Soto to catch him in the league standings, but if he could duplicate his HR total from July he would match Goldschmidt. You have to wonder if Soto hadn’t known this himself, as he began August by cracking two HR’s in the first game and third game of the month, drawing him to within 6 with nearly the entire month to go. In his fourth game of the month he cracked HR number five of the month. However over the next sixteen game he would hit just 1 HR, leaving him with a week to go in August and four HR’s back. Soto hit a HR on the 23rd to put him at 27 for the month. On the 26th of August he cracked number 28. Then he went out and hit #29 on the 28th of the month and got the big three-zero in the next game on the 29th of the month. The feat was the first time a Red had reached the 30 HR mark since Adam Dunn did so ten years prior in 2001. He would hit .269/.313/583 on the month with 7 walks and 27 strikeouts in 115 plate appearances.

With call ups to the big league club, Soto found himself in Louisville  to finish out the season. In four games he went 7 for 17 with a solo HR to push his total to 31 on the season. His four game stretch with the Bats produced a line of .412/.444/.588.

Overall Thoughts

Some of the questions on Soto remained unanswered after the year was complete. His plate discipline is still questionable and remains a bit of a concern moving forward. His power explosion was one of the more impressive things we have seen in a while, producing 31 HR’s in under 400 at bats on the season. We also saw an end to the catching experiment that seemed like a bit of a late start for a player who had a promising bat. Soto improved his prospect status with his 2011 showing because of his impressive power output, but there will be some questions to be answered for the 23 year old in Louisville next year (he will be 23 next season, but he is still 22 this year).

Stats

Spray Chart

Video

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