Since getting called up to the majors on May 20th, rookie outfielder Juan Soto has raked for the Washington Nationals. In 23 games, he’s slashing .312/.404/.571 with five homers and is helping the Nationals keep pace with the first place Atlanta Braves in the NL East.
On Monday, the 19-year old did something even more incredible – he hit a home run in a game before his MLB debut.
Wait, what?
The Nationals-Yankees game on Monday is the completion of a suspended game from May 15th, when Soto was still playing in the minors for AA Harrisburg.
I’m all for weird baseball things so today’s suspended game between the Yankees and Nationals should be fun.
Especially if/when Juan Soto plays in a game that technically happened before his Major League debut
— Jamal Collier (@JamalCollier) June 18, 2018
one small silly quirk I will especially enjoy if Soto gets in this game: since he was playing in a game with AA Harrisburg when the NYY/WAS game started on May 15, the game logs will have him playing in two different games in two different cities at the same time on the same day https://t.co/hl015uhXoG
— Cespedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) June 18, 2018
Essentially, Soto’s game today (and his home run) will go down in the books as happening on May 15th, when he was still in AA playing for the Harrisburg Senators in Bowie, Maryland (even though it happened a month later).
Weird things happen in baseball. This is one of them.
That’s either his first career home run or sixth home run of the season. Idk idk
— Jamal Collier (@JamalCollier) June 18, 2018
Years from now, people are going to look at Juan Soto’s rookie season and be awfully confused at what happened in May.
Baseball-Reference has already run into this situation with Barry Bonds, and it’s not exactly an easy situation to deal with.
For anyone curious about how we'll handle it if Juan Soto enters the game today, which is the conclusion of a game that was suspended 5 days before he made his MLB debut https://t.co/Y0rB1wMRyW
— Baseball Reference (@baseball_ref) June 18, 2018
Congratulations, Juan Soto – you’re so good at baseball that you’ve confused everyone and broken the time-space continuum.
This is my opinion should not have been allowed. As I remember, it used to be you could ONLY use players who were on the roster at the time the original game took place on May 15 in this case when a game resumed unless a team got permission from the League President and/or Commissioner. As that was the case, without such permission Soto should not have been eligible to play in the completion of the suspended game.