The 765 Million Dollar Man
Juan Soto heads to Queens, and MLB's balance of power has changed forever.
Ever since the 2024 Major League Baseball (MLB) season wrapped up when the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees four games to one in the World Series, I’ve assiduously avoided following news from the “Hot Stove League.” From the moment Walker Buehler struck out Alex Verdugo to end Game Five and give the Dodgers the title, the next question everyone was asking was which team would win the bidding war for Juan Soto, perhaps the most coveted free agent in MLB history.
From the jump, my beloved New York Mets were tabbed as the favorite to land the outfielder with a suspect glove, but a bat touched by the baseball gods. That wasn’t a surprise, as Mets owner Steve Cohen is the wealthiest in all of MLB and has shown that he will not be outspent when it comes to acquiring talent. But as far as I was concerned, I had enjoyed the team’s unexpected postseason run, and was happy to box it away and turn my attention to football and ice hockey, at least until the Mets returned to Spring Training in Port St. Lucie, Florida next February.
After all, the only reporting that really mattered was when Soto had signed on the dotted line and the new deal was official. Up until that point, anything else you’d read in the press was just noise, and not worth my time or yours.
That all changed at 10:00 p.m. EST last night when my friend Ben, a Washington Nationals fan who had seen Soto dealt to the San Diego Padres when he refused to sign a 15-year, $440 million deal to stay with the team, texted me the incredible news. Soto had signed an insane 15-year, $765 million contract to join the Mets, out bidding the Yankees, the team that had paid a king’s ransom in prospects to pry him from the Padres and get a head start on landing him when he reached free agency.
To paraphrase a former professional power lifter I’ve known for a few decades, Soto bet on himself and won to the tune of $325 million.
Undoubtedly, late Yankees owner George Steinbrenner is turning over in his grave.
Ever since he purchased the Mets, Cohen has expressed his goal of not only winning a World Series, but of catapulting the organization to the same plane as franchises that have dominated the game in recent years like the Dodgers, Yankees, Boston Red Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and Atlanta Braves.
That would be quite the change for the Mets, where brief flashes of success, followed by years of failure and misery, have been the rule. Making it happen takes more than just money, which is why Cohen hired native New Yorker David Stearns as the team’s President of Baseball Operations. But money can’t hurt, and though it’s taken a few seasons, Cohen’s purchase of the Mets has shifted the balance of power in New York baseball, at least for the next few years, from the Bronx to Queens.
As a long-time Mets fans, it’s a little bit dislocating. For as long as I can remember, with the exception of a few years between 1984 and 1990, the Mets have played little brother to the Yankees as Steinbrenner leveraged the millions he earned in the shipping business to lure one big name free agent after another to the Bronx.
Now the tables have turned, and the Mets are the 800-pound gorilla. For fans who have been used to being the butt of jokes not only in New York, but in all of MLB — ever hear of #LOLMets? — it’s quite the turn. If the sort of success that Cohen is aiming for comes to pass, I wonder if Mets fans will become as insufferable as fans of other teams that have experienced a happy reversal of fortune?
If experience has taught my anything, nothing is guaranteed in baseball, and the success that all Mets fans crave may never come to pass. But at least for one night, we can say this to Yankees fans: bottom rail on top this time.