Ablockbuster new report Monday says that the New York Yankees had a chance to keep generational slugger Juan Soto in pinstripes, but turned it down. The report by Joel Sherman of The New York Post contains details of the final negotiations in the multi-team competition to sign Soto that are sure to leave Yankee fans frustrated â as well as Red Sox fans.
According to Sherman’s reporting, the Red Sox were in the same “general area” as the Yankees’ Saturday offer to Soto, but for reasons not explained in the Post account Boston team officials were already doubtful that Soto’s decision would go their way.
Yankees Came Up Just $5 Million Short
That offer by the Yankees, according to Sherman, was $712 million over 15 years. But by Sunday the Yankees had upped their bid to $760 million plus an extra year, bringing the total length of the proposed contract to 16 years. The offer was broken down into $700 million in salary at $43.75 million per year, plus a $60 million signing bonus making the true average annual value of the Yankees’ offer $47.5 million.
Yankees Principal Owner Hal Steinbrenner and General Manager Brian Cashman wanted the extra year added to Soto’s contract in order to bring down the average annual value for luxury tax purposes. But in the end that move backfired. Soto went for the higher average annual value offered by the New York Mets and their billionaire hedge fund CEO Steve Cohen, even though the Mets bid was for 15 years, not 16.
The Mets’ offer was a relatively paltry $5 million more in total than what Steinbrenner was willing to spend. The cash total that ultimately will bring Soto the Flushing, Queens, is reportedly $765 million including a $75 million bonus â the richest contract in the history of not only Major League Baseball but any professional sport.
Soto Offered Yankees One More Chance to Beat Out Mets
But Soto still could have remained a Yankee, according to the New York Post report. After the Mets made their eye-watering offer, Soto’s negotiators approached Steinbrenner and Cashman again and told them they now had the opportunity to make another counter-offer. But they declined to do so. Soto then accepted the bid from Cohen and the Mets.
Of course, the Mets could have again topped any counter-offer made by the Yankees, but that scenario will never play out.
The frenzied quest for Soto that has mesmerized the baseball world for weeks is actually the second time in three years that the young superstar has been offered a historic mega-contract. He made his MLB debut with the Washington National at age 19 in 2018, and after the 2022 season Washington offered him a massive 15-year, $440 million contract extension.
But Soto decided to bet on himself, and he won. He turned down the offer from the Nationals, who then traded him to the San Diego Padres rather than risk losing Soto to free agency. After a year in San Diego, when the team failed to qualify for the postseason, Soto was again traded, this time to the Yankees.
With Soto on the lineup along with home run king Aaron Judge and fellow slugger Giancarlo Stanton, the Yankees got to their first World Series since 2009, only to fall in five games to the Los Angeles Dodgers.