Ferocious, calm and deadly: why the Mets agreed to pay Juan Soto $765m

JUan Soto agreed to a 15-year, $765 million contract with the New York Mets on Sunday night, the largest contract by total value in the history of professional sports. But beyond the mind-bending amounts of cash involved, it also represents a shift in the dynamics of baseball.

It’s obvious to say that $765 million is an obscene amount of money, and it is. But baseball salaries were obscene long before Soto’s deal was agreed. The 26-year-old received $65 million more than the Los Angeles Dodgers committed to Shohei Ohtani last winter, albeit on a contract that lasts five years longer. Soto’s contract, several reports showed Sunday, does not include the kind of deferred payments that included nearly all of Ohtani’s salary from the Dodgers. Soto’s contract is a generational deal and could upset the balance of power in the already strong National League East.

The Mets, who lost to Ohtani’s Dodgers in the National League Championship Series in October, will be a threat to the NL pennant for the foreseeable future. And by signing Soto, owner and hedge fund magnate Steve Cohen has dealt a devastating blow to the Crosstown Yankees, who enjoyed Soto’s brilliance for exactly one year before losing him to their Subway Series rivals. For most of Major League history, it was the Yankees who made these types of deals, while the Mets assumed their role as the city’s lovable underdogs. But Cohen does rich, even by sports owner standards:$21 billion has a funny way of changing a team.

Soto’s free agency was a blockbuster moment, the kind of looming event that forced teams to reshuffle their plans over the course of several years. The Washington Nationals, Soto’s first team, traded him in 2022, amassing a crop of talented prospects only after it became clear they couldn’t come to terms with one of the best hitters to ever hit the free agent market. Soto had transformed the Nationals and helped them to their first World Series title in 2019. The San Diego Padres made the same calculation by moving Soto to their own collection of young talent after he spent the 2023 season in Southern California. Soto’s profile only rose once he arrived in New York in 2024, when he posted a .288/.419/.569 slash line with the Yankees and became the apple of Cohen’s eye.

That the market would shower Soto with such riches won’t be a big surprise to the rest of the industry. Soto is one of the greatest hitters baseball has ever had, and his early debut – he was 19 years and 207 days old when he made his first start in a league where many great players don’t break through until their mid-20s – gave him a ​unusually young free agent.

Soto will play three more seasons in his 20s, and everything in his profile so far suggests he will age well. He played in at least 150 games in all five full seasons he played in the major leagues. (In the Covid-shortened 2020 season, he played in 47 of 60 games for the Nationals.) Soto has kept himself healthy, and his strengths don’t depend on him maintaining his running speed as he ages. Soto has been a superstar despite being a mediocre outfielder and not adding much as a baserunner.

Instead, Soto has built what will almost certainly be a Hall of Fame career with the twin pillars of power and discipline. He is the most patient hitter of his era, who regularly ranks at or near the top of the major leagues in base-on-ball speed and refuses to swing at pitches outside the strike zone. Pitchers know the only way to get Soto out is to challenge him, and that in itself is problematic because of his thunderous swing. Sotos three-run home run in the top of the 10th inning of the fifth game of last season’s American League Championship Series demonstrated the bond he creates for pitchers: There isn’t always a basis for handing Soto, and often the decision to throw to him results in a baseball going over the fences disappear.

Soto led the National League in walks three times during his seasons with the Nationals and San Diego Padres. He finished second in the American League this year, behind only teammate Aaron Judge. He leads all active hitters in career on-base percentage (.421). If “the times he stared at a pitcher while shuffling into the batter’s box and clutching his crotch” were a statistic, Soto would lead the league in that every year, too. No one in baseball has Soto’s relaxed yet ferocious attitude at the plate.

It’s even more fun when Soto takes the bat off his shoulder. As of 2018, his rookie season, Soto ranks fourth in all of baseball in FanGraphs’ ambient-adjusted runs created metric, a few points ahead of the big Ohtani. His 201 home runs in those seven seasons are ninth most in that span.

That would be enough for Soto to be one of the best players of any generation. But what makes him such an outlier is his youth. Those 201 home runs rank eighth always for a player during his age 25 season. Needless to say, everyone ahead of Soto on the list is either in the Hall of Fame (Jimmie Foxx, Eddie Mathews, Mel Ott, Mickey Mantle, Frank Robertson), headed there soon (Albert Pujols), or absent only because they have tested positive for steroid use (Alex Rodriguez, the leader with 241 home runs in his age-26 season). Nothing is promised, but Soto may only be halfway through his time as an elite hitter. And even if he’s no longer elite, his legendary eye will give him more productive seasons.

Could the signing be a disaster for the Mets? Sure, you could play devil’s advocate. Although Soto is only 26 and has already made four All-Star games and led two franchises to their first World Series appearances in many years, winning one, no signing is without risk. Except for the risk of catastrophic injury – which the Mets are close to doing definitely bought insurance for it – Defensive metrics tend to rate Soto somewhere between decent and absolutely terrible in right field, and it’s certainly possible he struggles to hold down a corner position in the outfield as he gets deeper into his career. He’s a slightly below-average baserunner now, and that will only diminish as he approaches his 40s.

By the end of Soto’s contract, he would have to defy the typical aging curves to still be a solid player. There could be years at the end of the deal where Soto is short-lived feels like an albatross.

But that should be worth it considering the excitement Soto will show in the short term and the many years of elite play that should still be on display for a player with his rare profile. The Nationals tried to give Soto a mega deal in 2022, but he rejected an offer of $440 million with a 15-year termin the end it turned out to be a lowball pitch. The Padres realized after a year that they weren’t willing to keep him once he hit free agency. So they cashed in on him as a trade chip as well and left the Yankees to spend a weird year with Soto in right field. It was fascinating to have Soto in the lineup, but terrifying to imagine the Yankees of all teams should not keep him after that. The move will be a blow to the psyche of Yankees fans. His going to the Mets – so long a byword for dysfunction and underachievement in New York – will only make things worse. Sometimes little brothers can usurp the throne: just look at what Manchester City has done to Manchester United in the Premier League in recent years.

In that sense, Soto’s signing doesn’t just mark the end of a few weeks of free agency drama. It ends years of uncertainty about which franchise would own the majority of the career of one of the best young hitters ever. With that taken care of, all you have to do is watch Soto strike – or, usually, run.