The San Diego Padres made the biggest splash of any team in Major League Baseball at the trade deadline when they acquired stars such as Josh Hader and Juan Soto.
But the Juan Soto era in San Diego was not off to a great start, as the Padres had lost five games in a row.
However, last night, the tone changed a bit.
San Diego had lost the first game of their three-game set with the San Francisco Giants on Monday and fell into an early hole on Tuesday in the second game.
But Soto made sure to fire up his teammates in the dugout after the Giants took an early lead, and it paid dividends as the Padres came back to snap their skid.
Manny Machado said that after the top of the first (and after LaMonte Wade Jr.'s home run), Juan Soto came in and "started screaming at the dugout, like, 'Let's go. We got this.' He tried to motivate the guys, and he set that tone from the get-go."
— Dennis Lin (@dennistlin) August 10, 2022
Soto Breaks The Ice
Soto is already pretty popular out in San Diego.
Just a few games into his tenure with the Padres, he’s already showing off his elite leadership skills.
Not only that, but they paid off.
The Padres were in desperate need of a win on Tuesday night, and they got it.
Soto was able to motivate his teammates and help get the Padres up off the mat after being shut out in back-to-back games.
It had been a total of 26 innings since the Padres had even scored a run, but they busted out the bats on Tuesday and responded quite well to Soto’s dugout speech, with Soto even hitting his first home run as a member of the Padres.
At the end of the day, the Soto addition is going to pay off for the Padres.
It just took them a few games to get acclimated after making some changes, but now they’re back in full force.
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