Over five months after signing a record-setting contract, perennial All-Star Juan Soto officially joined the New York Mets on Monday night.
When you play in Queens, your first true Mets moment has nothing to do with a home run or clutch strikeout. It’s when you get a reaction from Barstool Sports star and noted Mets superfan Frank Fleming.
Fleming unleashed on Soto in a series of Twitter/X posts both during and after the Mets’ 3-1 loss to the Boston Red Sox. Soto went 1-for-4 and controversially failed to hustle out of the box on a ball that hit the Green Monster.
The loss dropped Soto’s average to .246 and knocked the Mets out of first place. Soto and teammates had held sole possession atop the NL East since April 13, though they now trail the Philadelphia Phillies by half a game.
“He plays with no [emotion],” Fleming wrote. “[Now] he’s [sucked] the energy out of the Mets.”
Given the profanity involved, we can’t share most of Fleming’s posts, but it’s clear he already has significant concerns about Soto’s fit in Queens.
“Juan Soto is not even giving [competitive] at-bats,” he told his nearly 300,000 X followers.
Another post: “He’s been [miserable] all season and now it’s catching up.”
Soto enters Tuesday with a career-low .815 OPS through 210 plate appearances. At one point, Fleming even compared Soto to Bobby Bonilla, the former Mets outfielder who will earn nearly $1.2 million every July for the next decade following a 1999 buyout agreement.
Juan Soto thought he got all of this one so he watched it out of the box…
It ended up being a long single. 💀
(🎥: @Snytv)pic.twitter.com/xoECmhQbdY
— theScore (@theScore) May 20, 2025
Fleming ripped Soto for “pathetic” at-bats and called the team “lifeless” amid their 8-8 May.
“This is feeling like the 2023 Mets again where there is something wrong and [it’s] a fractured team,” Fleming wrote.
Regardless of how the Mets season turns out, we get the sense that Soto won’t be joining Fleming on a walk down the Manhattan streets anytime soon.
Related: Mets Fans Have Words for Yankee Stadium After Home Run
Related: Fans Outraged Over What Umpire Did in Mets-Yankees
