Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning during the regular season you’ll get a fresh, topical story to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
The baseball world is full of statistical anomalies. Paul Goldschmidt is slugging .687 against sliders. Max Muncy is hitting .147 against fastballs. Shohei Ohtani has bumped the velocity on his fastball by 2.6 mph. Martín Pérez has thrown 464 consecutive sinkers without allowing a home run since last September. Major league catchers are hitting .223—the worst ever.
But no fact is more surprising this year than this: Juan Soto is the worst hitter in baseball against breaking pitches. Entering Sunday, when he dumped a single into left field off a slider from Rangers righthander Glen Otto, Soto was hitting .067 against breaking pitches. He has five hits all season against spin.
