Juan Soto reportedly breaks Shohei Ohtani’s record with a monster $765 million contract with the Mets

It’s Juan Soto to the Mets via the richest known deal in sports history.

The New York Yankees slugger received the most anticipated payday of the offseason with a 15-year, $765 million deal with the New York Mets, according to to several reports, including MLB Network’s Jon Heyman and ESPN’s Jeff Passan.

Shohei Ohtani’s 10-year, $700 million deal shattered all conceptualizations of how much a player can make last season, but his record stood for just one year. He’ll still make more than Soto on an average annual value basis, but not if you factor in the large deferrals in his contract. After accounting for inflation, MLB views the Ohtani deal as a 10-year, $460 million contract in its CBT calculations.

Per PassanSoto’s deal includes no deferred money and has escalators that could inflate the contract’s value to $800 million.

Soto’s is also the longest contract in MLB history, passing Fernando Tatis’ 14-year, $340 million contract with the San Diego Padres. By most standards, Soto is the new pinnacle of MLB contracts.

Soto has been expected to reach a new level of wealth since before he could legally drink in the United States, and expectations only increased as, over the past seven seasons, he developed into one of the most prolific young hitters the sport has ever seen. have seen.

By any objective measure, Soto expects to be not just a Hall of Famer, but an inner circle. Such players rarely hit free agency – and almost never do at Soto’s age of 26. Hence the hundreds of millions of dollars now awaiting the Santo Domingo native.

All of Juan Soto’s predecessors are in or on their way to the Hall of Fame

Pretty much any precedent for what Juan Soto has done up to his current age places him in Cooperstown.

For example, here’s the list of every MLB player with at least 3,500 plate appearances and a 150 OPS+ (adjusted for era) before turning 26 in the modern era, via Baseball reference:

1. Ty Cobb, 180

2. Mickey Mantle, 174

3. Mike Trout, 172

4. Jimmie Foxx, 171

5. Rogers Hornsby, 165

6. Juan Soto, 160

7. Eddie Matthews, 154

8. Mel Ott, 153

9. Hank Aaron, 151

That’s a list of seven Hall of Famers and two active players on pace for slam-dunk Hall of Fame cases. If you lower the criteria to 3,000 plate appearances, you add Albert Pujols, Tris Speaker, Joe DiMaggio and Eddie Collins. Barring a horrific scandal, every single one of the above players will be in Cooperstown in two decades.

There is no shortage of numbers that can be used to make Soto look like a future Hall of Famer. He has the best eye for balls and strikes MLB has seen since, arguably, Ted Williams and has been torturing pitchers since he was a teenager. Every metric that captures total offensive production, especially those that reward walks, shows him to be elite.

Soto also plays the game with a unique flair and seems to relish the high-pressure moments, from his rookie year to the 2024 World Series, where he hit .313/.522/.563.

Juan Soto has looked special from Day 1

Soto entered MLB as a top, but not necessarily elite, prospect for the Washington Nationals in 2018. There was no question the 19-year-old could hit, but he was pushed into the majors earlier than expected due to a abundance of damage in DC

At the time, Soto had played just eight games above High-A ball. Still, he was an advanced hitter from Day 1, hitting .292/.406/.517 that season and finishing as the runner-up for Rookie of the Year honors. He got even better in his second year in 2019, which culminated in a World Series title for the Nationals.

One of the highlights of that series: Soto hitting a fastball from future teammate Gerrit Cole to the train tracks at Minute Maid Park.

At the time, Soto was a polished, productive hitter with impeccable postseason bona fides. Teams rarely let them get away, but the Nationals, through no fault of Soto, continued to get bad enough that they either had to sign him to a long-term extension or trade him away before losing him for nothing.

Washington tried the former, offering him a reported 15-year, $440 million deal, but Soto turned it down (a decision that has since been upheld). A trade to the San Diego Padres followed in 2022.

Soto joined a talented team in San Diego midseason and they went on to reach the NLCS, but a frustrating 2023 and the death of wealthy Padres owner Peter Seidler led to another trade last winter. Again, it was no mistake on Soto’s part other than the fact that he didn’t want to sign a contract extension.

The Yankees knew it was a risk to acquire Soto with just one year left before his free agency, but they took it anyway. The result was their first trip to the World Series since 2009, with Soto forming a devastating 1-2 punch with Aaron Judge.

Could Juan Soto’s contract go bad?

There is always some anxiety when a team pledges a significant portion of its finances to a single mortal. There’s no such thing as a sure bet, but Soto is uniquely equipped to be the exception to those concerns.

It all starts with his age. Because he made his MLB debut at 19, Soto hit the free market shortly after turning 26, which is almost unheard of among position players. The only good hitter to reach free agency at that age this century was Bryce Harper, and a) Soto has been consistently better than Harper was before his 13-year, $330 million contract, and b) you’d be hard pressed to find someone in Philadelphia to undo that contract.

While most teams hope their free agents can continue to replicate their success into their 30s, Soto still has nearly half of his 20s ahead of him. And he figures to age well, given that plate discipline and exit velocity, the two areas where Soto particularly excels, tend to stay with a player late in his career.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Soto is infallible. He’s not a good baserunner, and his defense is already rough enough that he might spend most of his time at DH in the later years of this contract. His game is notably one-dimensional; his one dimension – hitting – happens to be the most important in the game.

All indications are still that Soto is a future Hall of Famer with many of his best years ahead of him, which is why he ended up being worth so much money.