Year one of Juan Soto doesn’t seem to have the MVP caliber vibes we had hoped for. However, things have been much better over the last month+. Speculation about what took him so long to start shuffling again and looking like the superstar player we know he can be headlined a lot of the talk in the first few weeks of the New York Mets season. His numbers are, rather than coming back down to earth, starting to ascend into the heavens.

Soto isn’t going to finish the season with multiple Mets records. However, there is one he’s well on his way to smashing, or at least passively watching take place.

Juan Soto is going to walk more than any other Mets player in a single season

Through 90 games this season, Soto has walked 72 times. The current pace has him reaching near  his career 162 game average of 133. Only John Olerud, with 125 in 1999, was able to get to triple digits. Soto, with an average of .8 per game this year, should be at around 129.

Olerud’s walk percentage of 17.3% in 1999 isn’t a number anyone thought much about 26 years ago. Soto is already besting it at 18.1%, the same total he had last year. In fact, only his first two seasons at 16% and 16.4% were lower than what Olerud posted in his record-setting Mets campaign.

The only surprise with Soto walking this much is how excellent of a year Pete Alonso is having behind him. Soto hasn’t always had the offensive firepower as Alonso this year and yet teams continued to fear him. Soto is, of course, a master of the strike zone. A lot of the credit falls on him and not just the opponent’s having yellow bellies.

Multiple 3 walk games piling up, Soto’s elite OBP ability isn’t what lands him on posters in children’s bedrooms. It is, however, what makes him a greater threat than other hitters who swing a little more freely.

You don’t pay someone a record contract to take pitches. You give them $765 million to select when they put one into the Coca-Cola corner.