Aaron Doster-Imagn Images

When the Mets signed Juan Soto to a 15-year deal last December, they expected him to be the heaviest hitter on a contending team, a player who would factor into the Most Valuable Player voting. Odds are that they didn’t price his base-stealing ability into his record-setting, $765-million contract, yet with just under three weeks remaining in the regular season, the 26-year-old slugger has not only set a career high in steals, but he might very well become the first player this season to join the 30-homer, 30-steal club.

Despite a slow start that included just three home runs and two stolen bases through the end of April, Soto has clubbed 38 homers and is just three away from his career high, set last year with the Yankees. He’s already had additional seasons with 34 and 35 homers (2019 and ’23, respectively), so any total in that range is hardly out of the norm. What’s remarkable is that he now has 29 steals, a country mile beyond his previous career high (he stole 12 in both 2019 and ’23), and more than he swiped from 2022–24 combined (25 steals). At this writing, he’s third in the NL in homers but 11 behind leader Kyle Schwarber. By comparison, he’s fifth in the league in steals but just eight off the lead, held by Oneil Cruz.

Soto stole seven bases (in 11 attempts) last year, and averaged about nine steals for the 2021–24 span. He added five steals in May to those two in April, but he stole just two more in June. Once July hit, though, and especially after the All-Star break, he started running more frequently, with four of his six steals for the month coming in a nine-game span from July 19–28. He’s maintained a similar clip since then, with 11 steals in August — tied with Jazz Chisholm Jr. for the major league lead in that month — and three more in September. That’s a major league-leading 18 steals in 20 attempts over his past 45 games, a 65-steal pace! Chisholm is second over that same span with 17.

Soto isn’t just burning through outs in some mad statistical pursuit, either. He’s been caught stealing just three times, so his 90.6% success rate ranks third in the NL among players with at least 20 attempts. Only one of the 13 players in either league with more attempts has a higher success rate, the Cardinals’ Victor Scott II, who’s 31-for-34 (91.2%). The 24-year-old Scott isn’t quite the anti-Soto, but while he has 80-grade speed, he’s hit just five homers and produced an 80 wRC+. Paging back to Soto’s 2018 prospect report, Eric Longenhagen graded his present speed at 45 and his future speed at 40.

Soto isn’t a fast baserunner, and in fact, he may be slower than ever. According to Statcast, his 25.9 ft/sec sprint speed places him in just the 15th percentile, down from 26.8 ft/sec in each of the past two seasons (36th and 37th percentile). Sometimes slowing down is a choice, a measure of protection or self-preservation for a player who may be susceptible to leg injuries or just not expected to make a living with his wheels. Soto has never spent time on an injured list (major or minor league) for a lower body injury, and again, he’s just 26, but a counterpoint to the notion that his slower speeds are a matter of choice comes from colleague Esteban Rivera, who in his examination of Soto’s declining defense observed that he’s taking longer to accelerate to full speed (such as it is) than before, and thus getting worse jumps in pursuit of balls.

Taken at face value, Soto’s sprint speed makes him an outlier among thieves. He’s the second-slowest runner of any player with at least 20 steals this year:

The 5-foot-10, 235-pound Naylor — whom one reader nicknamed “Thicky Henderson” in a recent mailbag — ranks in the second percentile in sprint speed, down from the seventh percentile last year (25.2 ft/sec). Yet his success rate tops Soto’s and is third in the majors at the 20-attempt cutoff, behind only Buxton and Story, neither of whom has been caught yet.

Some of this running amok by players not known for fleetness of foot is rooted in the 2023 rule changes. The introductions of the pitch clock and bigger bases were accompanied by the disengagement rule, which makes it more difficult for pitchers to hold baserunners because it limits them to two disengagements from the rubber; pitchers are charged with a balk if they step off a third time without successfully picking off the runner. Wander off first far enough to draw a couple of throws but scamper back in time, and then you’re off to the races, though getting a good jump is still important — more important, even — if it will take you the extra half-second to get to the bag that some larger lads require. The rule changes have boosted stolen base attempts and successes: This year’s per-game stolen base rate (0.71 per team) is about 39% higher than in 2022 (0.51 per team), and the current success rate of 77.5% is 2.1 percentage points higher than that season.

