Juan Soto has no illusions about the kind of reception he’ll receive for his much-anticipated Bronx return Friday night.

Soto, who left the New York Yankees six weeks after their World Series loss to sign with the New York Mets on a record-setting 15-year, $765 million contract, knows that all eyes will be squarely on him when he makes his first trip back to Yankee Stadium for the opener of a three-game series between the two division leaders.

And he knows fans won’t exactly be welcoming him with open arms.

“It’s going to be 50,000 against one,” Soto told the New York Post. “They’re going to try to get on me, you know. It’s part of it.

“Whatever they do, they have a right to do it.”

Soto’s departure followed months of speculation over whether he would stay or go. Toward the end of last season and into a postseason run where the Yankees made their first World Series appearance since 2009, the affection between Soto and the fans was evident and highlighted by daily “re-sign Soto” chants.

Soto ultimately rejected the Yankees’ 16-year, $760 million offer, opting instead to sign the richest contract in professional sports history to join the Mets.

Though Soto said he’s still “adjusting to the new team,” he emphasized that he has no regrets.

“No, no. I made a decision, and I’m happy that I made it,” Soto told the Post. “You look around. We have an unbelievable team. And it’s going to be a good team for a long time.”

Soto is hitting .255 with eight homers and 20 RBIs, and he’s 13-for-45 (.289) in his past 12 games after hitting .241 in the first month of the season. He has batted second in the order between Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso for every game except Wednesday, when he was given the night off for a rainy 4-0 loss to the visiting Pittsburgh Pirates.

The Mets, who took the World Series champion Dodgers to six games in the 2024 NLCS, have been in first place every day since April 11 and are 6-3 in their past nine games.

Meanwhile, the Yankees used some of the money they’d hoped to spend on Soto to sign starting pitcher Max Fried and seven-time All-Star first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, the 2022 National League MVP. They also acquired two-time All-Star outfielder Cody Bellinger, the 2019 NL MVP, in a trade.

Those additions give the lineup more depth beyond six-time All-Star outfielder Aaron Judge, the 2022 and 2024 American League MVP who is leading the major leagues with a .412 batting average, 15 homers and 41 RBIs.

“I think it’ll be really exciting for the fan bases,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said of the weekend series with the Mets, “especially all that’s going on in New York right now with the Knicks hopefully on the verge of a series win and us playing the Mets and all that goes with that. Hopefully, the weather is good and it provides for an exciting weekend for our city.”

For his part, Soto echoed Boone’s sentiment, saying his return to Yankee Stadium is “going to be fun.”

“It’s going to be good,” he said. “We’re going to have a good time.”

Field Level Media contributed to this report.

Aaron Judge is at it again. A season after running away with AL MVP honors, the New York Yankees superstar is off to the best start of his career, batting .412 and already producing 4.0 WAR a quarter of the way into the 2025 season.

Can Judge keep this up? Will he top his own AL record for home runs? And can anyone keep him from winning a Triple Crown or repeating as unanimous MVP?

We set over/unders based on Judge’s ridiculous pace and asked our MLB experts to predict where his otherworldly season will go from here.

Aaron Judge’s xBA is .362. Will his actual batting average for the season be over/under that?

Jorge Castillo: Under. One player has batted at least .350 over a full season since 2010: Luis Arraez, whose contact-first approach is so extreme that he has drawn comparisons to Tony Gwynn. Not one player has finished a season .360 or better since Joe Mauer in 2009. In short, it’s just super difficult to sustain such a high average nowadays when hitting is harder than ever.

Judge’s .481 BABIP is significantly higher than his career mark of .344 entering the season, which strongly suggests a regression in this department is coming. Simply winning the batting title would be an extraordinary accomplishment for the 6-foot-7 slugger.

Bradford Doolittle: Under. All told, Judge’s xBA is .340 since he changed his batting stance last season. Month by month, he has topped .362 twice — the current month and last May — post-tweak. He has mostly been over .300 each month but has been as low as .277. So .362 is too high, but .340, a realistic target, is pretty amazing itself.

Jeff Passan: Under. He is currently batting .410 — with a .481 average on balls in play. Judge’s lifetime BABIP is .351. Even if he winds up hitting .400 on balls in play, the sheer volume of strikeouts — he’s punching out in 20.9% of his plate appearances — severely limits anyone’s ability to post an average as high as .360. The highest K rate ever for a hitter over .360 was Andres Galarraga at 14.4% (when he hit .370 for the 1993 Rockies). It’s foolish to doubt that Judge can do anything, but the numbers simply don’t support this being a reality.

