According to Jeff Passan, the Mets have reached an agreement on a 15-year deal at $ 765 million for Juan Soto, as the Yankees will now have to put together an offseason without their star outfielder. While the team remains competitive in other areas of the market, their inability to outbid the Mets for Soto will most definitely have ripple effects on the way Hal Steinbrenner and the Yankees as a whole are perceived in the modern day. Losing a star free agent doesn’t happen to the Yankees, but Steve Cohen proved that he’s the top spending force in baseball.
The Mets will take the Yankees’ best left-handed bat, leaving the organization to pick up the pieces and find a way to reinforce their roster for 2025 without Juan Soto.
Juan Soto Leaves For Crosstown Rival Mets, Yankees Forced To Pivot
After posting a career-best season with an 8.1 fWAR and 180 wRC+, Juan Soto will depart the Yankees for the Mets, who made an impressive offer at $765 million for the next 15 seasons. The Yankees will lose their second-best hitter and player, but they’ll also lose someone who seemingly changed the fabric of their season. It was Soto who galvanized this team in April and got them off to an incredibly hot start, and it was Soto who delivered the final blow in the ALCS.
The Yankees hadn’t been to the World Series in 15 years, and Juan Soto is arguably the biggest reason for the success they had in the regular and postseason. It’s a tough pill to swallow not just for Yankees’ fans, but for the organization who will have to try and figure out a way to field a top-notch contender without one of their best players. For the Mets, it serves as a potential shifting of the balance in the New York sports scene.
The Yankees won’t be able to just live this down; they lost out on a star player and didn’t do enough to get him, something that the fanbase will certainly not forget for quite some time. Letting Juan Soto go after you were so close to winning it all leaves the feeling that winning wasn’t the priority Hal Steinbrenner and the organization made it out to be at the start of the 2024 season.
When Brian Cashman mentioned making the Yankees the “Mecca of Baseball” after acquiring Juan Soto, there was a buzz in the air about the Yankees finding their old-self again. Going out and making the big move is something that had defined this organization for decades, and now that they’ve lost out on Juan Soto it feels as if that luster has gone for good.
Gone are the days of the Yankees being the financial titans of the sport, and so are the days of Juan Soto donning the Yankees’ iconic pinstripes. They’ll pivot to Corbin Burnes, Max Fried, Willy Adames, and others, but no group of players will quite fill the void left behind by Juan Soto.