Sources – Mets land Juan Soto on 15-year, $765M deal

Superstar outfielder Juan Soto and the New York Mets have agreed to a 15-year, $765 million contract, sources told ESPN Sunday night, the largest deal in professional sports history.

The deal includes an opt-out after five years and no deferred money, sources said. It has escalators that can reach over $800 million.

The 26-year-old Soto, whose immense power, discerning eye and postseason bona fides created a free agent frenzy among some of the game’s blue-blood teams, joins a Mets team that made a surprise run to the NLCS.

After an outstanding season with the New York Yankees, in which he guided the team to the World Series and finished third in the American League MVP voting, Soto’s presence on the free agent market drew a lot of interest. While the Mets, Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers were among the final bidders, teams across the financial spectrum — including the lower-payroll Kansas City Royals and Tampa Bay Rays — looked into acquiring Soto, who coveted his special bats.

In seven major league seasons, the 6-foot-2, 220-pound Soto has hit .285/.421/.532 with 201 home runs and 592 RBIs and has accumulated 36 wins above replacement. Despite below-average corner outfield defense, Soto excelled with the best command of the strike zone since Barry Bonds, allowing him to chase and punish pitches across the plate.

The $765 million guarantee exceeds the $700 million the Dodgers gave two-way star Shohei Ohtani on a 10-year deal last winter. While 97% of Ohtani’s salary will be deferred for 10 years, Soto’s deal contains no deferred money, lifting the present value of his deal well above Ohtani’s.

The contract, agreed after a month-long sprint that included face-to-face meetings, three rounds of bidding and agent Scott Boras leveraging Soto’s talent to drive the price to stratospheric levels, further validated Soto’s decision in 2022 to turn down a 15-year term . , $440 million offer from the Washington Nationals, who had signed him as a 16-year-old out of the Dominican Republic and watched him blossom into one of the best players in Major League Baseball. Shortly after Soto rejected the Nationals’ overtures, they traded him to the San Diego Padres, beginning a whirlwind 2½-year stretch in which Soto moved twice.

He had arrived in Washington at 19, a touted prospect who blasted through the Nationals system and debuted earlier than expected because of injuries to outfielders on the major league roster. In the first at-bat of his first start on May 21, 2018, Soto crushed a first-pitch fastball 422 feet to the opposite field. Over the next six seasons, he would hit more than half of his home runs to center field and left field, a rare ability that epitomized his gifts at the plate.

In a game where the imbalance between pitching and hitting makes for a high offense, Soto illustrated year after year why so many evaluators revered his skills. During his first full season in 2019, he hit three home runs in the World Series to lead the Nationals to an upset victory over the Houston Astros. In the shortened 2020 season, Soto hit .351/.490/.695 with 13 home runs in 47 games and likely would have won the National League MVP award, had a positive COVID-19 test and later an elbow injury kept him out miss about a quarter of the season.

Soto thrived in 2021, walking 145 times, the only person this century to reach that threshold outside of the bonds. Washington’s attempts to keep him in the nation’s capital included several extension offers, all of which Soto rejected, leading to one of the biggest trades in baseball history at the 2022 deadline: Soto and first baseman Josh Bell to the Padres for outfielder James Wood, left-hander MacKenzie Gore, shortstop CJ Abrams, outfielder Robert Hassell III and right-hander Jarlin Susana.

In San Diego, Soto shook off a mediocre by his standards last two months to rebound with a career-high 35 home runs and an NL-leading 132 walks in 2023. With one year remaining and San Diego’s attempt to extend Soto, however, denied that The Padres dealt him and center fielder Trent Grisham to the Yankees at the 2023 winter meetings for right-handers Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Randy Vasquez and Jhony Brito, and catcher Kyle Higashioka.

With the Yankees, Soto found the best version of himself. Batting second ahead of Aaron Judge, he hit .288/.419/.569 with 41 home runs, 109 RBIs, an American League-leading 128 runs and 8 WAR. During the postseason, he was even better, slashing .327/.469/.633 with four home runs, nine RBIs and 12 runs in 14 games. His extra-inning home run in Game 5 of the AL Championship Series sent New York to its 41st World Series.

The timing couldn’t have been better. The two most coveted free agents this century have been Alex Rodríguez, a 25-year-old shortstop whose $252 million contract in 2000 doubled the previous high, and Ohtani, a boundary machine whose skill and marketability helped him surpass that previous. standard with a sum larger than Rodriguez’s entire deal.

Before Soto’s contract, the longest contract in baseball history was Fernando Tatis Jr.’s 14-year pact with San Diego. The prospect of holding onto the rest of Soto’s prime — not to mention the milestones he could pass on the way to the Hall of Fame — appealed strongly enough that teams in the bidding were willing to match the 15 years he received.

If any resume warrants that kind of commitment, it’s Soto’s. He is already a four-time All-Star, four-time Silver Slugger, batting champion, Home Run Derby champion and World Series champion. His .421 career on-base percentage is tops in baseball since he debuted. His .532 slugging percentage is seventh. His .953 OPS and his 158 wRC+ are fourth. Soto’s 769 career walks are the most ever by a player through his age-25 season – 99 more than runner-up Mickey Mantle.

That enduring expertise allowed Soto to thrive in the arbitration system, where he earned $54 million over the past two seasons. Add that to his new $765 million deal, and Soto reaped $379 million more than he would have earned had he accepted the Nationals’ last extension offer.

“You can’t base a centurion player’s value on other players,” Boras said at the time. “You have to base it on the financial markets.”

The markets spoke loudly on Sunday night. And they said the biggest deal ever belongs to Juan Soto.

ESPN’s Jorge Castillo contributed to this report.