DALLAS — For 327 peaceful days, Juan Soto was a New York Yankee.
It was a glorious and captivating tenure. One is filled with swaggering acts of baseball domination — no doubt defiant home runs and walks on balls and gestures of love toward hordes of adoring bleacher creatures. A perfect match, they said. Soto, a monumental player born to play for the most monumental team in baseball. In Game 5 of the ALCS, with an at-bat for the ages and a swing for the books, Soto sent the Yankees to the World Series. It all seemed like just the beginning.
Late Sunday evening, this ride ended suddenly, with a dull, definitive thud.
Mets owner Steve Cohen extended a jaw-dropping, game-changing $765 million contract over 15 years to make this possible. This is not only the largest deal in MLB history; It’s the biggest transaction in sports history.. Cohen, one of the 100 richest souls on the planet, was willing to reach previously unthinkable heights to bring Soto to Queens. He outbid the Yankees, plain and simple.
Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner’s best offer, according to ESPN, was 16 years, or $760 million, about $4 million less per year than the final deal. It’s a strong offer, one that should naturally keep avid Yankees fans away from Steinbrenner’s tail, but no one is raising the “we tried” banner in the Bronx.
Can the Yankees build a competitive team after Soto leaves? Absolutely. The Bombers still employ Aaron Judge, the best hitter in the world, and Gerrit Cole, one of the best pitchers in the world. There is there are still enough needle-moving free agents available to strengthen this core. Adding, say, left-handed starter Max Fried, first baseman Christian Walker, right fielder Teoscar Hernández and a veteran reliever or two would help the Yankees remain a formidable force. Some, but probably not all, of the approximately 750 million reserved for Soto will be reallocated elsewhere.
That said, it will be nearly impossible to catch up with Soto’s offensive production. No single player offers this combination of power, on-base skill and sheer intimidation; that’s why he just received $765 million. The Yankees will try, as the Moneyball mantra goes, to replace him overall. And on a purely statistical level, they could achieve it. When it comes to roster construction, there remain avenues of salvation for Steinbrenner and general manager Brian Cashman.
But from a PR standpoint, losing Soto is an absolute disaster.
For decades, the Yankees operated as a giant, an unimpeachable, untouchable financial juggernaut at the top of the baseball world. It’s a history of economic superiority that dates back to Babe Ruth. When Hal’s father, George Steinbrenner, purchased the club in 1973, at the dawn of MLB’s free agent era, this dollar intimidation only intensified. The Yankees have always spent the most money, both on retaining their own players and acquiring new ones.
Today, they are no longer even the best in their own city.
Juan Soto is with the Mets because Cohen is a much richer man than Steinbrenner. Suddenly the Mets, long criticized for their frugality under previous ownership and their propensity for farcical controversies, were all grown up. They don’t just sit at the adult table, but they command it with ungodly amounts of money. Cohen once spent $244 million on a pair of statues; Soto is change for him.
Money, in sport as in life, only matters to the extent that it enables or restricts things. Giving Soto a king’s ransom won’t change the way Cohen lives (lavishly) or the way his baseball team conducts business (confidently). May Soto be value $765 million doesn’t really matter, either overall or to Cohen. He’s good at that. If Soto doesn’t live up to the contract, it doesn’t matter, it’s just money.
Steinbrenner, whose fortune comes directly from the success of the Yankees, simply cannot operate in this hemisphere. And if he had outbid Cohen’s offer, Cohen would surely have upped the ante.
This dynamic signifies a significant changing of the guard, both in the Big Apple and the MLB. The Mets and Dodgers are in a financial league of their own. The Yankees are a level below. Such a statement would have seemed absurd 15 years ago, when the Mets were run by the miserly Wilpon family and the Dodgers were bankrupted by a clueless owner.
But times have certainly changed and the Yankees, now without Soto, must find a way to adapt to this unforgiving new reality.