Juan Soto grew close with Mets 1B coach Antoan Richardson last season.
From early in his first spring training with the club, Richardson made it a point of working with Soto to improve some of the weakest areas of his game — outfield defense and baserunning.
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All of that hard work the two put in certainly paid off.
Soto has long been one of MLB’s most prolific hitters, but with the help of Richardson he added a new element to his game, finishing tied atop the National League with 38 stolen bases.
That more than doubled his career-high, which he tied two years ago in San Diego (12).
“We’ve put in a lot of work,” Soto said after joining the 30-30 club. “Antoan did an unbelievable job. He’s been helping me since Day 1, so I give all of the credit to him — he’s the one who put me in this situation and in this spot to do what I’ve done.”
And it wasn’t just Soto who Richardson helped, as the Mets stole the fifth-most bases in baseball as a team (147) and were caught the second-fewest times (18).
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But the two grew particularly close over the course of Soto’s first season in orange and blue, so he was sad to see Richardson leave the organization for the division rival Braves last week.
“It was really sad,” he told reporters including Newsday’s Laura Albanese at the MLB Awards. “But you’ve got to understand it’s a business at the end of the day — still the business of the game and you’ve got to take it like a man and move forward.”
New York still hasn’t filled Richardson’s spot on the coaching staff.
