Juan Soto’s path to a record deal

It’s not just about the money he’ll make with the New York Mets… although that’s obviously, um, unusual. It’s the way Soto got the biggest payday in professional sports – and where that contract may now take him – that is so bizarre.

Skill-wise, Soto isn’t as unique as two-way wonder Shohei Ohtani. And while there are very few players in history who have been as great on the field as Soto was in his 25-year-old season, there have been some players who have been as great…even if none of them had a 15-year contract received over $765 million.

But Soto’s path to this unprecedented moment in the history of baseball is itself unprecedented. Soto has taken the strangest, windiest path a generational superstar has ever taken.

The Mets will be Soto’s fourth team in only his eighth major league season. This is the kind of move that could have been considered a warning signal in many situations in the past. Players who are passed around like a hot potato could have a performance flaw that multiple coaching staffs have failed to fix or a character flaw that drains a clubhouse.

No, the color associated with Soto is not red, but green. Getting paid well for his services was a priority for him not only in free agency, but long before he even reached free agency.

That’s how he came here.

Soto signed with the Nationals in July 2015 at age 16 as an international amateur free agent from his native Dominican Republic. His signing bonus was $1.5 million – a small amount in the grand scheme of things. But he reached the major leagues in 2018, at age 19. And it debuted on May 20th, which is interesting for two reasons.

That 2018 season, Soto earned a prorated share of the league minimum of $545,000 and finished second in NL Rookie of the Year voting with a .923 OPS.

The following year, he earned $578,300 while finishing ninth in the NL MVP race and helping the Nats reach and win the World Series.

He earned a prorated portion of his $629,400 salary in the COVID-shortened 2020 season.

And the following winter, Soto reached arbitration for the first time as a so-called “Super Two” player, meaning he had more than two but less than three years of service time and had spent enough days in the bigs to qualify for four seasons to qualify for salary arbitration eligibility instead of the usual three.

During Soto’s first round of arbitration in January 2021, he and the Nats were able to avoid a hearing by agreeing to a salary of $8.5 million – 70% more than the $5 million Soto was quoted by reputable website MLB Trade Rumors expected (MLBTR).

Stop right there. Because that’s where the foundation for this Mets contract was laid.

Soto fell $3 million shy of Cody Bellinger’s record as a first-time arbitration-eligible player ($11.5 million with the Dodgers in 2020, though he would end up earning only a prorated portion of that due to the pandemic). But Soto was two years younger than Bellinger at the time of the deal. He had come to arbitration at the unusually young age of 22, which put him in an unusually perfect position to bet on himself.

The following offseason, prior to 2022, the Nationals approached Soto about a contract extension. Their offer this winter was reportedly $350 million over 13 years.

At the time, it would have been the third-largest guarantee (before accounting for inflation) in MLB history.

Soto declined, and for good reason. MLBTR estimated he would earn $16.2 million in just the second round of arbitration (he ended up getting $17.1 million), with two more years of arbitration still ahead of him. It seemed a certainty that he would eclipse the $27 million average annual value the Nats were offering by the time arbitration was finalized, not to mention what he could achieve as a free agent.

So Soto decided to continue taking his contracts on a year-to-year basis. The Nats eventually increased their offer to 15 years, or $440 million, and Soto turned that down too. It would have been only the 20th largest contract in terms of average annual value ($29.3 million), but because it would have surpassed Angels superstar Mike Trout’s $426.5 million as the richest total value contract in MLB history, When the offer was announced, people were horrified that Soto would say no to so much money.

(To protect the guilty, we will not share old social media posts on this topic here.)

And so the Nationals traded Soto, spurned by the then-23-year-old Soto in extension negotiations and wary of going through two more rounds of arbitration with a player whose costs were skyrocketing as their club began a rebuild.

Soto accumulated 21.3 wins above replacement in 4 1/2 seasons with the Nats, as calculated by Baseball-Reference. Before the 2022 trade deadline, there were never was a trade in MLB history involving a player age 23 or younger with at least 20 career WARs.

The Padres paid the midseason trade price for Soto and first baseman Josh Bell, sending along a player package that included young players CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, James Wood, Robert Hassell III, Jarlin Susana and veteran Luke Voit (a package that is highly sought after). Washington). After the season, San Diego agreed to terms with Soto on a one-year contract worth $23 million to avoid arbitration.

