Sticker Shock Is Stupid: In Praise Of The Juan Soto Deal

It’s just money.

The Red Sox didn’t get Juan Soto, but neither did the Yankees. My verdict: The Red Sox win. At least they weren’t humiliated, and the Yankees were. End of story. Unless it’s not?

The longer tale goes like this: $765 million, 15 years, Roosevelt Avenue, the Mets. Seems perfectly reasonable to me, but whenever a new record contract is signed there is a large, large chorus of people who think anyone earning that much money to play baseball is preposterous. This bothers me. Specifically, this take from Jeff Passan (who should know better) and Buster Olney (who could never) bothers me:

There are two assumptions at play, both of them wrong: one, that baseball players inherently don’t deserve this type of payout; two, that anyone making $50 million a year is inherently obscene. The traditional thinking for the former crowd is that playing baseball is less inherently valuable than, like, being a corporate whiz I guess, which is demonstrably false, and provably so. By and large the actual most wealthy people in the world don’t get involved in American sports, though Jeff Bezos is circling, and Mets owner Steve Cohen is a refreshing exception. He and the folks at the Dodgers, Padres and Astros are giving Major League Baseball what it needs most: A better class of criminal.

(The traditional thinking for the latter crowd is that if anyone makes $50 million a year, it’s class war time. Which, duh, but this isn’t the place.)

Anyhow, if the Red Sox were really interested in Soto, good for them. At least we don’t have loser videos like this:

This is loser behavior. Yes, I was sad that it wasn’t the Red Sox, but it’s plain that Steve Cohen was going to win at any cost.

I guess I’m just happy to be nominated. More importantly, three things are also true at once:

1. The Red Sox could plainly afford to give this sort of deal, so Boras treated their case as such, if only to grease the skids.
2. I understand why they held back when the bidding went over $700 million, in practical terms, because the New York teams could and had incentive to go back and forth over the top forever. Sometimes you just gotta wait for the next hand.
3. Soto went to the Mets, who are, at last check, not the Yankees.

Good choice for the lad. I’m surprised at the amount sticker shock, because there’s plainly a $1 billion athlete around the corner and this is merely another appetizer to that. Maybe, like my New York-area liquor store guy, a Mets fan, he thinks Soto isn’t “worth” the money. He earnestly claims to be worried about the dollar value, and while it’s plainly not worth my time to explain the depth of Steve Cohen’s pool of wealth to him, I’ll make an exception for y’all. In baseball salary terms, it truly might as well be an aquatic black hole. Unlike the gaggle of failsons who rely on their baseball franchises to make money, Cohen, an actual wealthy person, is out for blood and could not possibly bankrupt himself if he tried, even if it involved buying every single other team outright.

I think Cohen got Soto at exactly market value. I think this because I think it’s easy, in the haze of said sticker shock, to forget how good Juan Soto actually is. To cut corners, I’ll note he has a 17 “black ink” mark on Baseball-Reference, with the average Hall of Famer having 27. Look further down the page, to the “Similar Batters Through Age 25,” and you’ll see a list of five HOFers, three slam-dunks, one interesting but IMHO plainly worthy case (Andruw Jones) and one current player (Vladdy Jr.).

He’s 26 years old and has the best eye and bat-to-ball skills of his generation. Demeanor aside—but not shithousery, The Kid loved that—he’s a spiritual successor to Ted Williams. Both emerged on the scene as fully formed legends before the age of 21 and never disappointed. Soto obviously has a long way to go to match Teddy, but it would be dumb not to clock the similarity of the lefty hitting geniuses of their generation. Not leastwise because, you know, Teddy, Sox, Over the Monster, Red Sox site, etc.

If I thought the Red Sox really had a chance, it was because Soto, being only 26, would have grown up seeing the best Dominican players (not named Albert Pujols, who scandalously played against the Sox) winning World Series after World Series in Boston. I also liked when I thought Shohei Ohtani was coming because New Balance is headquartered here, though, so what do I know?

Until Sunday night, I knew Soto to the Mets was the mostly likely outcome, but I never felt it strong enough to believe without seeing it. Now that I have, I’m happy, and approaching Red Sox free agency as such:

The good thing about losing out on a free agent who cost more than $700 million is that the subsequent contract offers look tiny. The $136 million that Spotrac predicts for Max Fried (seems a little low, but whatever) is peanuts in comparison and similarly helpful for Boston’s chances next year, if not more vital, and definitely most vital at the price. To be clear, the Sox would have ideally have just signed both, but, ideally, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation right now. Welcome to the real world. Hopefully Craig Breslow cooks us something nice.