Juan Soto is playing every bit like the player the New York Mets thought they’d be getting when they signed him to a 15-year, $765 million deal this offseason.

However, it wasn’t always like that.

Soto slumped to start the 2025 Major League Baseball season, which brought out all the critics and conspiracy theories over what was going wrong for the former New York Yankees slugger.

Amid that slump. Yankees announcer Michael Kay was often a leading voice in explaining why Soto wasn’t working out with the Mets. Kay notably said that he’d heard Soto wanted to return to the Yankees and was “unhappy” after signing with the Mets, which he did to appease his family. The broadcaster also chided Soto for admitting he was still adjusting to not hitting behind Aaron Judge. And he fought back against Mets fans who questioned his reporting.

Whatever issues were plaguing Soto in April and May, they appear to be behind him. This past week, he joined Darryl Strawberry as the second Met with 10-plus home runs and 20-plus walks in a calendar month. Between May 30 and June 25, he slashed .333/.486/.774 with 11 home runs, 20 RBI, 24 walks, and 24 runs. He also broke the record for most multi-homer games in MLB history by a player before turning 27 years old (27).

Kay wasn’t the only person who had some strong commentary about Soto’s state of mind during his season-starting slump, but it feels like he might have been who The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal had in mind when he chided unnamed critics for making it seem like the slugger was destined to fail with the Mets.

“If he was really that depressed, I don’t think he’d be playing the way he is now.”@Ken_Rosenthal says Juan Soto has been everything the Mets could’ve hoped for. 😤 pic.twitter.com/OJDBwm8FGX

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“It’s so interesting to me, even when he was struggling, he wasn’t that bad,” Rosenthal said on Friday’s episode of Foul Territory. “And there was all that noise around him, how he really wanted to play for the Yankees and not the Mets, and he was depressed. Well, if he’s really that depressed, I don’t think he’d be playing the way he is now.

“He’s playing at an extremely high level. There’s some numbers that will show you that. Home runs in June. He’s right there with Cal Raleigh and Eugenio Suarez. He’s been everything the Mets could have hoped for. Now, they’ve got other problems, of course, on the pitching end. But Soto, in addition to all that, is even stealing bases. So he is doing Juan Soto things. He had that amazing two-homer game the other night. Not so amazing for him, but it was the 27th of his career. It’s the most ever before turning 27 by any player in Major League history. He’s going to make a lot of history.

“And if he’s so miserable, boy, he plays out pretty well when he’s pretty down and out.”

The finger-pointing and strange critiques about Soto during his struggles always needed to be taken with a grain of salt, especially when coming from a guy with a vested interest in protecting the team who let the superstar get away. Now that it’s clear Soto has worked out whatever kinks were causing him problems, we can only wonder what excuses we’ll hear next.