In the Dec. 7, 2023, blockbuster trade that sent Juan Soto to the Yankees, there was no shortage of notable players swapping teams and compelling storylines.
To acquire a superstar in his final year of club control, the Yankees sent five players to the Padres, headlined by starter Michael King, who would finish seventh in NL Cy Young Award voting for San Diego last season.
In the process, the Yankees also acquired outfielder Trent Grisham.
In his first year in the Bronx, Grisham was something of an afterthought, as the outfielder appeared in just 76 games, posted a .190/.290/.385 slash and accumulated 0.5 FanGraphs Wins Above Replacement. After years of dwindling production since his breakout during the shortened 2020 season (2.4 WAR and an .808 OPS in 59 games), it was fair to count on Grisham as a useful yet unexciting fourth outfielder.
What a difference a year makes. Through his first 36 games of the season, Grisham has an outrageous .283/.367/.628 slash line with a 1.4 WAR and 12 home runs, already surpassing his 2024 WAR and home run totals. He owns a 178 wRC+, not far from the 180 wRC+ Soto recorded for the Yankees last season.
It’s been an unexpected development for both the player and team, as Grisham has been a key cog in one of baseball’s best lineups and is doing his best Soto impression.
As fate would have it, Grisham’s Yankees begin a three-game series on Friday against the Mets, with Soto returning to the Bronx for the first time after signing a record-breaking deal with the other New York team over the offseason. The timing is perfect, as both Grisham and Soto enter the series scorching-hot for their respective teams.
Here’s how Grisham has found a new level at age 28 in what is his final year of club control.
All stats below are through Wednesday.
He’s owning the plate
Among Grisham’s many improvements at the plate, it’s his production on pitches in the zone that stands out the most.
Grisham has always possessed great plate discipline. Despite his career .217 batting average, Grisham has gotten on base at a .316 clip thanks to his 11.5 percent walk rate and 19.1 percent chase rate, while consistently ranking near the top of the chase leaderboards.
What Grisham was lacking from 2022-24, when he slashed .191/.298/.353, was production on in-zone pitches. When he got hittable pitches, Grisham wasn’t doing much damage on them.
Take a look how how drastic the changes have been.
Grisham on in-zone pitches from 2022-24 vs. 2025
Swing rate: 58.0% vs. 59.6%
Contact rate: 79.6% vs. 86.8%
Run value: -95 vs. +1
Expected wOBA: .287 vs. .416
OPS: .620 vs. .957
There are plenty of massive improvements on in-zone pitches to point to but none might be more notable than his run value, which essentially looks at how many runs a hitter creates based on the outcome of a pitch (ball, strike, HR, etc.). From 2022-24, Grisham cost his team 95 runs worth of run value on on-zone pitches, worse than all but nine hitters in that time. This year, he’s added one run.
“That’s where we do our damage [in the zone]. Pitchers make their pitches to get outs. That’s what makes the game go forward,” Grisham told MLB.com. “When they throw it over the center of the plate, we’re doing our best to get ready for those pitches.”
From 2022-24, Grisham’s .620 OPS was a whopping 139 points lower than the league-average .759 mark. This year, Grisham’s .957 OPS is well above the league-average .741 figure.
Grisham is also simply making more contact on the whole. Grisham’s 18.8 percent whiff rate ranks in the 82nd percentile and would easily represent a career high -- his previous best mark was 21.7 percent in 2021.
Pulling more balls in the air
Pulled balls in the air (line drives, fly balls and pop-ups) are easily the most valuable type of batted ball.
Hitters have slugged 1.327 on pulled air balls in the Statcast era (since 2015). Compare that to a .269 mark on any form of ground balls, and you can see why so many hitters have tried pulling more air balls, even those who you might not think of as prototypical sluggers.
Grisham has always produced pulled air balls at an above-average clip -- his 18.3 percent career rate is well north of the 16.6 percent league rate in the Statcast era. This year, though, Grisham has taken it up a notch.
Grisham from 2019-2024 vs. 2025
Pulled airball rate: 17.9% vs. 24.1%
Airball rate: 58.3% vs. 71.3%
Fly-ball rate: 27.7% vs. 43.7%
Of his 87 total batted balls, Grisham has pulled 21 of them, and those balls have produced a .714 batting average and a 2.000 slugging percentage. Nine of his 12 home runs have been pulled.
While one might assume Grisham has been the beneficiary of Yankee Stadium’s short porch in right field, seven of his 12 home runs have come on the road.
Swing improvements
Grisham’s bat-tracking metrics have also taken a step forward this season.
Grisham’s average bat speed has jumped from 70.4 mph in 2024 to 71.3 mph in 2025. While an additional mph doesn’t seem like much -- and his 71.3 mph clip only ranks in the 39th percentile -- it’s still a notable improvement.
On balls hit in the air, every one mph of added bat speed earns you approximately six more feet of distance. That additional six-ish feet of distance on his batted balls could very well be the difference between 12 home runs and, say, seven or eight home runs.
Grisham has also improved his ability to square up baseballs. In essence, squared-up rate tells you the percentage of swings that result in at least 80% of the maximum possible exit velocity based on the hitter’s bat speed and the speed of the pitch.
After squaring up 30.9 percent of the pitches he swung at last year, Grisham is up to 33.5 percent this season. That’s especially notable with his increase in bat speed, since he’s both swinging the bat harder and making better contact. That combination of bat speed and squaring up baseballs puts him in good company.
Highest squared-up rate for players with bat speed of 71 mph or higher
221 qualifying hitters
- Alex Bregman: 37.4% (71.5 mph bat speed)
- Jorge Polanco: 36.7% (72.1 mph bat speed)
- Juan Soto: 35.6% (73.3 mph bat speed)
- Maikel Garcia: 34.9% (71.9 mph bat speed)
- Alec Bohm: 34.6% (71.6 mph bat speed)
- Alejandro Kirk: 34.2% (72.0 mph bat speed)
- (tied) Trent Grisham: 33.5% (71.4 mph bat speed) // Alec Burleson: 33.5% (71.9 mph bat speed)
The overall changes have been drastic across the board for Grisham. For him, it’s come down to the mental side of things rather than any broader swing changes or differences in approach.
"Nothing’s changed, really. More work on mentality and mental skills, more than anything, the past two years. I set a pretty good foundation last year, and it’s come to fruition a little bit here in this first month,” Grisham said.
"Different mental skills. Mental fortitude. Acceptance. Just a bunch of little mental skills that add up. My head’s in the right spot every day. At this level, it’s everything. Everybody here has got more talent than you can dream of and imagine. The talent kind of levels out, and it’s who brings it mentally day in and day out -- who can get over failure, who can put what just happened behind them and keep going forward.”
Based on Grisham’s on-field changes and his head being in the right place, we’re seeing the optimal version of his skillset. And while it’d be far-fetched to think Grisham will keep up at this pace the whole season or fully replace Soto’s absence, he’s been an integral part of the Yankees' offense.
The 28-year-old is also posting career-best numbers at an optimal time, as Grisham is entering the final months of club control before he reaches free agency for the first time in his career.
MLB.com's Theo DeRosa contributed to the reporting of this article