Laura Albanese: Should Juan Soto really need to be playing at all?
Mets' Juan Soto looks on against the San Diego Padres at Citi Field on Aug. 17, 2026. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Juan Soto uncorked, sending a ball soaring to the second deck at Citi Field — a common enough occurrence in his two-year tenure here. Shortly after, he was chugging around the bases, stopping at second before turning back.
There was, of course, no one in the stands to cheer him on. This was hours before the Mets were set to take on the Brewers on Wednesday night, and part of Soto’s “progression” — this nebulous, timeline free crawl toward maybe playing a few meaningless games down the stretch.
And maybe you’re in the group that doesn’t see the point to all this. This is Soto’s second calf injury this year, and it’s imperative that he doesn’t do something disastrous while attempting a return — say, tear his Achilles. But throughout, the Mets have been insistent on two things: 1. They will be cautious, but 2. That getting him back on the field is still the end goal. Soto has said as much, too.
Frankly, the logic here is starting to sound pretty good (as long as that when the Mets say “cautious,” what they actually mean is, “really, profoundly, prodigiously cautious.”)
We saw evidence of that Tuesday, when Francisco Lindor soared through the air to make a snag on a ninth-inning flare that would have given the Brewers the lead, and then came back in the 10th to score the winning run. When he made that first play, the effervescent Jefry Yan was on the mound, going to all fours to smack the ground in jubilation. Lindor roared. When he scored the run, his teammates — led by Yan — bounded out of the dugout to celebrate as if any of this really matters.
Because for them, it does. It does for Soto, too. And that’s a good thing.
“We’re playing to win baseball games,” interim manager Andy Green said Tuesday. “Fans are showing up in a pretty impressive way given where we are in the context of the season right now. (We’re) grateful for that. I think (Soto) wants to be a part of winning baseball and having him in the lineup makes everybody quite happy . . . There are games to be played and games to be won and competed in, and he’s a competitor and he loves playing baseball.”
Going into Wednesday, FanGraphs had the Mets playoff odds at 0.0%. Their 13-6 record since Aug. 4 is tied for the best in baseball during that stretch, but the teams in front of them in the wild card standings are playing pretty well, too, meaning they’re 10 1/2 games back with 30 left to play, and seven teams between them and the last spot.
But they’re showing something valuable right now. On Tuesday, they took down the best team in baseball, and many of these August wins have come against teams deep in the playoff hunt. They have the sixth-hardest strength of schedule remaining, according to Tankathon, but for the first time all season, it feels like this odd, young crew can go nose to nose with any of them.
There’s a heartbeat that wasn’t there before, and as one of its leaders and its most valuable asset, Soto can be the blueprint — he can show rookie players that “meaningless” is what you make of it.
A week and a half ago, president of baseball operations David Stearns was asked what value he saw in both Soto and Devin Williams returning to play out the stretch. “I think there’s a peace of mind aspect for the players sometimes to come back and our goal is to show up and compete and win every night,” he said. “We’ve got baseball games left.”
Green wryly noted that even if Soto didn’t get into any baseball games, “however it ended, he’d be confident the next year was going to go really well . . . and rightfully so.”
So really, it’s just for that second part. Competitors compete until the end. But you didn’t see too much of that earlier this season: Early deficits felt insurmountable, morale was low, and as the losses kept piling up, their demise began feeling inevitable. The prophecy self-fulfilled, and here we are at the tail end of August debating whether one of the best hitters in baseball really needs to be playing at all, state of his calf notwithstanding.
That’s no way to build a winning culture, and no way to lead.
That said, Soto’s rehab is fluid by necessity. That’s what the “progression” is all about. They try something, they wait, they see how the calf responds. The only way he gets activated is if he feels “nothing in the calf,” Green said. Extra time isn’t a setback, because the goal is the peace of mind in knowing he’s fully healthy.
In the end, it will be up to the trainers, but Soto, too.
“We’ll let how he feels dictate his timeline more than our needs,” Green said. “There are moments you’re sitting on pins and needles, waiting for your best players to get back on the field and as badly as we want that, we understand where we are right now. His timeline is dictated by what he feels on a daily basis.”
It’s about as reasonable an approach you can take, save for encasing Soto in carbonite and thawing him out in time for spring training.
But sure, if Soto can play, let him play. And let him (and the Mets) find some meaning in the abyss.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