Soto isn’t fast, but he is smart, and the same attention to the little things that helps him pick apart opposing pitchers from the batter’s box give him other advantages as well. “He’s just got a good eye for the details. We have a lot of guys that put work in. But he’s the most consistent. It’s every day,” Mets first base coach Antoan Richardson said of Soto’s penchant for studying video of opposing pitchers’ moves to first. More, from The Athletic’s Will Sammon:

Soto, however, is creative. Every day after the club’s general base running meetings, he works on his technique and goes over more information with Richardson. In games, he uses walking leads or gets big jumps, often taking off before a pitcher is delivering the ball to a catcher. Typically, he slides feet-first into a corner of a base, as if he’s an accomplished swiper years into his craft. He has been caught stealing only three times.

“We’ve talked about Picasso a lot and how base stealing is an art form,” Richardson said. “On the bases, you get to create. We’ve heard the cliche, like, you don’t have to be fast to be a good base runner. He is actually making this cliche very, very real.”

…“Nobody anticipated him being in the conversation for what he is doing on the bases,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “Teams are starting to pay attention. We know that he’s an elite hitter, but he’s a complete player right now. What you are getting at the plate, on the bases and defensively is pretty impressive.”

Mendoza may be off base regarding Soto’s defense given the grim metrics (-11 FRV, -4 DRS). Still, his steals have added value. By Statcast’s estimates, which factor the pitcher and catcher against whom a base is stolen, Soto’s four Runner Stealing Runs puts him in a virtual tie with Story, Cruz, and Scott for the major league lead, though he’s two runs below average in other baserunning contexts for a net of two runs (up from -3 last year). By FanGraphs’ measures, Soto’s baserunning has been worth 1.8 runs, up from -3.9 last year.

Colleague Davy Andrews wrote about the Mets’ stolen base success last month, and Matt Martell added more about Richardson in the aforementioned mailbag, pointing readers to a March 21 piece in the Bergen Record by Andrew Tredinnick. During spring training, Richardson — who joined the Mets last year after three seasons with the Giants — ran players through a drill designed to increase the length of their leads and improve their jumps by taking a flat-screen TV monitor showing video of pitchers’ deliveries and pickoff moves out to the infield dirt. Richardson’s tutelage has been so successful that the Mets’ 88.4% stolen base success rate is the second-highest full-season rate since 1947… trailing the Mets’ 88.7% success rate from 2023 (the 2020 A’s had an 89.7% success rate in the pandemic-shortened season). The Mets recently ran off a streak of 39 consecutive successful steals, tying a single-season record held by the 2013 Red Sox. The player who swiped the 36th base, which surpassed the 2023 team to set a franchise record, was Soto.

Anyway, there have been just 47 seasons in which a player has combined at least 30 homers with 30 steals, more than half of which (24) occurred in the 2007–24 span, owing mainly to higher home run rates. Indeed, the first time more than one player went 30/30 in a season was 1987, when a strange home run spike — the first time teams averaged more than 1.0 homers per game — helped four players complete the feat, including the first pair of teammates, the Mets’ Howard Johnson (36 HR, 32 SB) and Darryl Strawberry (39 HR, 36 SB). With home run rates even higher in recent years (1.16 per game this seasons), and stolen bases on the rise thanks to the aforementioned rule changes, four players went 30/30 in 2023 (Ronald Acuña Jr., Francisco Lindor, Julio Rodríguez, and Bobby Witt Jr.), and three more did so last year (Shohei Ohtani, José Ramírez, and Witt).

We’re not getting a 50/50 season this year like that of Ohtani in 2024, or a 40/70 one like what Acuña achieved in ’23, but once again, we could have a handful of 30/30 players. Nine have hit at least 25 homers and stolen at least 24 bases, and four of those nine have already reached or surpassed 30 in one of the two categories.

