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DALLAS — In another world, Juan Soto is about to enter his eighth season for the Nationals, his future already cemented in Washington as his Hall of Fame trajectory plays out for a team still trying to claw its way back toward contention and relevancy.
But he was thinking bigger. Much, much bigger.
After back-to-back last-place finishes following their stunning 2019 championship run, the Nationals were cellar-dwellers again in the summer of 2022 when they gave their superstar a substantial offer, one that nobody would have faulted Soto for taking. Three years prior, Mike Trout had signed a 12-year, $426.5 million extension with the Angels that made him the richest player in the sport. The Nationals were prepared to top that for Soto, at the time a 23-year-old phenom who already had three top-10 MVP finishes, two All-Star appearances and a batting title under his belt.
They offered him $440 million over 15 years.
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Soto, to the surprise of many, turned it down.
It was a risky bet on himself but one that would be bountifully rewarded less than two years later — he agreed Sunday to a mind-boggling, landscape-altering 15-year, $765 million pact with the Mets — and one that provided some insight into what he desired.
He had experienced the euphoria of winning it all, but the elation was fleeting. The Nationals had a losing record in the shortened 2020 season and won just 65 games in 2021 before things spiraled further in 2022. At the time Soto received his offer, the Nationals were already more than 30 games under .500 by the break, in last place by 27.5 games. Soto was tired of losing, and the Nats couldn’t entice him to stay, not with their future so uncertain.
So, they traded him to San Diego, where, at least for a brief moment, the decision to forgo the payday seemed in danger of backfiring on the Scott Boras client. Soto slashed .236/.388/.390 over the final 52 games of the 2022 season, still considerably above average but hardly the type of elite numbers that would garner the highest offer in MLB history.
And then Juan Soto turned into Juan Soto again. The Padres reached the National Leage Championship Series for the first time since 1998. Despite losing to the Phillies, Soto produced a .944 OPS during the series, offering the tantalizing combination of power and patience at the plate that would eventually command an unfathomable offer from an owner willing to go where no one thought possible.
Soto’s work the next two years — in 2023 in San Diego, where he launched 35 homers, led the majors in walks for a third straight season and hit 55% better than league average; and even more so in 2024 in the Bronx, where he hit a career-high 41 homers, transformed the Yankees lineup from one of the worst to one of the best in baseball and helped them reach the World Series for the first time in 15 years — raised the stakes for all interested parties. (Four teams reportedly offered Soto at least $700 million.)
“This was a year that he was setting himself up for this type of deal,” Giants manager Bob Melvin, who coached Soto in San Diego, said Monday at MLB’s winter meetings. “I don’t know that anybody could have really predicted what the number would be, but if anybody is going to get money like that, it’s going to be Juan.”
There’s only one precedent for a player as talented as Soto hitting the open market at his age — Álex Rodríguez in 2000 — which is why it’s the only precedent for the length and size of the contract Soto received in comparison to his peers.
Considering how quickly Soto rose through the ranks to superstardom and how teams are increasingly finding creative ways to keep their young stars in uniform through their prime before they’ve established their full value — Ronald Acuña Jr., Fernando Tatís Jr., Julio Rodríguez, Corbin Carroll and Bobby Witt Jr. all received nine-figure extensions at the age of 23 or younger, and the Brewers even inked then-19-year-old Jackson Chourio to an eight-year extension before he’d made his MLB debut — it’s unlikely anyone currently playing in the majors will get a deal like Soto’s.
The next-closest comparison is Bryce Harper, who was also entering his age-26 season when he signed his 13-year, $330 million deal with the Phillies in 2019, but Soto had produced better slash-line numbers across the board through his first six years than Harper did and was worth nearly nine more wins than Harper in that time, per Baseball-Reference’s calculation. This winter, Soto figured to top both Harper’s total and that of his former Yankees teammate, Aaron Judge, who got nine years and $360 million after the slugger’s 62-homer season. Getting more than both Harper and Judge combined, however, seemed preposterous.
Soto doesn’t offer the power of Judge, but he’s one of nine players in MLB history to hit 200 homers before the age of 26, and there are few players in the history of the game — regardless of age — who have reached base at a greater clip than Soto. His career .421 on-base percentage currently stands as the second-highest mark for any player who debuted in the past 75 years. Moreover, Soto’s career 158 wRC+ is higher than that of Hall of Famers Stan Musial, Hank Aaron, Joe DiMaggio and Willie Mays.
The deeper the Yankees’ run continued this year, the higher the figures seemed to rise — $500 million? $600 million? $700 million?! — especially with billionaire Mets owner Steve Cohen pushing the envelope. If he wants something, and money is the primary driving force, he’s capable of getting it. In the case of Soto, it meant going to absurdly unprecedented lengths.
