Juan Soto is only 26 years old, but he’s already accomplished a great deal in his MLB career. He hit a home run before his official debut (it’s complicated). He’s won a World Series and knocked multiple hits that clinched playoff advancement. He was the prize acquisition in multiple blockbuster trades.
And now, Soto has signed the largest contract in professional sports history: a 15-year pact with the Mets worth a whopping $765 million guaranteed, or $51 million every year for a decade and a half. Soto reportedly will be able to opt out after five seasons, or the Mets can void that possibility by adding $40 million more ($4 million spread over the remaining 10 seasons). But odds are he’ll be a very wealthy Met for the rest of his career.
The conclusion to the winter’s most luxurious free agency sweepstakes yields several clear takeaways. The Mets, and über-wealthy owner Steve Cohen, have made the biggest, boldest statement possible after a surprise run to the National League Championship Series. The Yankees, Soto’s most recent employer, have lost to their little brother. And MLB contracts have jumped to a completely new level.
Soto’s record contract features lots of years and lots of dollars per year—a combination that allows him to best the 10-year, $700 million deal Shohei Ohtani signed last winter. Remember, though, that Ohtani’s stunning contract was heavily deferred, such that its net present value was calculated at around $460 million instead of $700 million.
That contract still set the record (in both total dollars and average annual value) a year ago. But Soto blew it out of the water late Sunday night; you could add Trea Turner’s $300 million contract to Ohtani’s deferral-adjusted deal and still have some room to go before you reached Soto’s.
The sheer magnitude of Soto’s $765,000,000 sum is unprecedented. After pricing in Ohtani’s deferrals, Soto becomes the first player to be guaranteed more than $500 million in a single contract. And $550 million. And $600 million. And $650 million. And $700 million. And $750 million. This is a new frontier entirely for MLB money.
He reached it because of a rare combination of talent, production, and age. Soto has a career 158 wRC+, meaning he’s hit 58 percent better than league average across his seven MLB seasons. That mark ranks 13th among all players through age 25 since the start of the 20th century (minimum 2,500 plate appearances). Among the top 20 players in this statistic are Soto, 18 current Hall of Famers or future Hall locks, and Shoeless Joe Jackson.
Best Hitters Through Age 25 (Min. 2,500 Plate Appearances)
For months if not years, analysts anticipated that Soto would tread new ground with his free agent deal. Last month, ESPN’s Dave Schoenfield ranked Soto as the fourth-most-valuable free agent in MLB history, and the top three—Barry Bonds, who left the Pirates; Ohtani, who left the Angels; and Alex Rodriguez, who left the Mariners—all signed record deals when they incited bidding wars.
But nobody expected this. The Athletic said the key question about Soto’s contract was whether he “pushes it to $600 million.” ESPN surveyed 15 MLB insiders, and the maximum amount any of them predicted was $660 million in net present value—an outrageous sum that still ended up nine figures shy of Soto’s final contract. ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel forecasted that Soto might end up at $700 million or higher but, like Ohtani, only if such a deal were “heavily deferred.”
This roundup of contract predictions from top baseball sites shows that everyone missed Soto’s eventual total by an amount that could sign another top-tier free agent. (Willy Adames, the second-best position player on this winter’s market, signed with San Francisco for seven years and $182 million over the weekend.)
Predicted Juan Soto Contracts Fell Short of Reality
The key difference between expectations and reality was the willingness of Soto’s suitors to commit to him through his age-40 season, as he received 15 years instead of the predicted 12 or 13. That’s a potentially risky proposition for the Mets, as evidenced by prior aging stars with infamously expensive contracts. All elements of Soto’s game other than his bat could age poorly. Already, he rates as a below-average baserunner, with subpar foot speed despite his youth.
Soto also might spend the majority of his time in Queens as a designated hitter. Ignore the fact that he was a Gold Glove finalist last season; he grades as a dreadful defender. Over the past three seasons, Soto was worth 24 runs below average in the field, according to Statcast, which ranked fourth worst among all MLB outfielders, ahead of only Kyle Schwarber (who’s now a full-time DH), Nick Castellanos (who would be a full-time DH if he weren’t on Schwarber’s team), and Andrew Benintendi.
