Jun 10, 2018; Washington, DC, USA; Washington Nationals right fielder Juan Soto (22) singles against the San Francisco Giants during the second inning at Nationals Park. Mandatory Credit: Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

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.

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.

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.

Congratulations, Juan Soto – you’re so good at baseball that you’ve confused everyone and broken the time-space continuum.

About Joe Lucia

I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.

1 thought on “Nationals rookie Juan Soto homered in a game that took place before his major league debut

  1. 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.

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