Wow. Based on our Depth Charts rest-of-season projections, five players are forecasted to reach 30/30, which would be a record, with two more falling one homer short, one falling two steals short, and one falling two short in both. It’s worth remembering that stolen base attempts have a discretionary element; these projections are based on career rates and aging curves but don’t account for a sudden desire to run aggressively à la Soto.

[Update: I made an unreasonably late request for ZiPS odds from Dan Szymborski as to these players making it to 30-30. It wasn’t ready when the article was published, but now that the wheels have spun, here it is:]

Some notes on each of these guys above the 10% bar besides Soto, going down the projected home run list:

• Two years ago, Rodríguez became the third-youngest player to reach 30/30. He’s already checked the home run box in what’s been a bounce-back season. If he picks up his stolen base pace, he could join Witt as the second player to go 30/30 twice through his age-24 campaign.
• Last Friday, Carroll reached the 30-homer plateau for the first time, though the next night he lost a potential no. 31 to Ceddanne Rafaela’s ridiculous catch. He hasn’t been running as often as usual; he stole 54 bases in 59 attempts as a rookie in 2023 and then 35 bases in 43 attempts last year, but he’s down to 26 steals in 31 attempts this year.
• For the second year in a row, Chisholm has set a career high in homers, first with 24 while splitting last season between the Marlins and Yankees, and now 28 with New York, 17 of which have come at home. While nine of those have been hit in the general direction of Yankee Stadium’s short right field porch, by Statcast’s reckoning, six of the nine would have been out in all 30 parks, with the other three out in 22, 26, and 29 parks, so this isn’t just a home-cooked pursuit. Stolen base-wise, after swiping 40 bags in 50 attempts last year, he’s 27-for-32 this year.
• Last year, Ramírez fell just one home run short of becoming the seventh player to reach 40/40, finishing with 39 homers and 41 steals; coupled with Ohtani, it would have been the first time two players reached at least 40/40 in the same season. While that pairing is out of reach for Ramírez this season, he has a clear shot of notching his third 30/30 season, tying Johnson for the fourth-most such seasons; only Alfonso Soriano (four) and the father-son combo of Bobby and Barry Bonds (five apiece) have more.
• Given the importance of reaching base to generating steal opportunities, it’s not surprising a player with a sub-.300 on-base percentage has never completed this feat. Joe Carter (.304 in 1987) has the lowest OBP for any club member to date, and even the OBP-challenged Soriano was at .309 in 2005. Crow-Armstrong, with his .293 OBP, is two homers away from making a very strange and somewhat dubious kind of history, though even with his shortcomings, he’s produced a 115 wRC+ and 5.4 WAR.
• After hitting 31 homers and stealing 31 bases in 2023, Lindor bashed 33 homers last year, none bigger than the go-ahead two-run shot in the ninth inning of Game 162 that helped the Mets clinch a Wild Card berth. The only downside was that even with two stolen bases (and a homer) the day before, he finished one steal short of 30. Right now, Lindor projects to finish one homer short, but does anyone want to bet against him these days? He and Soto could join Johnson and Strawberry as the second pair of Mets to reach 30/30 in the same season; the only other pair of teammates to go 30/30 played for the 1996 Rockies: Ellis Burks (40 HR, 32 SB) and Dante Bichette (31 HR, 31 SB).
• Arozarena has already set a career high in homers, and could pair with Rodríguez to join the short list of 30/30 teammates. Meanwhile, he’s the only player besides Ramírez to hit least 20 homers and steal at least 20 bases in each of the past five seasons; Rodríguez and Witt are the only ones with four such seasons, and they didn’t debut until 2022.
• Neto finished with 23 homers and 30 steals last year. He projects for a closer miss this time around, but he’s hitting the ball a lot harder, and 10 of those homers have come since the start of August, so don’t count him out.

Admittedly, there’s a trivial element to reaching 30/30; we know that a 35-homer, 29-steal season may be more valuable, for example. To these eyes at least, the combination of those two round numbers is a link to baseball history. After all, it’s not every day that a player deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Willie Mays, Bonds… and (very possibly) Soto.