Shohei Ohtani annihilated all concepts of what was once considered possible with his landmark 10-year, $700 million contract last December, a deal that obliterated the sport’s previous highwater mark in total value by more than $250 million. But that number was something of a mirage. The stunning deferrals in the two-way star’s contract lowered his total present-day value to around $460 million, a number that figured to pay for itself even before he won his third MVP award and led the Dodgers to a World Series championship in his first year with the club, given the many revenue streams he opened up for the Dodgers due to his international appeal and their ownership group’s ability to put his money to work.
Soto won’t be able to replicate that off-field value. On the field, his below average baserunning and defense put a cap on his production — his 7.9 bWAR this past season easily represented a career high — and might force him off a corner outfield spot halfway through the deal. He has never been an MVP, but he has finished in the top three in voting twice and has produced the fifth-most WAR in the majors since he entered the league as a 19-year-old in 2018. The only players with a higher wRC+ than Soto in that time are Judge, Trout and Yordan Álvarez. Since the shortened 2020 season, the only MLB player who has clearly offered more overall offensive value is Judge, who was entering his age-31 season when he signed his extension two winters ago.
Together, Judge and Soto made magic. For one season, they combined to form one of the greatest tandems in baseball history. With Soto now joining Francisco Lindor, the Mets have created a new dynamic duo, even if it won’t be quite the same for Soto as hitting in front of Judge.
Still, Soto’s skill set should allow him to thrive in any lineup. In 2024, Soto paired a 99th percentile barrel and hard-hit rate with a 100th percentile expected batting average and walk rate. He’s an unrelenting, shuffling force in the box with an exceptional understanding for the strike zone. No player had ever recorded more than 670 walks before turning 26; Soto is at 769, and he has walked more than he has struck out in each of the past five years.
He is one of the most well-rounded hitters we’ve ever seen, and he just turned 26 during the World Series. His ability to reshape a team’s offense over the next decade was enticing enough to shatter any preconceived notions of his worth.
A year after Ohtani earned an unthinkable amount of money, it was no longer the largest deal in the sport.
“I certainly didn’t see that happening,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
There are no deferrals in Soto’s record-setting deal, no means of lowering the luxury-tax hit. In fact, he could opt out after the first five seasons and would hit free agency again at 31 years old if the Mets don’t add another $4 million to each of the final 10 years of this deal, which would raise the total value of the contract above $800 million.
It’s an astronomical figure, but paying for a superstar’s mid-to-late-20s is a lot different than getting them in their 30s. Most of the cautionary tales of teams signing sluggers to megadeals fall into the latter camp.
In March 2014, a soon-to-be 31-year-old Miguel Cabrera signed an eight-year, $248 million extension that, when added to his existing contract, gave him the largest deal of all time. He played at a below replacement level for the final seven years of the pact. Albert Pujols never finished in the top 15 in MVP voting in any of his 10 seasons with the Angels after signing for $240 million a few weeks before his 32nd birthday, as he averaged between 1-2 WAR per year over the course of the entire contract. Both Pujols and Cabrera, of course, were perennial MVP candidates prior to signing those contracts.
There’s no way to know with any certainty when a player’s downturn will begin or health will deteriorate. Trout, for instance, had played in at least 139 games in seven of eight seasons leading into the record extension he signed with the Angels as a 27-year-old in 2019. He was seemingly as sure a bet as anyone to continue his production well into his 30s, only to have injuries limit him to 453 of the Angels’ 870 games following the extension. Soto, for what it’s worth, has been incredibly durable to this point, playing in at least 150 games in each of the past five full seasons. And his keen eye should help make up for any waning power as he enters his 30s, even if maintaining this level of production for the next 15 years is improbable.
If Soto can be a 6-8 WAR player for each of the next five years, or a 4-8 WAR player for each of the next 10, would that make him worth between $765-$805 million? It’s hard to fathom, but that was the risk ultimately required to reap the potential reward.
The team that Soto picked also matters in answering the question.
For many clubs, committing $51-55 million per year would significantly handicap their ability to build a competitive roster. That shouldn’t be the case for Cohen, who once bought an Alberto Giacometti sculpture for a reported $141.3 million — after he had already spent nearly $101 million on another.
The billionaire is operating in a different financial stratosphere from the rest of his competition, has a lot of money coming off the club’s books in 2025, doesn’t appear fazed by the luxury-tax penalties or surcharges that will arise in his quest to lift the Mets into a perennial contender and wasn’t going to forgo what might be the only chance he’ll get to secure a free agent of Soto’s talent in his prime years. No matter the cost or overpay, in an in-state battle for the best free agent on the market, he wasn’t going to relent.
Even with Soto, the team’s estimated payroll for the upcoming season is still $85 million less than it was last season. Expect Cohen to keep adding. As long as that continues to happen for the next 15 years, and Soto can help bring championships to Flushing, Mets fans won’t care about how much one WAR should be worth.
“I don’t know what he’s going to do when he’s 40,” Soto’s former manager, the Nationals’ Dave Martinez, said. “But I know what he’s going to do come Opening Day.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.
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