Yankees’ Juan Soto feeling ‘noticeably better,’ likely to do some hitting Sunday
The Yankees were without their superstar outfielder Juan Soto for the second straight game on Saturday night and it led to an ugly lopsided 11-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Aside from Aaron Judge, who stayed hot with a pair of homers, the rest of New York’s offense has struggled mightily in Soto’s absence as they’ve scored just four runs over their brief losing streak.
The 26-year-old is expected to remain sidelined for a few more days as he works his way through some left elbow inflammation, but postgame it sounded like Aaron Boone feels he’s heading in the right direction.
“Today he felt really good, noticeably better in his eyes,” the skipper said. “It was important that yesterday he didn’t do much of anything baseball-related to try to calm it down. It sounded like he felt a lot better today.”
Boone added that Soto was able to go through his normal prep work without any issues, and while he wasn’t sure if he did any hitting, he expects he’ll do some on Sunday if everything feels good when he arrives.
The Yanks have been optimistic that the slugger will be able to avoid a trip to the injured list, but they’ll likely continue to take things on a day-by-day basis moving forward.
While they can’t afford to lose him for an extended period of time, there’s no denying that this offense would benefit greatly from getting their sweet-swinging lefty back in the mix sooner rather than later.
Before the injury, Soto was hitting a stellar .318 with three triples, 11 doubles, 17 home runs, 46 walks, 53 RBI, a .424 on-base percentage, and a 1.027 OPS over his first 64 games in pinstripes.
