“Hey,” Starling Marte said to Juan Soto, grabbing him by both shoulders and forcing him to turn around. “This is what we do.”
It was the afternoon of May 1, and Soto had just hit his second home run of the game. He returned to the dugout, high-fived a few teammates, and appeared ready to move on with his day.
Marte, a smiling presence in a hoodie lurking behind Soto, saw the chance for a teaching moment. He nudged his younger teammate, then took hold of his upper body and spun him forward. Soto looked at the camera, flashing a pair of peace signs and a forced smile. Not good enough, not at Citi Field in the post-OMG era. Marte slapped Soto’s helmet; that induced a broad smile and ended the moment on high note.
“Whenever any of us hits a home run, we pose in front of the camera,” Marte said through an interpreter Sunday at Yankee Stadium. “When he hit that home run, he was about to just kind of go put his stuff back, and I pushed him. I said, ‘Hey, this is what we do.’ So now, if you ever see when he hits a home run, he’s there posing.”
It was a small lesson, but indicative of the way that Marte has proven invaluable during Soto’s transition from the businesslike Yankees to the vibey Mets. Without fanfare, the veteran has devoted considerable time and energy into serving as an elder statesman to Soto and other young Mets.
“He’s a quiet leader,” says manager Carlos Mendoza. “He’s not going to go out of his way in front of people, but he will go out of his way when nobody sees it. That’s what makes him a special person. He’s very calm, and when he speaks — man, people listen.”
Soto and Marte are both natives of the Dominican Republic and have known one another since Soto’s minor league days. When the Mets signed Soto, it meant pushing Marte, a two-time All-Star, into a job as a part-time designated hitter.
“I had to talk to him about his role,” Mendoza says. “We’re signing a player for the right field position, so you have to have that conversation right away. Right away, he understood. The first thing he said was, ‘I want to be a Met. I want to win with the Mets.’ That went a long way for me. After that it was, what can I do to help Juan?”
Says Marte: “Since we’ve known each other for a long time, I felt like it was my responsibility once he signed to try to make him feel more comfortable. Obviously, he’s been on big-market teams and teams with a lot of guys before, but now he’s new here, and a lot of us have been here together for quite a while.
“Maybe when he got here, he didn’t feel as comfortable because he didn’t have that same type of familiarity with all of us. So I took that responsibility to bring him into the group and try to make it feel more comfortable.”
Soto was not available for comment prior to Sunday’s game, but another of Marte’s acolytes, Mark Vientos, praised his leadership and ability to spot small advantages and tendencies within a game.
“He has helped me out a lot,” Vientos said. “He’s a team leader. It’s year fourteen for him, and he’s still at it with the same mentality. The game is super slow for him.”
Like Vientos, Soto is a young man who appreciates tough and honest mentorship. Unlike Vientos or anyone else in the game, he carries not only the largest contract in the history of American sports to his new job in Queens, but the weight of unfathomable expectations from a fan base whose very identity shifted after his arrival.
Folks in the organization believe that Soto has made significant progress settling in — smiling more of late, and getting closer to the theatrical flow that has long made him the most exciting hitter in baseball.
“I see him talking to teammates all the time, sitting down with his teammates,” Marte said. “It’s nice to see because that’s what you want with a guy who’s gonna be here for so long. I expect to see a lot more of that going on this year and for the next 15 years.”
On Friday night at Yankee Stadium, Soto even brought back a modified version of his famous shuffle, which has been missing for most of the season.
“I mean, it wasn’t with too much swag,” Marte said with a smile. “I think once he starts to feel himself a little more, you’re gonna start seeing it really coming out.”
Whenever it does, the team will know that Marte helped to bring it out — and that Soto’s inevitable success as a Met will form part of Marte’s own legacy here, long after he is gone.
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