Juan Soto Tipped the Financial Scales of New York Baseball — But In An Era When That May Matter Less Than Ever
In a huge statement, Steve Cohen's Mets signed Soto away from the Yankees for a record-setting contract. But MLB's money game has changed since the heyday of the Steinbrenner Yankees, too.
The Juan Soto Sweepstakes is over, and the 26-year-old superstar slugger is staying in New York — but he’ll have to update his address from the Bronx to Queens. As various sources reported Sunday night, Soto will be joining the New York Mets on a 15-year, $765 million deal, setting a new record for the most valuable contract in the history of professional sports.
On top of adding a player of Soto’s talent — he was MLB’s fifth-most valuable player last season by Wins Above Replacement — the symbolism of the deal is an undeniable coup for the Mets. Soto’s $51 million average salary shatters the previous high for a player who went from the Yankees to the Mets between seasons (Curtis Granderson, at $13 million in 2014). He is the biggest star the boys from Queens have ever pried away from their pinstripe-clad big brothers.
Many have noted that this represents a paradigm shift of sorts in the dynamic between the Big Apple baseball rivals. Here’s Yahoo’s Jake Mintz on that subject:
“For decades the Yankees have operated as a behemoth, an unimpeachable, untouchable financial juggernaut atop the baseball world. It’s a track record of economic superiority that stretches all the way back to Babe Ruth. When Hal’s father, George Steinbrenner, bought the club in 1973, in the dawning days of MLB’s free-agent era, that dollar-bill bullying only intensified. The Yankees have always spent the most money, both to keep their own players and to acquire new ones.
Now they aren’t even the top dogs in their own city. Juan Soto is on the Mets because [Steve] Cohen is a much, much richer man than Steinbrenner. Suddenly, the Mets, long a baseball punch line for their frugality under old ownership and their propensity for wonky controversy, are all grown up. They’re not just sitting at the adult table but commanding it with ungodly gobs of money.
[...]
Steinbrenner, whose fortune comes directly from the success of the Yankees, simply cannot operate in that hemisphere. And if he had outbid Cohen’s offer, surely Cohen would have re-upped the ante. That dynamic signifies a significant changing of the guard, both in the Big Apple and across MLB. The Mets and Dodgers are in a financial league of their own. The Yankees are a level below. Such a statement would’ve sounded preposterous 15 years ago, when the Mets were run by the stingy Wilpon family and the Dodgers were bankrupt by a clueless owner.”
In terms of what Soto brings to the Mets, it’s hard to argue he isn’t worth the money, at least for the foreseeable future. By FanGraphs’ estimation, his production was worth $65.1 million last season, and he projects to be worth something in the $54-55 million range in 2025. His most similar batters through age 25 are unanimously either Hall of Famers already (Frank Robinson, Ken Griffey Jr.), future HOFers (Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera) or guys like Andruw Jones who could get the call eventually. Something would have to go seriously wrong for Soto not to join them in Cooperstown someday.
So in that sense, Cohen is doing exactly what he set out to when he bought the team nearly 5 years ago. The hedge-fund manager grew up a Mets fan on Long Island, and he vowed to use his substantial wealth and data-driven business background to transform the franchise into a Dodgers-esque championship contending machine. If you’re going to leverage all of that for any player, it may as well be Soto. That it comes at the expense of the crosstown behemoth Yankees is just the icing on the cake.
But Cohen may also be out-Yankee-ing the Yankees at a moment in baseball when pure spending carries more diminishing returns than ever.
As I wrote before the Dodgers-Yankees World Series got underway, that starry matchup obscured the fact that salary was less correlated with winning percentage in 2024 (0.36) than in the average season since the 1994 player’s strike (0.44). And if we plot the trend of payroll-versus-wins over time, the general relationship is trending weaker than it was in the late 2000s (when the Yankees last won a title) or especially the late 1990s (when the Yankees had their most recent dynasty):
In 2024, payroll explained just 13 percent of the variation in team records, while that share is 15 percent over the past five seasons. (By comparison, that share was nearly 30 percent in the late 1990s.) As teams have shied away from spending as much on free agents — with some exceptions, such as Shohei Ohtani — and built around younger, cheaper talents instead, winning has become more about drafting, player development and finding hidden gems than getting into bidding wars on the open market.1
Another reason why old-school, Steinbrennerian spending might be less linked with championships in the modern game is the nature of the playoff format. Before the strike, a team needed only to outlast three other teams to hoist the World Series trophy; that number is 11 now. The expanded playoffs have yielded more pitfalls for top teams, even if you have a Soto-level star on your side.
When I looked at the Dodgers’ expected championships won, I ran a regression to generate pre-playoff World Series probabilities that featured dummy variables for the particular structure of the postseason over time. We can use those to conduct a version of the same exercise (with WAR instead of Elo ratings as the team’s talent input) to see the effect of adding a Soto-like player in different eras of the game.
Soto generated 8.0 WAR almost exactly on the number last year, and the Mets as a whole had 38.1 WAR with 1.3 coming from their right fielders.2 So let’s model the World Series odds for a playoff team improving from 38.1 to 44.8 WAR, depending on what era they played in — that of the original Division Series (1995-2011), the Wild Card Game (2012-21, except in 2020); the one-off COVID format of 2020; and the Expanded Wild Card (2022-24):
Unlike in the glory days of the dynasty Yankees, a team like the Mets can now expect less of a boost in World Series probability from bringing in a star of Soto’s caliber simply because the format makes it harder for a great team to win. (Even the Dodgers, the closest thing we have to a dynasty in today’s game,3 won this past season with fewer WAR/162 than they had in any season from 2017-22.)
