Yankees general manager Brian Cashman left pondering 'now what?' after Juan Soto picks Mets

DALLAS — While praising Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner for going “beyond our comfort level” in dollars offered to try to retain Juan Soto and expressing “disappointment” in coming up just short in doing so, general manager Brian Cashman said he spent late Sunday and much of Monday pondering: “What’s next?”

On the eve of baseball’s annual winter meetings, Cashman was informed early Sunday night by Soto’s agent, Scott Boras, that the 26-year-old outfielder had agreed to a 15-year, $765 million contract to join the Mets.

The Yankees, who have doled out their share of big-money contracts over the years, offered a 16-year deal worth $760 million, a source confirmed.

“I’m just proud of the effort that we took as an organization,” Cashman said Monday. “Hal Steinbrenner really stepped up to find a way to retain Juan Soto. I’m certainly proud of his efforts. It certainly went well beyond [where] I would have expected.”

Still, if Cashman was crippled by disappointment, he did a good job of hiding it. In surveying a cross-section of members of the Yankees' organization on Monday, that seemed to be a common thread.

Though no one begrudged landing the historic deal that Soto did — or undersold the difficulty in replacing a player widely considered the best overall hitter in the game — even if they had brought the four-time All-Star back, the Yankees would have had a myriad of roster holes to fill. And that would have been dramatically more difficult to do with so much money committed to one player.

As one club insider put it: “Now we can really go about building a complete roster [for 2025].”

And Cashman did not downplay that. “We have a lot of different areas to fix on this team, or fill,” he said.

Among those are bullpen arms, first base and either third base or second base, depending on where the Yankees choose to play Jazz Chisholm Jr.

Though Chisholm held his own at third, a position he had never played before, after the Yankees traded for him last July, the club’s preference is to move him to his more natural position of second.

“We’re exploring trades as well as free agency,” Cashman said.

At third base, one name to keep an eye on is the Cardinals' Nolan Arenado, 33. He had a down season in 2024 but is an eight-time All-Star and 10-time Gold Glove winner, with the latter fact appealing to the generally defensively deficient Yankees. Arenado, who has three years left on his current contract, has a full no-trade clause, but the sense around the Cardinals, who have given indications they plan to go younger in 2025, is that he would waive it to come to the Yankees.

Other needs? Cashman swears by the time-worn adage of the game that “you can never have enough pitching,” and the Yankees already have engaged with two of the top starters on the free-agent market, Max Fried and Corbin Burnes. Cashman said they also held a Zoom call with Blake Snell shortly before he recently signed with the Dodgers.

It would be folly to think that even though Steinbrenner was willing to lay out more than $750 million for Soto, he will green-light all of that money being spread out to cover all of the Yankees’ needs.

Still, Cashman indicated that the Yankees, whose 2024 payroll exceeded $300 million, will be selectively aggressive.

“It’s not easy to find matches with comfort in free agency. Typically you have to get out of your comfort zone,” Cashman said. “We’re also, at the same time, not going to be drunken sailors [with spending]. We’re going to do our best to try and improve the team based on our evaluations, based on our capabilities, because the Steinbrenner family’s efforts are strong, typically, and we’ll hopefully run into some things that can benefit us that will make our fans excited as we move forward.”

Aaron Boone, whose option to manage the club in 2025 was picked up last month, said he found out about Soto’s decision shortly after landing in Dallas on Sunday.

“Literally, the wheels hit the runway and the alert hit my phone that he had signed with the Mets,” Boone said. “So, you know, disappointment. Stings when you’re with a guy for a year and get to know him and it doesn’t end how you want, but then again, that’s sports. It doesn’t always go your way, and now it’s on all of us to figure out a way forward, which I know we will.”