A Socialist Yankee Fan Tries To Process the Juan Soto Signing
Well, Juan Soto signed a 15-year, $765 million deal with the New York Mets. As a Yankee fan, I am devastated. As a fan of labor rights, I am impressed. As a Steve Cohen skeptic, I am humbled. Please bear with me as I work through my feelings.
1) I admit that I am floored by the final numbers here. I say that as someone who wants players to make as much money as possible, and who knew that Juan Soto would break records this offseason. But I never would have guessed he’d end up with $765 million. The surprise was somewhat mitigated by reporting from late last week that the Yankees and Mets were each over $700 million in their bids, but I did not expect that after the season ended.
After Juan Soto hit his amazing home run to win the ALCS, there was a clip of Jazz Chisholm urging Hal Steinbrenner to “Pay Juan Soto” and even in the ecstasy of his celebration, the number the threw out was $700 million:
When I saw that, I thought two things. First, it was funny that, even a teammate talking in the heat of the moment couldn’t fathom Soto getting more than Shohei Ohtani’s mind-blowing contract from last year. And my second thought was, “Well, there’s no way Soto is getting that much.” Even though everyone remembers the $700 million number from Ohtani’s contract, his deal wasn’t REALLY worth that much — 97% of the money was deferred, so the “real” economic value of the deal was more like $470-480 million (my math might be slightly off, because I’m doing this from memory). So even if Soto broke that record, $700 million seemed like a stretch. I figured he might get $600 or $650 million, if the Mets really went crazy. And yet Soto topped the $700 million, and did so without deferring a single cent.
2) For this reason, it’s hard to really be mad at the Yankees for not matching the offer. They were reportedly stuck at $760 million over 16 years, and while the final difference feels small, the team was way out of its comfort zone, and at that price it seems likely that Steve Cohen would have simply topped whatever bid the Yankees made.
To be clear, I’m still incredibly BUMMED about this, because Soto is a generational talent and I fear the Yankees will be decidedly mediocre without him. But it’s not like the Yankees didn’t recognize that — they were willing to stretch their budget. They just got outbid. It sucks, but it happens…
3) As a Yankee fan, this is a very new feeling for me. In my lifetime, the Yankees have never really been outbid for a free agent, especially one who had played for them. They have let guys I liked leave, like Luis Severino or Hideki Matsui, or they have been uninterested in guys I thought they should sign, like Bryce Harper or Vladimir Guerrero. But the only time I can recall them actually being outbid was for Robinson Cano, and even then they made a higher bid in terms of Average Annual Value — they were just reluctant to give Cano 10 years. This feels very different.
And I have to say: I don’t like it one bit!
4) I will say, though, that I don’t harbor any ill will at all towards Soto himself. I’d always wondered what to make of fans who grow to hate players who leave their teams for more money elsewhere. It seemed like a weird grudge to hold, but as a Yankee fan it was hard to put myself in their shoes. Now, though, having felt it, I still don’t get it. The Mets offered Juan Soto more money. Why wouldn’t he take it?
A lot of online Yankee fans are talking about how a $5 million difference isn’t enough to give up the privilege of playing for the Yankees, and the chance to win rings, and the potential legacy that comes with being a great Yankee. And I buy a lot more of the “Yankees aura” bullshit than your average person… but c’mon. First of all, $5 million is a lot of money, and we don’t yet know the exact terms of the offers. Maybe the Yankees wanted to defer money, or avoid opt-outs, in addition to offering less total money.
But also: The Mets were in the NLCS this year! They nearly beat the Dodgers! The Yankees haven’t won a World Series in 15 years! Soto probably has just as good a shot of making the World Series with the Mets as he would with the Yankees.1
As for the legacy stuff, it seems like going to the Mets is great for Soto’s legacy. He’s already a hero to Mets fans. He’ll probably be the best hitter in the history of their franchise within three years.2 On the Yankees, he was somewhat overshadowed by Aaron Judge, not to mention the daunting history of following Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, etc.
The thing about “legacies” is that you really cannot control that stuff, or even anticipate what factors will end up affecting it. This is not to say that you should only consider economic factors, but that those are simply the easiest to weigh objectively. And maybe this is the socialist in me, but it’s just pro-boss propaganda to pretend that the workplace impacts a player’s legacy more than the player himself.
5) Returning back to the shocking $765 million number here, it seems like the big factor here is age. Juan Soto is not the unique player Shohei Ohtani is. He’s not as good as Aaron Judge. But he got way more than both of them because, at 26, he’s so much younger than either of them were when they reached free agency. (He’s five years younger than Judge, when he was a free agent, and four years younger than Ohtani last year.)
We don’t often see it so starkly, but these three players serve as nice comparison points, since they are all pretty great, and they all signed their deals in the last 24 months. If anything, Soto is probably the least accomplished, and he’s worth the least defensively. And yet his annual salary is now 27.5% higher than Aaron Judge’s, and the real value of his deal is nearly $300 million more than Ohtani’s.
That difference is ENTIRELY because of age. This really gives a sense of how much money players are leaving on the table by granting so many years of team control to owners. It’s only once in a blue moon, when a player like Soto comes up early enough to reach free agency in his mid-20s, that we see just how highly valued those prime years are, and it’s honestly a major failing of the MLBPA that they haven’t fought to open up free agency earlier to more players.
6) Do I have to eat crow about the Steve Cohen thing? For years now I have been skeptical about the whole “rich owner saves the day” narrative that has been parroted since he bought the team back in 2020, pointing out that the same bullshit always follows new owners. Even real scumbags and awful owners like Frank McCourt and Dan Snyder got that treatment. Plus, there’s no real correlation between the personal net worth of an owner and team payroll.
But here we are. The Mets have kept their payroll high for the first five years of Cohen’s ownership, and now they’ve signed the richest deal in the history of professional sports. I mean, there are no good owners, but I’ll concede that Cohen is at least not the WORST one…
7) Finally, can we please stop with this nonsense about how free agency kills competitive balance? This is not only blatant pro-owner propaganda, but it’s just empirically untrue. Competitive balance has INCREASED under free agency, and Juan Soto is a great example of how free agency HELPS competitive balance. Just look at how his career unfolded:
He started in Washington, where he helped lead that team to its first ever World Series title as a 19-year-old. Then, because Juan Soto rejected their extension offer of $440 million,3 they traded him to San Diego for a bunch of prospects, including C.J. Abrams, who is now their best player and possibly the cornerstone of a future contender. Then, in a season and a half with the Padres, he helped them get to the NLCS, before they TOO traded him for a boatload of prospects, including Michael King, who helped them nearly upset the Dodgers in the Division Series this year. Then, he helped bring the Yankees to their first World Series in 15 years, and now he’s going to the Mets, where fans are as excited about a season as they’ve been in decades.
In other words, in his young career, Soto has helped renew hope for three different teams who all had their best seasons in over a decade, if not ever. The two “small market” teams were able to trade him for valuable pieces that help them stay competitive, and he is now heading to a fourth team, which has not won a World Series in 38 years. Without free agency, he’d still be languishing in Washington, with no way to ensure that the Lerner family invested in the on-field product. Free agency is not just good for players — it’s good for fans and it’s good for baseball. A win for labor is a win for all!
I may have more to say about this deal in the coming weeks, but for now that’s all…
The one complication is that the National League is better than the American League, so it might be tougher to get through the Dodgers and the Phillies and the Braves.
Fun Fact: The hitter with the most career bWAR for the Mets is David Wright, with 49.2. Juan Soto is at 36.4 ALREADY.
Damn, what a smart move that turned out to be!