David Schoenfield: Under. For all the reasons Jeff outlined. The best chance for Judge to hit .360 would be to draw a lot of walks and thus make each hit count more, but he’s walking less often than last season. Then there’s just the sheer difficulty of hitting that high in this era. Not counting the short season of 2020, the last right-handed batter to hit .360 was Magglio Ordonez at .363 with the Tigers in 2007 — a year in which the AL average was .271, almost 30 points above this year’s average of .242.

Judge’s current OPS+ is 257. Will he finish the year over or under his career high of 225 set last year.

Castillo: Over. Around this time a year ago Judge was just beginning his historic five-month onslaught after a sluggish April, and he still finished with the highest OPS+ since Barry Bonds’ ridiculous 2004 season (263). Offensive production across the majors is down (slightly) from last season so far, making Judge’s sustained excellence even more mind-blowing. And that context is necessary when evaluating his OPS+ prospects. Judge would have to experience a significant dropoff to not eclipse last season’s number.

Doolittle: Over. It’ll be close, but I’ll take the over. His expected stats supported an even higher OPS+ than he finished with in 2024 and those numbers are on target to at least repeat that level. I don’t see the league levels spiking, which matters a lot in the OPS+ calculation. The higher the league level, the more air has to come out of raw OPS figures. I think he’ll land at around 230.

Passan: Over. This is the best version of Judge yet in his illustrious 10-year career. He’s striking out less than ever and continues to hit the ball with his typical velocity and ferocity. And with offense around the sport as weak as it is, a number like OPS+ — which is measured by a player’s numbers compared to league averages — is ripe to be exploited.

Schoenfield: Over. Last year, he had a slow start when he had a .754 OPS in April and still finished with that 225 OPS+. This version of Judge appears slump-proof. Even when he had a stretch in April when he homered just once in 20 games, he managed to hit .425/.528/.546 to keep that OPS high.

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Passan: ‘This is the best version of Aaron Judge that we have ever seen’

Jeff Passan joins the “The Pat McAfee Show” to talk about Aaron Judge’s hot start to the season for the Yankees.

Judge is on pace for 56.5 home runs. Will he go over/under that total?

Castillo: Over. Between cold temperatures and consistent rain, the Yankees have dealt with some miserable weather — home and away — in the early going. It’s only a matter of time until the weather warms up. Judge will take advantage when it does.

Doolittle: Over. He has actually been hitting the ball on the ground much more than usual with his flyballs being reduced. That may be an evolved approach, but I still expect that distribution to level out closer to his career norms — which means more fly balls. Judge’s fly balls tend to leave the ballpark, so I think he’ll get to 60 again.

Passan: Over. Judge has yet to go on one of his home run jags — during a 20-game stretch in April, he hit just one — and when that happens, it’s going to put him in position to make a run at the 62 he hit in 2022.

Schoenfield: Not including June and July of 2023, when he hurt his toe and played just five games, Judge has averaged 10 home runs per month — with half of May still to go. Give him five more home runs in May and 40 from June through September and we get 59. Over.

Judge has already posted 4.0 FanGraphs WAR in 2025. Will he surpass his career high of 11.2 from last season?

Castillo: Over. He’s on pace to smash 11.2. If he stays healthy, he’ll threaten to surpass Bonds’ 11.9-WAR season in 2004 and enter the top 10 of all time in the category.

Doolittle: Over. At Baseball-Reference (not the WAR number cited here), his individual winning percentage, based on wins above average, is .568; last year it was .554, so there’s a buffer there against some regression. Playing exclusively in right should boost Judge’s fielding plus/minus metrics and at least offset any hit he might take in positional value. He just needs to stay healthy and he’ll get to 12 wins, at least.

Passan: Over. This is a tough one because of the whims of single-year defensive and baserunning metrics. Judge last season was considered a below-average defender and slightly below-average baserunner. Thus far this year, he is an average defender and poor baserunner.

The offense is always going to be there. The question is the marginal elements that can earn those differentiating tenths of a WAR. It would be his third season with a WAR of 11 or higher in four years, by the way. The only players ever to do that are Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds.

Schoenfield: He’s on pace for nearly 14 WAR. We just said he seems slump-proof. Over 11.2 WAR.

Judge currently leads the league in all three Triple Crown categories, will he finish atop the AL in over/under 2.5 of them?

Castillo: Over. See above: If Judge stays healthy, he’ll put together one of the greatest seasons ever and it’ll come with a Triple Crown. Batting average is the tallest challenge and RBI totals always depend on teammates being on base. But he already holds a near-50-point lead on the competition in batting average and the Yankees’ offense is good enough around him for consistent RBI opportunities.

