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SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic – Rusty razor wire runs atop a chain-link fence that separates Estadio Pepe Luca from Calle Yolanda Guzman, but stray dogs walk in through a gap at the bottom.
Trainer Rafael Zapata, or “Papé,” minds the gate. Mets outfielder Juan Soto arrived at the facility when he was 5 years old and worked mostly as a pitcher prior to Zapata coaching him a few years later.
At 14, Soto was set to test his arm’s professional value, but Zapata wondered if Soto was better suited long term as a hitter in an international prospect class that lacked lefty power hitters. Colleagues laughed at Zapata.
To hone Soto’s hand-eye coordination, Zapata gave him a tennis racket to reinforce the need to follow through. Two years later, Soto received a $1.5 million signing bonus from the Washington Nationals. Zapata reinvested his 10% cut of the deal by building a batting cage with a pitched roof of corrugated metal. Padlocks kept out overnight interlopers.
“The whole world thought I was crazy,” Zapata says in his office as he eyes team photos with Soto in them. “I saw something in his bat.”
Few pivots have spurred greater dividends. Soto, 26, left the Yankees in December to sign a 15-year, $765-million contract with the Mets that made him the highest-paid athlete in sports. Booed at Yankee Stadium upon his return for the Subway Series this weekend, derision of Soto as a mercenary is drowned out by a mixture of merengue music and moped horns amid Caribbean storms back home. To Dominican denizens, he is a model for how to develop completely in modern baseball.
“Everyone wants to be Juan Soto right now — not just in the Dominican but the world,” says Junior Noboa, the 60-year-old former Mets infielder who is the commissioner of the Dominican Baseball League. “They are watching and following him. We are very proud of that kid.”
Dominoes continue to fall in the Dominican‘s favor. In the country with a population of 11 million that produces the most Major League Baseball players outside the U.S., children try to replicate his powerful stroke from his leg kick to follow through. A World Series champion with the Nationals in 2019 and an American League pennant winner with the Yankees last year, he chases the hitting standard set by fellow Dominican Albert Pujols as he rounds out his game with a focus on improved base running and the pursuit of a Gold Glove.
“So many emotions going through my career,” Soto says. “I’ve been blessed with a lot of things, and I am more than thankful for that.”
Coaches encourage charges not only to mimic Soto’s swing but to adapt his discipline in discerning pitches. At Estadio Pepe Luca, aspiring Sotos in Zapata’s program throw yellow rubber balls against a cinderblock wall to test their reaction times and instincts. So many balls have struck the wall that green paint has faded; holes have formed. A name spray painted in black reminds them of the standard they chase.
“Soto Hola,” it reads.
‘Young boy on a mission’
Soto was born in the Los Rios section of Santo Domingo in 1998 and grew up between a younger brother, Elian, and older sister, Natali, on the second floor of a yellow house in the Herrera neighborhood of the Dominican Republic’s capital. Roosters could be heard starting at dawn. When it rained, local roads become rivers in the metropolis that lacked proper drainage. Denizens peddled fresh pineapples and papayas to passersby. A lottery store stood next door.
His mother, Belkis, was an accountant, and his father, Juan Sr., was a salesman who moonlit as a catcher in a local men’s league. They sent Juan to Movearte, a private school, and shuttled him to ballfields across the country’s capital. For sustenance, he ate his mother’s platanos maduros and costillas de puerco, or sweet fried plantains and pork ribs.
“They were the number ones,” Soto says of his parents. “They were there every day since Day 1, believing in me, cheering for me and being there in every step that I take in my life.”
When he was 5 years old, he played for Alberto Disla in the Vecinitos program. Then he joined Zapata’s team. They traveled abroad to Puerto Rico and Colombia for tournaments. Domestically, they played at Estadio La Normal, a ballpark where Jackie Robinson once starred with the Dodgers.
No matter the stage, Soto strove to sharpen his skill. Zapata had one data point when he moved Soto off the mound. A year earlier, he felt a similar urge to transition Sauris Mejia to the outfield, and it led him to a deal with the Tigers. In Soto, Zapata saw greater power and potential. They worked together at all hours. Finally, the day before a showcase for scouts in 2015, Soto worked out for Zapata on the Olympic training grounds at 6 a.m.
John Dipuglia had first scouted the Dominican Republic when he was worked for the St. Louis Cardinals. Back then, signing bonuses were $500. As he studied the scouting reports on Soto in his role as the head of the Nationals’ international scouting department, he noted his steadiness and consistency in addition to his preternatural talent.
“You saw two parents, which is a plus. You don’t see that often,” Dipuglia says. “Well groomed, good handshake. Very professional answers to your questions. You knew the kid had structure. The way he put his uniform on, how he presented himself was a plus. There were a lot of good checks on the checkpoint list.”
Zapata recalls that the first offer from the Nationals was for $300,000. That was the floor for his value, and it eventually grew to $1.5 million as another trainer, Christian Batista, counseled Soto on the marketplace. The signing meant Soto had to move 21 miles east to Boca Chica, where the Nationals maintained a baseball academy across the street from a Catholic cemetery where crypts were visible through the trees from a practice field.
“He was a young boy on a mission,” Dipuglia says.
Injuries slowed Soto early on, but he used idle time well, studying English via Rosetta Stone tapes with an eye on conducting interviews stateside. Once he was healthy, his rise accelerated quickly. Tearing through five minor-league levels in short order, he leapt from Double A straight to the majors as a 19-year-old in 2018, becoming only the ninth teenager to join the big leagues in the previous 16 years. During the Nationals’ World Series run the next year, he reached base safely 28 times in 17 playoff games. His English was fluent.
