Only One Team Had the Owner Willing to Pay Juan Soto What He’s Worth

The Washington Nationals tried. In 2022, they offered a $440 million deal over 15 years, then leaked the terms to reporters when Juan Soto did not accept it. They wanted their fans to understand that when they would soon trade Soto, then 23, to the San Diego Padres, it was because they had no better option.
The San Diego Padres tried. Soto’s agent, Scott Boras, negotiated with club owner Peter Seidler after the Friars swung that trade with the Nationals for the superstar right fielder. But Seidler was ill, and the Padres were on the verge of enormous financial problems owing to the collapse of their local television deal. No one will ever know how serious Boras was when, this fall, he said the Padres would have signed a contract extension with Soto if Seidler had not died before the 2023 season.
The New York Yankees tried. After they traded for Soto before last season, their efforts to contract him for the long term were the biggest story of their season—bigger than Aaron Judge’s second MVP award, longer-lasting than the team making a run to the World Series. Hal Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman answered more questions about Soto than the White House press secretary answered about inflation.
All failed. Soto, 26, woke up Monday as a New York Met. It turns out that nobody in baseball really tried to sign him until Mets owner Steve Cohen actually did it. Soto’s 15-year, $765 million contract (with escalators to around $800 million, if all goes well) is the biggest in sports history, a touch more lucrative than the $760 million over 16 years that the Yankees offered, according to baseball insider Jon Heyman. Soto got $60 million more than Shohei holy goddamned Ohtani got a year earlier, and Soto got it without taking almost all of his compensation in tax-friendly deferrals that would have lowered the real-dollar value.
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It is now clear that Soto was out of 29 owners’ league. The past three years of extension rumors and machinations were theater on the part of the teams involved, who were performing at least for their fans if not also for themselves. Soto did not accept a discount in exchange for managing his downside, because Soto is not the kind of hitter who has to worry about downside. One owner in baseball saw it as a personal calling to get a deal done, and the parties came together once Soto had no reason to accept a compromise. As a result, babies born this year in Queens will be taking driver’s ed when Soto’s time in the borough runs out.
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Baseball contracts are a particular thing. Because teams hold a player’s rights until he’s spent six full seasons in the big leagues, most players don’t work on anything but a series of one-year contracts. When they sign longer-term contracts, they tend to be team-friendly in capping the price of a player’s upside. In exchange for avoiding the hamster wheel of six-figure minimum salaries and arbitration that fighting this would require, players sacrifice the top end of what they might earn in free agency. Perpetuating this reality defines all player–team relations. It is more or less the entire business model of the Atlanta Braves. All teams aim for some degree of it.
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Each of Soto’s former teams tried to strike a deal with him in that vein. The Nationals now look like comic losers for trying to secure the rest of his career for a paltry $440 million, about 55 percent of what he could make on this Mets deal (and not accounting for the $54 million he made the past two years.) The Padres, a small-market team that stands apart from its peers by spending on players in an honest effort to win ball games, were not in Soto’s financial weight class. The Yankees gave it a pretty good try—$760 million is a big offer—but ultimately relied on Soto liking them enough to take a small haircut to stay with them. They were under a version of the same illusion that the Nationals and Padres were under in years past: the notion that Soto had any reason not to chase the maximal upside in any deal.
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Soto is not Ronald Acuña Jr., the outfielder who signed an eight-year, $100 million extension with the Braves after one amazing season when he was 21 and had six seasons to go before free agency. Acuña is a big star, but he’s been hurt a lot and would not have gotten a deal like Soto’s if he were a free agent today, at the same age. Soto is not Fernando Tatis Jr., another young superstar who signed up for 14 years and $430 million with the Padres before the 2021 season. Tatis is only a few months younger than Soto and would be reaching free agency a year from now, too, if he had not signed that extension. (He also later tested positive for performance enhancers, which would have dampened his salary prospects.) Acuña and Tatis are both on a potential Hall of Fame track, but neither is close to Soto, whose numbers dwarf both of theirs through their age-25 seasons.
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Judge, one of the greatest hitters of all time, isn’t Soto either, at least not in free agent value terms. The late-blooming slugger had produced eight wins above replacement through 25, compared to Soto’s 36, according to Baseball Reference. Even Ohtani, as a combined hitter and pitcher, was a mere fraction of Soto by this age and was a long-toothed 29 in his first Dodgers season. The most serious comparison to Soto in recent times is Alex Rodriguez, who reached free agency a year earlier in his career (as a 25-year-old) for the 2001 season. Soto and Rodriguez were roughly equals to this point, and Rodriguez’s reward was a 10-year, $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers. That would be closer to $500 million today, an amount that would’ve gotten a team laughed out of the room in the Soto negotiations.
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This combination of youth and accomplishment almost never hits the open market. Soto’s free agency was thus a referendum on baseball capitalism, a useful exercise to figure out what a superstar who just turned 26 is really worth. It would have been a disservice to information-gathering if Soto had signed for anything less than a ransom. Not “a ransom with some team-friendly features.” Just a ransom, the kind befitting the most patient hitter in the game and a Ted Williams–like power hitter.
In that sense, it is good that Cohen exists. Without ascribing any moral virtue to this hedge funder who has much more money than most homespun MLB owners, Cohen is the kind of rich dude a fan wants to have own their sports team. Too much of the ownership class sees spending on talent as a vice, as a concession in a class war to labor that would be better off being exploited. But Cohen is so egregiously wealthy and full of bravado that he sees it as a sport unto itself to throw money at great athletes and then preen about his employees. No other club owner watches his prized shortstop come through in the clutch and then tells a reporter, “That 341 is looking pretty freakin’ good right now.” As in, $341 million.
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For most owners, signing Soto to a pre–free agency extension for $500 million would have been a crowning achievement, a moment of good PR and cost management. Cohen likely takes a perverse but pure form of pleasure in doling out this deal, the sort that nobody could ever describe as a discount. All of baseball wondered for years which team would land Soto, but in the end, the answer was just what a plurality of fans and media speculated it would be for months. Soto went to a team whose boss understood that a premium is worth paying when the prize is devastating the Yankees and making sure everyone knows who was responsible for that gut punch.