On Monday, it was announced that Yankee left fielder Juan Soto had signed with the crosstown rival Mets for a reported 15 years, $765 million. It eclipses the mostly deferred deal Shohei Ohtani signed before last season with the Dodgers and makes the young, very talented outfielder the highest paid player in baseball with the longest and biggest deal in MLB history.
Make no mistake, Soto is one of the best three or four players in baseball. He is a four-time All-Star, a three-time first teamer and a five-time winner of the Silver Slugger award. Soto was the biggest name on the free agent market
Soto turned down $440 million from the Nationals a couple years ago.
In 2022, Soto turned down 15 years, $440 million from the Washington Nationals. At the time, it seemed insane. Clearly, it was the right move. Not only did he end up with a lot more money, but he did it in a city like New York with a team that will spend, spend, spend until they are able to buy themselves win a title.
He will be 41 when the deal ends.
Fifteen years is a really long time even though Soto is just 26 at the moment. He will be clearing more than $50 million per year from 35 to 41, not typically one’s best years as a player. And because all contracts in baseball are guaranteed, that will be a tough pill to swallow for fans. Maybe the millions don’t mean much to a multi billionaire like Mets owner Steve Cohen, but that contract could feel like an albatross when you are fielding an aging and declining player with a massive salary. Then again, with the way salaries are increasing, maybe that won’t be that much in 10 years.
Ohtani’s deal is worth the money, Soto’s is not.
While many shook their heads over the deal the Japanese star signed in LA before last season, not only is Ohtani equal to Soto in batting, but there is the potential for him to be a top of the lineup starting pitcher if he can come back from injury. Moreover, Ohtani is adored by Japanese fans the way Yao Ming was in China when the Rockets drafted him. The value of Ohtani as a player is difficult to put a value on for a franchise that can now expand its fan base into Japan.
The contract is awful for baseball.
If Soto gets three quarters of a billion dollars, what is Kyle Tucker going to get after next season? This is the quandary virtually every team outside of New York and Los Angeles will face in the coming seasons. Soto’s annual salary will be $10 million less than the combined salaries for the entire A’s team in 2024. His total $756 million contract is 10 times the amount multiple teams spent on payroll in 2024. Virtually no one can compete with those kinds of numbers, which makes the haves and have nots of baseball chasm grow even larger.
And there is no fix for this. No one in the league with any kind of power wants a salary cap, and that includes the owners like Cohen. As a result, teams like the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, Red Sox and two or three others will be able to, year-in and year-out, buy the best rosters in baseball, scavenging from teams that cannot afford to compete at that level. It is the one major sport where parity simply doesn’t exist and teams in Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Colorado, St. Louis and others will remain at the bottom of the standings every year.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
