Is Juan Soto the Game’s Greatest Hitter?

Also: Where have the .300 hitters gone? And how about another JoeBlogs Connections game?

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*If you would like to order the book—and I highly recommend it—you can get 30% off and free shipping at the Rutgers University Press website by entering RUSA30 at checkout.

So I saw this headline on the Yankees game story from MLB.com.

Soto’s first 3-HR game has Yanks gawking: ‘He’s the greatest hitter in the game’

And I immediately thought to myself: There’s no way that Yanks—plural—are saying that. The only Yankee who can get away with saying that about Juan Soto is Aaron Judge. And sure enough… it was Aaron Judge who said it.

“That’s who he is,” Judge said after Soto’s breathtaking game. “That’s why he’s the greatest hitter in the game.”

Even as a fairly well-known Yankees hater, I can’t help but think that in Judge and Soto, we are seeing the greatest back-to-back hitters any of us have ever seen. Here, in chronological order, is a complete list of all the AL/NL hitter combos where each had a 165 or better OPS+.