San Diego was never considered a long-term destination for Soto, as the Padres had invested heavily in other players and were simply hoping Soto could be the final member of a World Series-caliber club. They lost the NLCS with Soto in 2022 and then missed the playoffs entirely in 2023. Instead of going through another round of arbitration with Soto and adding him to his walk year, they dealt him and outfielder Trent Grisham to the Yankees on December 7th. 2023, for a package of controllable pitchers in Michael King and Jhony Brito, prospects Drew Thorpe and Randy Vásquez, and backup catcher Kyle Higashioka (a package that looks strong for San Diego).

At this point, we were all pretty numb to the Soto trade. But this trade was also a first of its kind.

When Soto made his Yankees debut on Opening Day 2024, he became the first player to make three or more All-Star teams and change teams twice before the age of 26, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. In short, no one was traded twice when they were so young and so good.

Soto had a tremendous walk year in the Bronx (.989 OPS, career-high 41 homers with 109 RBIs and 129 walks), and it was his big swing that got the Yankees back to the World Series for the first time since 2009. Years earlier, aided by the arbitration system and his unusually young and productive place in it, he had bet on himself and was now ready to make money.

In the Soto Sweepstakes, $500 million was a formality, $600 million became the floor, and $700 million ultimately turned out to be a cost of doing business. It came down to the two New York teams – every player’s dream. Mets owner Steve Cohen, one of the richest people in the world and an avid art collector, couldn’t be outbid for this artist, and Soto closed the richest deal ever in a sport.

And not only that: Contrary to how things seem or are reported, Soto completely destroyed the richest contract in MLB history by a wide margin. Yes, it’s true that Ohtani signed a (then) record-breaking 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers a year ago, but 97% of that cost is deferred to 2034-43. The current value of Ohtani’s deal was calculated by Cot’s Contracts to be $460.8 million.

Now Soto will make history of a completely different kind. Not just by the contract, but simply by suiting up for the Mets.

Soto has a career WAR of 36.4 as he joins his fourth team in his eighth season. In the expansion era (to eliminate the strange circumstances of early baseball), there were only two other players with at least 30 WARs in eight seasons, playing for up to four teams:

But even then the comparison falls apart because Teixeira became a free agent at 28 and Colon at 30. They didn’t generate nearly the passion for free agents like Soto (and his age).

And now that he’s with the Mets, Soto has a chance to do something that, while not unprecedented, is certainly unusual.

To be clear, although Soto has a full no-trade clause in his Mets contract, he also has an opt-out clause after five years. So perhaps there is another strange twist in this saga.

But for now, it seems reasonable to assume he’ll be staying in Queens for a while.

This leads to all sorts of wonderful opportunities for the Mets’ further development. Soto already has 201 home runs, giving him a good chance of hitting numbers 300, 400 and 500 at some point in the next decade. He has 934 goals in 936 games, putting him on track to reach 3,000 over the life of this contract. If he really is the player we expect him to be – a first-ballot Hall of Famer – then it stands to reason that the cap on his plaque will be with the club he wanted to play for and achieve its most important milestones.

And that would be an interesting ending for this baseball vagabond. It’s a backwards career in a sport where players often make their debut and spend extended periods with one team, moving from place to place in the later stages of their playing days.

Soto could potentially join this entertaining Elias Sports Bureau list (again, limited to the expansion era) of players who suited up for at least three teams before joining a team they spent at least a decade with.

• Manny Mota: Giants, Pirates and Expos, then 13 seasons with Dodgers
• Lou Piniella: Orioles, Indians and Royals, then 11 seasons with the Yankees
• Joe Niekro: Cubs, Padres, Tigers and Braves, then 11 seasons with the Astros
• Gene Garber: Pirates, Royals and Phillies, then 10 seasons with Braves
• Jamie Moyer: Cubs, Rangers, Cardinals, Orioles and Red Sox, then 11 seasons with the Mariners
• José Bautista: Orioles, Rays, Royals and Pirates, then 10 seasons with Blue Jays

A strange list (with exactly zero players given $765 million contracts) and a strange path.

But it is the path Soto chose, successfully betting large sums on himself.