It is one thing to get the handshake agreement and the physical signature on the bottom of the 15-year, $765 million contract. It is entirely different when Juan Soto shows up to spring training wearing New York Mets gear.
Steve Cohen, David Stearns, and countless Mets fans’ dreams became a reality on Sunday morning when Soto — the transcendental superstar of just 26 years old — walked out of team facilities in blue and orange and sauntered his way to the training fields in Port St. Lucie, FL.
Juan Soto has arrived at @Mets camp 😎 pic.twitter.com/ImZdjBIpN4
— MLB (@MLB) February 16, 2025
This is not just the realization of some wild fantasy. This is the harnessing of the proverbial white whale. The Mets have never had this kind of talent at such a young age choose to play for them. It is why Stearns and Cohen doled out the richest contract in North American sports history to acquire his services for, potentially, the next decade and a half, as Stearns detailed during an appearance on the Pablo Torre Finds Out show.
“Players very rarely get to free agency at such a young age, so Juan is going to play at 26 this year. Most players get to free agency as they’re approaching 30. And so players are generally open for competitive bidding at a point in which they may already have peaked as a performer.
We have a player who’s had as good a start to his major league career as arguably any hitter in the history of baseball, becomes freely available for competitive bidding as he’s entering his peak years, and has proven that he performs at an extraordinarily high level on the biggest stages.
This is a player who has played in multiple World Series, won a World Series, performed well in our market, which isn’t always a given. And so you add all these things up and we knew this was going to break all sorts of records. It’s tough to foresee another identically situated free agent emerging in the next, let’s say, seven-to-10 years. And so you had one shot at this type of investment, and we put our best foot forward, and fortunately, we got it.”
So begins what should be the continuation of a Hall-of-Fame career, with the majority of it set to come in Queens. Not many ballplayers, even the game’s best, have done what Soto has in his first 936 career games.
His 201 career home runs through his first seven seasons are tied for the seventh-most ever in MLB history. That power is coupled with elite plate discipline. His 769 walks are the most ever through an age-25 season — 99 more than second-place Mickey Mantle’s 670.
His .953 OPS ranks 13th amongst players with at least 500 games through their age-25 season, and to say that the men in front of him were elite is an understatement: Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Albert Pujols, Joe DiMaggio, Frank Thomas, Mickey Mangle, Mike Trout, Vladimir Guerrero, Mel Ott, and Willie Mays. Eleven of those 12 are in the Hall of Fame, with Trout likely on that track to Cooperstown even with the onslaught of injury issues he has encountered in recent years.
Last season with the Yankees was one of his finest seasons yet. Soto smashed a career-high 41 home runs, which featured AL MVP runner-up honors and a run to an American League pennant that he helped cement with his ALCS-clinching homer in Game 5 against the Cleveland Guardians.
Now, with the Mets, he joins a deeper lineup that boasts one of the most imposing units in all of baseball. NL MVP runner-up Francisco Lindor leads off with Soto likely stepping in at No. 2. Behind him is perennial 40-home-run threat Pete Alonso — no National Leaguer has hit more home runs than him since his debut in 2019 — and breakout star Mark Vientos, who hit 27 round-trippers last year.
“I’m excited. I feel like I have a lot of things to learn from him, and he has a lot of things to learn not just from me but from a lot of the guys here,” Lindor said of Soto’s arrival. “I’ve heard amazing things from the people that surround him and the people that play with him or against him and that have been close to him. I’m looking forward to it. He’s a fantastic man and a great player. Not only do the numbers on the field show it, but the contract shows it. I think he’s going to do very well for us.”
Stats courtesy of Stathead.com
