Juan Soto’s return to Yankee Stadium in the opening game of the Subway Series did not go the way anyone in Queens or the Bronx would’ve wanted - unless, of course, you were grading him on how little he got done.
The conversation around Soto leaving the Yankees for the Mets before the 2025 season can wait. What happened on Friday night is simpler: he had a rough one, and then it got rougher. The bat never really showed up, and neither did the defense.
Soto finished 1-for-5, but the lone hit was easy to lose track of - a two-out single in the third, followed by Carlos Rodón retiring the next 10 batters. Before that, Soto struck out in the first inning, swinging through pinpoint Rodón cutters.
He did it again in the sixth. Then, in the eighth, he bounced into a groundout that made him one of only two batters Brent Headrick retired over 30 pitches; the other was Francisco Lindor on a liner that can only be described as "Holy shit, a complete and total accident".
The final at-bat was the one that sealed the mood. With Soto coming up as the tying run against David Bednar in Bednar’s second inning of work, he whiffed on two splitters and then grounded into a double play to end the game. The whole sequence looked harmless until it suddenly wasn’t.
Juan Soto hits into a game-ending double play pic.twitter.com/jfK7J6yDRK
- Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) September 12, 2026
His work in left field didn’t help the cause either. If Soto did come back too soon from his second calf strain of the season, then playing left at Yankee Stadium was always going to be a demanding ask.
In the bottom of the eighth, with one on and nobody out, Spencer Jones dropped a dunker in front of him and lost his helmet on the play. The effort, the source of the problem, was lacking.
One batter later, after both runners moved up on a bunt, Ryan McMahon sent what looked like a routine fly ball too shallow to score a run into left field. It turned into a single anyway, and Soto’s effort level appeared to dip even further. It was a rough night all around, and one that left the Yankees looking like the better team while the Mets showed plenty of fight and young talent.
For about an hour and a half late in the game, almost nothing went wrong for New York - unless Soto was involved. The rest of the series will have to look better for him. It really can’t look worse.
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