Steve Cohen, Mets officials meet with Juan Soto and Scott Boras, per report
The Yankees' Juan Soto talks with agent Scott Boras before Game 1 of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Oct. 25 in Los Angeles. Credit: AP/Julio Cortez
A small contingent of Mets officials met with free-agent superstar Juan Soto and his agent, Scott Boras, on Saturday, according to a report from the New York Post.
Owner Steve Cohen, president of baseball operations David Stearns and manager Carlos Mendoza traveled to Southern California for a weekend date with their top target this offseason. Soto, a 26-year-old outfielder, is expected to command a contract of at least $500 million and perhaps more than $600 million, which would rank as the second-largest guarantee in baseball history.
The Mets’ meeting was expected, a routine piece of any nine-figure free-agent pursuit — even more so at this level of anticipated financial commitment. In the case of Soto, he wants to hear directly from team owners as he works through finding his next team, Boras said this month. Now, Cohen & Co. have had their turn, one in a series of such setups as Soto mulls his options.
“Juan Soto wants ownership that he knows is going to support an opportunity to win annually,” Boras said at the general managers’ meetings in San Antonio. “His focus always was: ‘I want to know who my owner is. I want to know that we’re going to be able to win, and I want to know that, besides me, there’s going to be a great number of support on the part of the owner, that he has the same desire to win that I do. And that I’m going to commit my career to it, and I want the owner to commit his resources to it.’ And that’s really why Juan Soto became a free agent.”
The Red Sox and Blue Jays reportedly have met with Soto and Boras in recent days, too. The Yankees are due to do so Monday, according to the Post. The Dodgers and Giants also have been linked to Soto.
It’s not clear whether teams are making contract offers during these initial discussions.
“I will be there,” manager Aaron Boone said during a video news conference last week of the Yankees’ imminent Soto meeting. “I certainly would love to have him back, obviously. I want him in pinstripes moving forward. But you also know there’s going to be a lot of people competing for that, and who knows where it ends up? All I know is we’ll try to put our best foot forward with it and hope that Juan’s back.”
General manager Brian Cashman said at the GM meetings that even though Soto and the Yankees know each other well, he was ready and willing to meet with Soto as many times as Soto wanted during free agency.
“We certainly have an interest in retaining him and we’ll put our best foot forward there,” Cashman said. “That will either lead to us retaining him and signing him back or we’ll be forced to go to a different direction if we can’t. And if we can’t, there’s a lot of different players in this marketplace that can positively impact this roster in different ways.”
Cohen has repeatedly expressed over the past year that he would like to bring down the Mets’ payroll from the $300-plus million outlays from recent seasons. Soto, though, is an exception because of his young age (with theoretical several prime years still ahead) and his production (an early Hall of Fame track with few historical peers).
The Mets have about $170 million on the books for 2025, as calculated for MLB’s luxury tax, according to Cot’s Contracts. Even if they penciled in Soto for, say, $50 million per year, they would have plenty of wiggle room before hitting the highest tax threshold of $304 million.
Last offseason, a period of relative austerity under the freshly hired Stearns, the Mets took a similar approach with pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto. They didn’t want to spend big overall, but they deemed him a worthwhile exception because of his youth and talent. He wound up joining the Dodgers.
Soto, who was named one of three finalists for AL MVP and won a Silver Slugger Award, had the best year of his career in his thus-far-only season with the Yankees, batting .288 with a .989 OPS, a career-high 41 home runs and 109 RBIs
Among Boras’ other free-agent clients are 2024 Mets Pete Alonso, Sean Manaea and Jose Iglesias, as well as potential Mets or Yankees fits third baseman Alex Bregman and righthander Corbin Burnes.
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