And yet, there’s only so much downside in a player whose bat is as brilliant as Soto’s. The patient, powerful prodigy posted a 143 wRC+ in the worst offensive season of his career, at the age of 20 in 2019. He was still the 12th-best qualified hitter that season, and ended the year as a playoff hero for the World Series champs. That’s a mighty fine downside scenario.
And Soto’s youth should give him further years of peak performance before he starts to decline. For instance, Albert Pujols ultimately didn’t age well, but his infamously expensive contract with the Angels started when he was 32 years old. In his age 26-to-30 seasons—the equivalent of Soto’s next half decade—when he was still a Cardinal, Pujols led the majors in WAR, won two MVP awards, and finished as the MVP runner-up twice. Then, in Pujols’s age-31 season, he led St. Louis to a championship.
If Soto can come close to such exploits in the years to come, Cohen should consider his money well spent, regardless of what Soto looks like in the 2030s.
FanGraphs calculates that—based on WAR and the estimated cost per win—Soto has been worth $197 million over the past four seasons, which comes out to $49 million per year. And that counts only the regular season; Soto is more valuable when factoring in the playoffs, where he’s a career .281/.389/.538 hitter with a medley of memorable moments in the clutch. By that measure, the current version of Soto is easily worth $51 million per year.
The long-term question for a 15-year commitment is obvious: Will the future versions of Soto still be so valuable all the way through his age-40 season? Almost certainly not, given how most athletes age. But he won’t need to be, because inflation reduces the actual value of contracts even if they’re not deferred. $50 million in 2009 was “only” worth about $34 million in 2024 terms, and baseball salaries have historically risen at a faster rate than national inflation figures.
One reason that Soto’s final deal climbed so high, after all, was that numerous teams were willing to push well north of $500 million or $550 million or $600 million with their offers. This isn’t a case of Cohen conceiving of a risky gamble only he would make; the Yankees, with a reported offer of $760 million over 16 years, were also willing to approach the same stratosphere as the Mets to retain their star slugger. Soto just chose the team across town.
From a purely objective, analytical perspective, the Mets probably overpaid somewhat for Soto. But not by a terrible amount; ZiPS projections peg a 15-year value for Soto at $719 million, which is close enough to $765 million to be well within the error bars of a decade-and-a-half forecast.
And because MLB doesn’t have a salary cap and Cohen is its richest owner, even a slight overpay shouldn’t hamper the Mets’ ability to contend in the years to come. Even with Soto aboard, the current Mets roster probably isn’t the NL East favorite over Philadelphia and Atlanta, but as long as Cohen doesn’t stop his spending with Soto and continues to build a championship-level roster around his newest star, Soto should have plenty of opportunities to produce more playoff memories.
That was the issue with the contract most comparable to this Soto deal: Alex Rodriguez’s 10-year, $252 million deal with the Rangers in 2000. At the time, A-Rod’s salary guarantee more than doubled the previous MLB record, though it actually outstripped the $160 million deal Manny Ramirez signed with Boston less than 24 hours later by a similar amount that Soto’s deal outstrips Ohtani’s. A-Rod’s guarantee beat Ramirez’s by 58 percent; Soto beats Ohtani’s deferral-adjusted guarantee by 66 percent.
Despite the gap between his own contract and second place, A-Rod was still worth his massive salary. He produced 70 WAR over the next 10 seasons, which was valued at an estimated $314 million at the time—a healthy 25 percent more than the $252 million for which he’d initially signed.
The only problem was that the Rangers didn’t benefit, as owner Tom Hicks—who later called the decision to sign Rodriguez to that deal “dumb”—didn’t properly invest in the rest of the roster, and Texas couldn’t put together a winning team. Three years later, the Rangers ate $67 million and traded Rodriguez to the Yankees, in exchange for Alfonso Soriano and prospect Joaquin Arias.
Cohen shouldn’t face such a concern. He’s eager to invest in stars, and in just a few years of ownership has already handed out three of the four largest contracts in MLB history on an average annual basis. Previous short-term, high-dollar deals for Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander didn’t work out, but Soto isn’t a pitcher in his 40s. He’s one of the best young hitters in MLB history, who entered free agency at a perfect time to command the richest bidding war that professional sports have ever seen.
