Juan Soto is going to be one of the largest reasons why the New York Mets will have success in 2025, but he is not entering his first season in Queens with that sort of mindset.
“I’ll never say that I could be the guy,” Soto said after arriving at Mets spring training facilities down in Port St. Lucie, FL on Sunday. “It’s the whole team. You need a whole team to go all the way. You look around teams that have won the World Series, it’s teams that have really good players, teams that have experience, teams that have youth… It takes more than one guy.
“When you see the Mets and the roster and what they have in the farm system, they have a really good chance to be on it for a long time. We just have to show it. We just have to play good baseball and go out there and show our ability. I think we have a really good chance to go all the way.”
Like it or not, the focus will be on the 26-year-old superstar, who signed a North American record 15-year, $765 million contract to join the Mets back in December after seven professional seasons — the most recent coming with the New York Yankees which featured an AL MVP runner-up finish and a pennant.
He is no stranger to the brightest stages within the sports. Not only did he find marquee-worthy success in the Bronx, but he won a World Series with the Washington Nationals as a 20-year-old in 2019.
Now he joins a lineup that will be considered one of the best in baseball, adding punch to a fearsome top four that includes NL MVP runner-up Francisco Lindor, Mark Vientos, and one of the game’s most elite sluggers, Pete Alonso, who is back with the Mets after a precarious foray into free agency resulted in a stop-gap two-year, $54 million pact earlier this month.
His potential presence in the middle of New York’s lineup was one of the things that most intrigued Soto, and something that he kept an eye on throughout the winter.
“I think Pete Alonso is one of the guys that impressed me more,” Soto said. “[I spoke with Mets management about him] a lot of times. We were trying to make sure we have the cover of Pete. This is one of the best pure power hitters in the league. We were trying to land some of that protection. Whenever we have that lineup, with him, we’re going to have big depth. It’s great to have him over here and it’s a huge piece for the team.”
From an offensive standpoint, the nucleus of a Mets team that came within two wins of a National League pennant is still intact. In theory, Soto should put them over the top — or at least get them even closer to the powerhouse, defending-champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
The club that vanquished Soto’s Yankees last year in five games at the 2024 World Series somehow got even better this winter. While the starting rotation is the best in baseball, bringing in Roki Sasaki and Blake Snell to join Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Dodgers brought back Teoscar Hernandez to remain with the fearsome offensive core of Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, and Freddie Freeman.
Soto appears ready to go to war with the starting nine he has provided preseason surge to.
“We have a great group of guys in here,” Soto said. “On paper, we have a really good team and I’m really happy to be surrounded by these guys and be a part of this team. It looks amazing… I think it’s a pretty good lineup, it’s a very good lineup. We have a lot of good hitters, we have balance in the lineup. I think we have a really good one. There’s teams out there that have a really good lineup, too, so at the end of the day, it’s going to tell you who’s got the best lineup when you go and step on the field and show it. It doesn’t matter on paper if you have the best team. You have to go out and show it. You have to show the world that we have a really good lineup.”
