What Aaron Judge is to home runs, Juan Soto is to drawing walks. Not that the San Diego Padres star can't hit them out of the park, but of all his baseball skills, his plate discipline is what stands out the most. That was highlighted anew when he got issued a free pass during Wednesday night's game against the visiting St. Louis Cardinals at Petco Park.

When Cardinals reliever JoJo Romero walked Juan Soto in the eighth inning of that game, Soto became the fastest player to collect a total of 500 career walks since 1906, as pointed out by Ben Verlander of Fox Sports.

Juan Soto's plate discipline is legendary in the MLB. This season alone, he has a 20.8 walk rate — the highest in the big leagues. He is the only qualified player with walk rate higher than 16.0 percent. He leads the majors by a mile with 127 walks. Judge is second with 94 and he's only got a 14.6 BB%. What's even more impressive is that Juan Soto has  an excellent 14.0 strikeout rate. Max Muncy, who is second overall with a 15.8 BB% owns a 25 K%. Judge's strikeout rate, meanwhile, is at 25%.

Among all players in the majors since Juan Soto arrived in the big leagues in 2018, he holds the best walk rate of 19.1%.

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Yankees' Juan Soto on left, Yankees' Aaron Judge on right. MLB World Series Trophy in middle. Yankee Stadium background.

Joey Mistretta ·

Without a doubt, Soto is one of the best talents in the MLB today, and at just 23 years old, you can just imagine how many more records and incredible statistical feats he could achieve in his baseball career.

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