Juan Soto, the top free agent available this offseason, has reportedly agreed to terms with the New York Mets. Soto’s 15-year deal will pay him $765 million, surpassing Shohei Ohtani’s year-old pact with the Los Angeles Dodgers for the richest in Major League Baseball history.
Whenever a transaction of this magnitude occurs, it’s fair to wonder about the larger ramifications. It’s been said that no man is an island; the MLB version of that sentiment says no signing or trade exists within a vacuum.
With that in mind, CBS Sports felt it would be worthwhile to highlight a few teams, individuals, and concepts we feel comfortable labeling as immediate winners or losers within the context of the Soto signing.
Let’s get to it.
Winner: Juan Soto
We have a few simple rules of thumb for these things. One is that if you’re signing a contract worth $765 million, you’re an automatic winner. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Soto’s generational wealth is well-earned. He’s on a Hall of Fame trajectory as a 26-year-old for a reason. He combines elite strength and barrel control with elite plate discipline. It’s become trendy to nitpick his defense and baserunning. We get it, but let’s put things into perspective: only one player in MLB history has amassed more Wins Above Replacement (a statistic that takes those components into account) than Soto while reaching free agency at a similar age: Alex Rodriguez.
Soto is a very, very good player. Now, he’s also a very, very rich one.
Winner: Scott Boras
We have a few simple rules of thumb for these things. One is that if your client is signing a contract worth $765 million, you’re an automatic winner.
OK, but to be serious about the present topic: remember how, about 10 months ago, people were lining up to declare that Boras had lost his fastball? That won’t be a talking point this offseason.
In addition to Soto’s historic contract, Boras has already fetched paydays worth more than $20 million annually for lefties Blake Snell and Yusei Kikuchi. He’s also cleared the $15 million mark for righty Frankie Montas and outfielder Tyler O’Neill, and came close to it with lefty Matthew Boyd. And that’s without mentioning the late-season extension for Matt Chapman, or the accepted qualifying offer for Nick Martinez.
Boras still has ample ground to cover this winter, as he represents both Corbin Burnes and Alex Bregman, or two of the top free agents remaining. Based on how this winter has played out so far, expect them to do well.
Winner: New York Mets
We’ll get to the larger optics in a second. For now, let’s focus on the on-the-field component.
There’s no overstating how big of an addition Soto is to the Mets lineup.
Soto’s 178 OPS+ would’ve ranked first on the 2024 Mets by a wide margin. Ditto his .419 on-base percentage. No Mets regular had an OBP over .350, and only Francisco Lindor threatened a 140 OPS+. Even so, New York ranked seventh last season in wRC+, a catch-all metric housed at FanGraphs that adjusts for ballpark and other factors, which speaks to their collection of solid to good hitters.
Soto’s presence near the top of the Mets order will create more run-scoring chances in multiple respects. Foremost, he’s quite capable of plating himself by launching 30-plus home runs a season. There’s also the cascading effects that come with having a constant on-base threat in tow — not only by giving his teammates more opportunities to bat with a runner on base, but also by wearing down pitchers with lengthy, disciplined at-bats that can reveal more about a pitcher’s approach.
You needn’t look further than Soto’s impact on the Yankees lineup last season to see how an elite bat can alter fortunes. The Yankees, to wit, ranked second in MLB in wRC+ despite relying on Soto and Aaron Judge to do the heavy lifting.
Winner: Steve Cohen
It was poetic, in a sense, that Soto’s free agency came down to a battle between a George Steinbrenner heir and a George Steinbrenner proxy.
The proxy won, making good on the promise of elevating the Mets to a higher level, or at least putting them in a position to do so.
Let’s put Cohen’s win in perspective. Imagine the Wilpons still owned the Mets. Could you even imagine the Mets prevailing over the Yankees to win the services of a Soto-caliber free agent? And doing so just weeks after the Yankees reached the World Series? No chance — and that’s not because you lack a healthy imagination.
Tip your cap to Cohen for ponying up. Now comes the hard part of competing in the same market as the Yankees: establishing themselves as a consistent equal on the field.
Loser: New York Yankees
Again, we’re focusing only on the on-field perspective.
There’s no replacing Soto. No free agent or realistic trade candidate comes close. The question for the Yankees now, then, is just how do they improve several parts of their lineup in an attempt to replace Soto on the aggregate? To that we say good luck.
Brian Cashman is a future Hall of Fame executive for a reason. He’ll do what he can to salvage the coming months. That could mean trading for Cody Bellinger; it could mean signing Alex Bregman; it could mean any number of other possible targets and moves to make.
But, ultimately, it’s hard to see the Yankees walking away from this offseason feeling better about their roster than any under scenario in which they retained Soto outright.
Loser: Hal Steinbrenner
Let’s face it: losing Soto to the Mets doesn’t look great on Steinbrenner’s part.
The Yankees stayed true to their usual playbook when it comes to their top free agents. They let Soto reach the open market and made competitive offers, hoping that interia and the power of the pinstripes would do the rest. To be fair, that’s usually enough — the most recent notable, in-his-prime free agent to leave the Yankees was Robinson Canó, whom New York didn’t seem to pull out all the stops to keep.
Unfortunately for Steinbrenner and the Yankees, it wasn’t enough here.
We’ll see how the remainder of the offseason turns out — surely the Yankees will redirect at least some of the funds earmarked for Soto elsewhere. At it stands, though, the Yankees have lowered both their ceiling and floor for the foreseeable future.
Loser: Straightforward contracts
Remember when contractual terms used to be fairly self-evident? Or, at least, when one needn’t have familiarity with the present value formula in order to properly contextualize a signing? Alas, those days seem to be in the past. We’re not sure if that’s a positive development on the whole for baseball, already known for arcane transaction rules, but we suppose in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big of a deal.
Loser: Fans of surprises
You were out of luck if you wanted Soto’s free agency to end in a surprising manner — like, say, with him signing with a team located outside of New York City.
It took a month for Soto’s wooing to play out, yet it ended in the same place everyone expected it to all along. We’re not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, per se, but we’ll empathize with anyone who felt the past couple weeks were anticlimactic.