“The same language process he went through, all the other Latin prospects do, and they don’t know English 10 years later,” Dipuglia says.
Nelson Cruz, a Dominican who played 19 seasons in the majors before retiring following the 2023 season, met Soto in 2019, when the Nationals were in Minneapolis to play Cruz’s Twins. They kept in touch, and when Soto was the visitor, Cruz had his cousin, who doubled as his chef, cook Dominican food for him, as he did for other compatriots. In 2022, Cruz joined the Nationals, and for the first road trip during spring training — a 50-mile drive from West Palm Beach to Port St. Lucie to play the Mets — Soto asked if he could ride with Cruz.
“The whole trip, he was asking me questions about life,” Cruz says. “It was really interesting to see him interact and how curious he was. Since that day, I was like, ‘He is different.’ He always wants to grow, and he always wants to be on top of everything. Whatever he wants to do, he wants to be on top.”
When offered a 15-year, $440 million contract by the Nationals that year, Soto rejected it. He already was a generational hitter, but he was uncertain of the Nationals’ direction after falling off from the World Series, and he was betting that he could get more with a franchise intent upon winning.
The Nationals traded him to the Padres that summer. After a full season in San Diego, he was traded to the Yankees in December 2023 and, batting in front of AL MVP Aaron Judge, he reached the World Series last fall as he stitched together 41 home runs, a .288 batting average and .989 OPS before losing to the Dodgers.
Six weeks later, he signed a 15-year contract with the Mets for a record $765 million — after turning down a $760 million, 16-year offer from the Yankees. That’s why his homecoming to the Bronx this weekend has been punctuated with obscene gestures and insults. While Yankees fans feel betrayed, the Mets believe they have a superstar who can take them out of the Yankees’ shadows and deliver historic offensive numbers to help the Mets add to their two titles — on his way to Cooperstown.
“He doesn’t give up anything for him to be good,” Cruz says. “He wants to be the best he can be every day, and if that means tell his family or a friend, ‘I cannot go out today or I cannot do that.’ He is not willing to sacrifice anything to perform and be at his best every single day. I thought I was like a freak about my career, but then seeing him as a young player, I was like, ‘Wow, he is really special.’ He will play into his 40s because he knows even his diet, he is eating healthy now. He has built his own team. All the things he does is to be a good player.”
When Cruz retired, Soto had one more question. Cruz’s cousin, the chef, was now a free agent. Soto had taken to calling Cruz “Dad,” and asked, “Hey, Dad, can I hire your cousin?”
Soto employed the cousin last season with the Yankees, but pivoted to a new one when he joined the Mets, whose family-friendly atmosphere felt welcoming to Soto.
“I think his uncle is his chef now,” Cruz says.
Flight paths
Citi Field and Yankee Stadium are separated by 10 miles in New York, but the Mets and Yankees are even closer rivals in the Dominican town of Boca Chica, a rural area where locals lead horses across the road with ropes and puppies hide from a hard midday sun in the shade of gas station pumps.
It is only three miles from the international airport, and manicured baseball diamonds dot the landscape beneath the flight path. The New York teams both maintain baseball academies that are separated by a quarter mile to develop talented natives, and they have company, too. Down the same freshly paved road that leads to the Yankees gated complex, the Rockies and Cardinals train. The Rangers, Mariners, Phillies, Marlins and Twins operate within a relay throw, as well.
Since signing his contract, Soto has reflected on his path from the Nationals’ complex to being called up to the major leagues. In January, he attended the graduation ceremony at the Mets academy next door.
“It seems like long time ago, but not that long,” he says. “It feels like it was yesterday.”
Locals wonder how Soto, who returns to the Dominican each offseason and has spoken with upcoming Vecinitos players, will spend his money. Signing bonuses for top prospects now reach $5 million, and Soto appears in commercials for Presidente, the country’s most popular beer, and is a brand ambassador for Reserve Bank, the biggest in the nation.
Still, the poverty rate is high — 23% — with many Dominicans struggling through food and water insecurities. Soto has spoken with Cruz about how he has used his charitable foundation and previously donated around $200,000 to sponsor Dominican Olympians at the 2021 Games.
Soto keeps a tight circle and flies commercially. In February, when Noboa departed Santo Domingo for Florida to tour spring training sites, he was surprised to find Soto on his American Airlines flight.
“He was just sitting very humbly,” Noboa said. “Normal citizen.”
On Friday night, Santo Domingo fans gathered at their neighborhood bodegas and comaldos, where barefoot owners jerry-rigged extension cords to broadcast the Subway Series opener before restocking beers in the refrigerators. Many muted the volume as merengue music played. Between pitches, teens mimicked Soto’s signature shuffle, his bat grip and staredown of pitchers.
The next morning, children with holes in dirt-stained pants and stray dogs returned to Estadio Pepe Luca. The kids timed swings as coaches lobbed one ball after another and those who idled a few feet away picked up bottle caps and rocks to hit with aluminum bats. They finished by running sprints along the warning track.
Angel Liriano, a 50-year-old instructor who wore long sleeves and a hood to protect his skin from the sun on an 82-degree day, noted that they all want the Soto swing.
“Even the natural right-handers swing lefty now,” he says. “He is the model.”
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