Mets’ Soto, Yankees’ Chisholm Jr. Among MLB’s Six 30-30 Players

The power/speed combination that is considered a star-defining season — 30 homer runs, 30 stolen bases — is back in major league baseball.

A record six players have reached that plateau this year entering the final weekend of the regular season, including the New York Mets’ $765 million man, Juan Soto, who became baseball’s highest paid player last winter.

Soto, who added base-stealing to his game this season with No. 37 early Friday, is one of four first-timers. He had never stolen more than 12.

“It means a lot,” said Soto, who has 43 homers. “It’s part of the journey of your career. At the end, you’ve just got to think about the team. What we’re trying to do here is help the team as much as I can.”

Cubs outfielder Pete Crow-Armstrong capped his breakout season with his career-high 30th homer in a 12-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals in Wrigley Field on Friday, pushing the Cubs within one game of hosting their NL wild card series against San Diego. He has 35 stolen bases.

Crow-Armstrong joined the club one day after the New York Mets’ Francisco Lindor hit his 30th homer against the Cubs in Wrigley for his second career 30-30 season, and five days after Corbin Carroll hit his career-high 30th homer to become the first player in Arizona history to get there.

Carroll Is Arizona’s First 30-30 Player

“It was a goal of mine before the season to hit 30 homers and steal more than 30 bases, so to accomplish some personal goals late in the year is great,” said Carroll, who had 32 steals.

“Obviously it is a long history in this game. Just to do something that is historic in some way, I feel like it means you are doing something right.”

Carroll has done that sort of thing before. He was the unanimous 2023 NL Rookie of the Year when he had 25 homers and 54 stolen bases. He became the the third player in major league history this season with 30 homers, 30 stolen bases and 15 triples. Willie Mays and Jimmy Rollins are the others.

The fourth first-timer, the New York Yankees’ Jazz Chisholm Jr., hit his career-high 30th homer Sept. 19. He had 31 stolen bases.

Chisholm Jr. Knew It Was In There

“My whole career I always thought that I could be better than 30/30 every time if I stayed healthy,” said Chisholm, who made it despite missing 28 games this season.”

Chisholm has drawn a career-high 58 walks this season.

“He’s really starting to control the strike zone, and that’s allowing him to kind of go to another level as a hitter,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “You’re seeing him routinely work counts.

“That’s one of the exciting parts for a guy obviously in the prime of his career now to really start to know the zone as well as he is. That’s going to allow him to ascend even more.”

Cleveland’s Jose Ramirez has reach 30-30 in each of the last three seasons, two of which were the even rarer 30-40. Seattle’s Julio Rodriguez was two stolen bases short of his second 30-30 season entering a weekend series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

There is no question that the rule changes limiting pitcher “disengagements” to two has encouraged stolen base attempts. That has not affected power per se, although it is also also clear that hitters have become more conscious of the long ball in the algorithmically-forward recent decades.

Crow-Armstrong’s Productin Jumped Off The Page

Center fielder Crow-Armstrong, a former Mets’ first-round draft choice who was acquired in a deal that sent Javier Baez and Trevor Williams at the 2021 trade deadline, has tripled his career high in homers in his first season as a full-time starter. He is seventh to reach 30-30 in age 23 season or younger.

Crow-Armstrong built on a strong final two months of 2024, in which he hit .284 with seven of his 10 homers and and seven of his 27 stolen bases.

“It’s a young player who had a sneaky-good two-month stretch in the second half that was really exciting for everybody,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said.

“He’s a talented player. Offensively he has a lot more growth left I think. That’s exciting. He has a lot of room to improve there, too. He’s never going to be Kyle Tucker (a plate disciplinarian), but he’s going to see thousands of pitches before he is 28. He’ll get better.”

Crow-Armstrong flipped his production this season. He had 25 homers and 27 stolen bases at the All-Star break but had only two homers in his previous 216 plate appearances before hitting one Friday.

“It’s been a tale of two halves for sure,” Crow-Armstrong said.

“Pete’s had a great season,” Counsell said. “How its happens is how it happens.”