It didn’t take much time for Soto to make right on his game ending strikeout from opening day. He turned on a 96 MPH cutter from Hunter Brown that was up-and-in on his hands and blasted it nearly 400 ft deep into the right field stands. Regular hitters can’t do things like that. Soto is not a regular hitter, though. It’s only been two games, but he looks comfortable and downright thrilled to be a Met.

Unfortunately, the final at-bat was the memorable one today. Facing Josh Hader with the tying run on base, Soto struck out. He actually got ahead 3-0 in the plate appearance, but then he took a slider right down the middle and swung at ball four twice, with the last of those being a checked swing on a slider way off the plate.

Soto victimized Cardinals’ right-hander Michael McGreevy in the first inning, crushing a full-count cutter for a 396-foot (111.4 mph EV) solo shot to open the scoring in the contest. He also plated Francisco Lindor with a run-scoring single in the sixth inning, pulling the Mets to within a run at 3-2. That would be as close as they would get. Soto seems to be enjoying his first spring training with the Mets, slashing an absurd .417/.462/1.000 with four homers and eight RBI in his first 24 at-bats.

The clear frontrunner for hypothetical Grapefruit League MVP honors this spring, Soto’s third-inning blast off Cardinals ace Sonny Gray raised his OPS to a surreal 1.556 mark. We ran out of superlatives to describe the generational talents exploits years ago, but it’s not hyperbolic to speculate that he could be on the verge of something special in his Mets debut.