Nationals’ Fearless Juan Soto used app to showcase dynamic personality

The 20-year-old seemed polished beyond his years, tormenting pitchers one minute, captivating the media another minute.

Juan Soto made it look easy with a powerful swing at the plate and a confident, if not cocky, personality off the field. He was a crossover hit, pun intended, with bilingual skills rarely seen from a kid who didn’t leave his native Dominican Republic until three years earlier.

Thankfully for Soto, he was given a crucial tool the day he signed as an international free agent.
Soon after giving Juan Soto a $1.5 million signing bonus in 2015, the Washington Nationals gave the 16-year-old phenom a Rosetta Stone app for his smartphone.

The app proved crucial in helping the outfielder show his true personality when he finally landed on baseball’s biggest stage as a dynamic 20-year-old this October.

When Soto signed at 16, he was already 6-foot-1 and 175 pounds with a radiant smile fit for Main Street and a potent bat that would shoot him to the majors much sooner than even the most optimistic observers had a right to expect when he signed.

Although he was only 10 years old when his father predicted that he would one day celebrate a birthday during a World Series, Soto was far from the polished, charismatic superstar who captivated America this past October while helping the Nationals win their first title in franchise history.

Soto, who celebrated his 21st birthday on Oct. 25, didn’t learn English growing up in the Herrera barrio of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Four years later, you could hardly tell that English was his second language.

If you didn’t know any better, you could have easily assumed he grew up speaking English in the Dominican enclave of Washington Heights in the Bronx, N.Y., or in Miami, Orlando or even Los Angeles.

“For me the key was just talking, talking with the media,” Soto said. “When I was in the minor leagues I studied an app in my phone. The team gave it to me. I just go out there with the app and then started talking with my teammates and everybody and started talking with the media. And don’t be afraid to say something. That’s how I learned.”

Few fans truly understand how much work players put in off the field to be ready for the majors. The development process extends far beyond the diamond as players adapt to life away from their native countries for the first time.

Soto spent his first season of professional baseball in the Nationals’ academy in the Dominican Republic before he played rookie ball in the United States as a 17 year-old.

“When we sign in the Dominican you got one year to just prepare and be ready,” Soto said. “In that year I studied in English. That was a rule. You have to make (time to spend) one hour on the app every day. From Monday to Saturday we got to do one hour, so six hours a week.“

Soto made plenty of progress with Rosetta Stone, which is a popular language-learning software that many Major League Baseball teams now use for their players.

Nonetheless, Soto still went through some culture shock after he reported to the Gulf Coast League Nationals in Florida in 2016.

At 17, he naively didn’t realize how much English he would be expected to understand when he landed in the United States for Rookie League ball.

Soto had assumed that he could ease into his new country without needing much English.

“I came to rookie ball and I never (thought) that I needed to start talking English in rookie ball,” Soto said. “I was surprised. I thought I got to start talking English later. Then when I saw that I said, ‘All right, I got to learn a little bit more, so I just graduated from the app and started talking to everybody.”

Soto hasn’t stopped talking. He was ready for the media spotlight when he made his major league debut with the Nationals as a 19-year-old on May 20, 2018, less than three years after he signed as an international free agent.

He is now one of the most promising young faces of baseball. He was a quote machine throughout the postseason, answering questions in English and Spanish for American and international media.
Even when his manager and teammates cringed after he carried his bat past first base after hitting a home
run in Game 6 of the World Series in response to the Astros’ Alex Bregman similar gesture, Soto smiled and admitted that he plotted the antic as soon as Bregman did it.

While Bregman apologized in one clubhouse, Soto owned his display. He didn’t hide behind an interpreter or pretend that he didn’t understand the unwritten rules. In English and Spanish Soto declared that he decided to do it because it looked fun when Bregman did it.

He didn’t need anybody to speak for him. He let his bat speak for him on the field and then explained himself in the clubhouse, the interview room or on the MLB Network set afterward.

He followed the best advice he received early in his career. It’s advice that he proudly shares for other Latin American players adjusting to a new language and new culture after leaving the Dominican Republic, Panama, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela or Puerto Rico.

“For the English, don’t be afraid,” he says. “There’s a lot of guys from the Dominican, Venezuela and whatever, and we come here and we know the language and we’re afraid to talk. That’s the first thing. Just don’t be afraid. Just talk. If you say anything wrong, just let them know if I say anything wrong let me know and start from that.”

Soto’s fearlessness has paid off on the field and off with the help of the Rosetta Stone app.

Featured Image: Jean Fruth