All of which is to say that, yes, the Mets signing Soto out from under the Yankees’ noses represents a tangible momentum shift in the war between the two NYC teams — whose battles on the field (and off!) have traditionally tilted in favor of the Bronx Bombers. With Cohen escalating his spending, and the Steinbrenner heirs less willing to keep pace,4 the biggest-ticket team in the city could be wearing orange and blue going forward.
But the irony is that it may matter less now than in earlier eras of the game. Even a player like Soto can only contribute so much — he may elevate the Mets from 89 wins to, say, 96 next year, and that’s if he has another career-best campaign. And in turn, 96 wins can only guarantee so much under the current postseason format. Cohen’s Steinbrenner moment may have come at the wrong time in baseball history, then — even if it feels satisfying to finally turn the tables on the Yankees.
Filed under: Baseball
The league has instituted a variant of a salary cap, in the form of a luxury tax, during that era as well, imposing heightened penalties on teams whose payrolls exceed a certain threshold — and thus discouraging wanton spending.
Soto played 145 games at RF, with the other 12 being split between LF and DH. But we’ll simplify and just consider his effect to occur in right field.
With apologies to the Astros and Braves, who have also been in that conversation in recent years.
Comparatively speaking — I mean, the Yankees have finished either first or second in payroll in each of the past eight seasons, including 2024. They’re just no longer spending 70 percent more than any other team.
First, a tremendous and insightful piece. The ending and your conclusion here are much needed clear thinking and analysis during this time of Soto hysteria where the mainstream sports media treats this rather predictable signing as the sports equivalent of an atomic bomb test in some adversary's desert.
With that in mind, four personal takes on the Soto signing:
1. Scott Boras is overrated by the media. They present him as some sort of magical money tree agronomist. Boras gets big deals because he has had big deals in the past. He's like a personal injury law firm that you see in advertisements. Are they the best PI lawyers around? Certainly not - there are plenty of better lawyers at other firms, but what they have is a brand and a pipeline that through self-selection drives the best plaintiffs and biggest cases to them because they are well known.
With a ready pipeline of large, self-selected cases, they sell their recent cases to the public to drive more future business. Juan Soto didn't sign with Boras because he did a deep dive on his negotiating acumen or strategies. He signed because he saw his other clients and their deals.
So, what did get him to $700MM plus? The good old free market. The free market is an exogenous condition existing because of competition that doesn't require agents. Agents are routinely presented to the public as essential larger than life fictionalized characters because there exists an incestuous relationship between the press and agents. The agents give the media “scoops” while the media promises to provide fawning portrayals of them and their clients. Like when it was "leaked" that the Soto bidding had exceeded $700MM - for obvious reasons.
Recall when Lamar Jackson and his mom negotiated his extension with the Ravens. The press called it "malpractice"... that is, until he signed an outstanding deal by himself without the agent's commission.
Baseball teams didn't need Scott Boras to "sell" them on Soto or provide a book of information on him. They knew his value both in relative and situational terms down to the penny. It's not like buying a used car where you walk on the lot and might need the salesperson to help you figure out its features, flood and accident history, and warranty. Juan Soto has been thoroughly analyzed by front offices. Boras just ran the auction by taking calls and collecting his fee - nothing more. Now that Soto is signed, Boras is surely to get more elite talent and more big deals as everyone quickly forgets about Jordan Montgomery.
2. Juan Soto for 15 years is high risk. You wouldn't know that from listening to the media about what a sure thing he is. Most of that invariably hinges on his age - he's just 26 goes the refrain. But here's the weird problem with Soto that isn’t being talked about. His speed numbers - base running, outfield range etc. - have dropped since 2021. Why is that so for a guy in his prime at ages 24-25? That shouldn't be happening. In fact, reports have the Mets already planning on using him as a DH soon. At only age 26.
So, what is it? I don't know for sure, so I will leave that to the theorists out there - but it's a red flag for me. I would not be surprised if in 4-5 years people are drawing career parallels to Albert Pujols. Soto isn’t a sure thing in my book beyond 4 years or so.
3. The Yankees aren't dead. I'm not sold that having Soto on the aging Yankees roster mattered a whole lot beyond ego. In fact, the opportunity cost of spending $700MM plus on him for an eternity seems super high. Now, Cashman can spend his already approved money on several younger impactful assets instead and reopen their window more efficiently and perhaps even exceed Soto's individual WAR.
Soto isn't Aaron Judge, let's be clear. We saw what happened to the Yankees when Judge struggled, and Soto didn't - the Yankees weren't competitive. Judge is the straw that stirs the drink in NY - not Soto.
4. The whole park effects narrative is just lazy media analysis. We know, Soto is a spray hitter with good power - averaging a solid 35 HRs per game - but even his 41 HRs last year don’t reflect exceptional power. He's been the same since I watched him play virtually every game in Washington. So, moving to Citi Field won't hurt that much...yeah, we get it.
But here's what will hurt. He won't have Judge and Stanton around him in the lineup. Alonso might bolt and Lindor is over 30 and isn't enough to protect him. So, it's entirely possible he could revert to San Diego version Soto when Tatis, Jr. wasn't around, and the fans regularly booed him.
In San Diego, pitchers pitched him off the plate and he took a lot of walks that some argued were too many for a guy brought in to drive in runs. Yes, he had a .930 OPS, but it didn't matter - he didn't meet expectations when they traded for him.
His barrel % in NY jumped and he walked less last year compared to San Diego and his career average. That feels like possibly the lineup around him and him seeing better pitches. We'll see.
Thanks again for the enjoyable piece.
Very quick question - no rush. It looks like the Yankees have signed Max Fried and are targeting Kyle Tucker next. Am I correct that If they get Tucker, they will have already exceeded Soto's WAR for last season? This, with still more money left in the tank - perhaps $200MM for a major third FA? Wow. Thanks again.