'We found it': Soto believes season is just starting as he finds swing

NEW YORK -- Much like the weather in New York, Juan Soto is beginning to heat up.

Soto had a season-high three RBIs to help the Mets to a sweep of the Cardinals with a 7-4 victory on a sunny, mild Sunday afternoon at Citi Field.

Brandon Nimmo provided some heroics, robbing Jordan Walker of a home run with a leaping catch at the wall in the sixth before snapping a 3-3 tie in the seventh after the Cardinals had tied the game in the top of the frame.

“They're both really fun,” Nimmo said. “It's hard to compare them, but it's a cool feeling, definitely, to rob the home run. Those don't come around quite as often. They both feel great; you're contributing to help the team win in both situations.”

Francisco Lindor belted the 22nd leadoff home run of his career and Clay Holmes tossed a season-high six innings, but Soto’s performance the past three days might have been the most encouraging sign of the sweep.

Soto went 2-for-3 with a double, a walk and a sacrifice fly on Sunday, driving in three runs while scoring another. In the final three games of the series, the right fielder went 5-for-10 with two walks, two runs scored and five RBIs, exceeding his hit and RBI totals from the previous eight games entering Friday (3-for-29, two RBIs).

“Players go through ups and downs,” Soto said. “It will never always go great. Through the year, it’s a long season and it’s a lot of at-bats. There are ups and downs, but whenever you click in and find your spot, that’s when everything starts.”

Soto hit a broken-bat sac fly to left-center in the third, pushing the Mets’ lead to 2-0. He singled to right field in the fifth, scoring on Pete Alonso’s RBI single to boost the lead to three.

After drawing a walk in the seventh, Soto took a swing in the eighth that may have given manager Carlos Mendoza and the Mets the most confidence moving forward, drilling a two-run double to left field to provide an important pair of insurance runs.

“When you see him driving the ball the other way with authority the way he did with that double in the gap, that's a good sign,” Mendoza said. “When he's going good, that's the A-swing there.”

Mendoza actually saw signs of that swing on Saturday, recalling a pair of foul balls that told the manager his slugger was close to breaking out.

“He fouled one off straight back, then he took a swing and fouled it off towards left field; I thought, ‘That’s what it is, right there,’” Mendoza said. “I even talked to him after the game and he said, ‘That's the one I'm looking for.’”

Soto has been working on “a lot of things” during his early-season struggles, but he said he found “something that clicked” after his first at-bat Sunday, one that ironically resulted in a called third strike.

“What we found after the first at-bat, it worked,” Soto said. “We're just going from there.”

So what did he find?

“I can't say that,” Soto said with a grin. “I’ve got to keep my secrets.”

On a day when the top four hitters in the Mets lineup combined to record seven of the team’s 11 hits while driving in six of the seven runs, the crowd seemed to have a little extra love for Soto, who has taken notice of the fans’ encouragement during his un-Soto-like start to the season.

“It's a great feeling when you have the fan base supporting you when you're doing bad, when you're doing good; it’s just great,” Soto said. “I really appreciate what they did; I feel like they don't know how meaningful that is.”

Nimmo believes Soto will be “as hot as a firecracker here pretty soon,” and based on his at-bats this weekend -- specifically that double in the eighth -- Soto seems confident that the worst is behind him.

“Every time I hit the ball the opposite way is when my swing is the best,” Soto said. “I felt like that swing was really good, there were definitely a couple more things that we had to look at, we found it, and now we're rocking.”