Doolittle: As long as teams don’t start doing ill-advised, peak-Bonds stuff like walking Judge whenever someone is on base, I’ll take the over — even though winning a Triple Crown is an incredibly difficult thing to do. I just think this is where Judge is at this point of his career, which is a place few others have been to in the history of the sport.

Passan: Under. He’ll lead in home runs. The batting average element is scary, though — Judge’s career high to this point is .322 — and RBIs are so lineup-dependent. If Judge finds himself in the 3-hole more often, that element becomes less of a concern, but the combination of two categories not being stone-cold locks makes this a cautiously pessimistic bet. If anyone is going to win the Triple Crown, it’s Judge.

Schoenfield: I’ll go with the Triple Crown. He might not drive in 144 like he did last year with Juan Soto hitting in front of him, but these Yankees are scoring at a higher clip than last year’s Yankees, so he should have enough RBI opportunities.

Judge is a runaway favorite for AL MVP. Will over or under 0.5 ballots have someone other than Judge as the AL winner?

Castillo: Under. And that doesn’t mean there won’t be worthy players in the AL. Bobby Witt Jr., Cal Raleigh and Alex Bregman rank in the top 10 in WAR across the majors. Most years, they’d be among several legitimate early MVP contenders. But Judge has just been that good. He’s levels above his peers. It’s his award to lose.

Doolittle: Under. But if I’m picking a team from scratch, I’m still taking Bobby Witt Jr. and you can’t talk me out of it. Still, if Judge doesn’t get hurt, he’ll be a unanimous pick.

Passan: Under. If Judge stays healthy, he will be a unanimous MVP. He’s that much better than everyone else in the AL — which is saying something considering Witt is in the league, too.

Schoenfield: Under. Even when Shohei Ohtani had an amazing two-way season in 2022, Judge still received 28 of 30 first-place votes. And Ohtani is in the NL now.

ARLINGTON, Texas — This anticipated pitchers’ duel fully lived up to expectations, with two-time Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom getting the win for the Texas Rangers over the blossoming Houston Astros standout who is 10 years younger and threw his first career complete game.

Even before the Rangers won 1-0 on Thursday night, manager Bruce Bochy talked about how deGrom will go down as one of the best pitchers ever in the game. He also said Hunter Brown was getting established as one of the best with what he has done over the last year for the Astros.

“Everything we thought this game would be, runs would be at a premium,” Bochy said. “I didn’t know it’d be one.”

Jake Burger led off the sixth with a homer in the opener of a four-game series.

The 36-year-old deGrom (4-1), who missed most of the past two seasons after joining Texas because of Tommy John surgery, struck out seven over eight innings and walked just one. The right-hander threw 69 of his 96 pitches for strikes.

His first career start against Houston, on the 11th anniversary of his big league debut with the Mets, was his longest start since a shutout for New York against Washington on April 23, 2021.

“The goal is just to try to take the ball as much as I can, try to stay out on the field, do what I can in between to get ready for the next one,” deGrom said. “You miss that much time, you really miss this game. … Being able to come back and pitch some [late] last year, that gave me a little peace of mind going into this season. So I was able to prepare well this offseason and try to go out there as many times as they let me.”

Brown (6-2) entered the game tied for the major league lead with wins. He struck out nine without a walk in a 91-pitch effort, throwing 65 strikes. He retired the first 12 batters before Adolis García lined a sharp double to left to start the fifth, the inning before Burger went deep.

“They both know it’s a pitchers’ duel and sometimes in a pitchers’ duel, one pitch sometimes is all it takes. That’s what happened in today’s game,” Astros manager Joe Espada said.

“That one just stinks, you know? You want to come out on top of those games, and it didn’t fall our way,” Brown said. “There’s a handful of pitches throughout the course of the game that got foul balls or guys popped them up or hit a groundball. [Burger] was able to put a really good swing on it and make us pay for it.”

Brown had gone 6-0 in seven starts since losing his season debut in a 3-1 defeat to the Mets. Over exactly a year, since May 15, 2024, Brown is 17-7 with 26 quality starts and a 2.18 ERA. Only Paul Skenes has a better ERA in that span.

For deGrom, he has a 1.49 ERA over his past six starts.

He got plenty of help from his defense in the latest one. Rangers right fielder García made a sliding catch of a sinking liner by Mauricio Dubón for the final out of the seventh, when Houston had a runner at second base. García also had another sliding catch near the line after running a long way to open the fourth, and center fielder Evan Carter had a nice running catch against Jake Meyers to start the fifth.

“Probably my defense behind me,” deGrom responded when asked what allowed him to have the longest of his 18 starts for Texas since signing a $185 million, five-year contract in December 2022.

“He’s one of the best ever in this game,” Bochy said. “He’s just incredible with the stuff, his command and everything, and his competitive nature.”