Losing Juan Soto to Mets 'hard to believe' for Yankees GM Brian Cashman
The Yankees' Juan Soto takes off his batting gloves after grounding out against the Dodgers to end the third inning in Game 3 of the World Series on Oct. 28 at Yankee Stadium. Credit: AP/Godofredo A. Vásquez
DALLAS
When the door to his hotel suite swung open Monday, about 16 hours after he lost out on Juan Soto, Brian Cashman sat awkwardly on a couch, leaning up against one side.
A dozen or so reporters entered, signaling it was time to face the music, time for the general manager to explain the Yankees’ failure to keep Soto after he helped lead them to their first World Series appearance since 2009.
This wasn’t Cashman’s first rodeo. He’s used to these interrogations. And, frankly, he didn’t look all that uncomfortable with Soto’s decision.
In the final analysis, Hal Steinbrenner’s only crime was his inability to get a free agent to take $760 million from the Yankees, a scenario that was unimaginable only a few weeks earlier. When I asked Cashman if he was shocked that such a mammoth offer didn’t close the deal, what else could he possibly say? “When you’re playing at that level, it’s hard to believe,” he said.
Not all that long ago, if you put that number and Yankees in the same sentence, chances are there wouldn’t be another team within $100 million. Cashman has been doing this job for decades. He knows when a Steinbrenner is hellbent on blowing away the market, from CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira to Gerrit Cole and Aaron Judge.
Soto represented another one of those opportunities, but multiply that times 100. There’s a reason these deals are done at the ownership level: because no rational GM would lobby for them from a pure baseball perspective.
Steinbrenner’s obsession with Soto took hold during his first weeks with the team, and the owner pushed for in-season contract talks as early as May, according to Cashman.
Steinbrenner desperately wanted to retain Soto. He saw the immediate impact on the attendance, the TV ratings and the team’s on-field performance. So when it came time to submit the Yankees’ final offer, Steinbrenner figured his 16-year, $760 million bid would get it done.
But the Yankees can’t be confident in such beliefs anymore. Not when Steinbrenner has baseball’s richest owner for a neighbor. He’s never competed with someone in Steve Cohen’s weight class before. How can Steinbrenner beat an owner who refuses to be outbid?
Cashman said the Yankees were mostly flying blind at the end, not knowing where the rest of the numbers came in until Scott Boras called them Sunday night with the verdict.
“It wasn’t a back-and-forth,” Cashman said. “They wanted everybody’s final official offer and the process played out. Then we just waited.”
What else could the Yankees do? If a nine-month Bronx courtship that included being paired with Aaron Judge and making a trip to the World Series wasn’t good enough when packaged with $760 million, then all that was left to do was shrug.
The Yankees did learn a valuable lesson, though. The old way of doing business is over. Thanks to Cohen and his $21 billion fortune, the Mets have been elevated to superpower status, and now every highly coveted free agent has the potential to ignite an interborough arms race.
The Yankees used to rely on their championship tradition and piles of cash to separate themselves from everyone else. But the Mets’ recent success and Cohen’s megabucks are raising the bar, forcing the Yankees to be better, and not just among their AL rivals.
The war over Soto wasn’t just about baseball. The last five teams to win the World Series did it without him on their roster. Signing Soto doesn’t even guarantee a playoff berth.
What Steinbrenner did understand, however, is that Soto is a huge needle-mover from a PR standpoint, as did Cohen, but the Mets’ owner has a bottomless vault of disposable income.
Soto defecting to Queens truly was the worst-case scenario for the Yankees’ century-long grip on New York, even if Cashman tried to suggest otherwise.
“I’d rather him not be in the American League East, you know?” he said. “Pick your poison. Ultimately, the Mets got a great player, so congratulations to them. And our work continues as we focus on our team and how to reconfigure. Our efforts on a year-in, year-out basis don’t change.”
Presumably, the Yankees should now be flush with money to address their remaining needs in a post-Soto world. That’s $50 million right off the top to reinvest in the 2025 roster for the next decade-plus. To a GM, that’s like Christmas morning, and Cashman sounded energized now that Soto was off the board.
The Yankees already are paying a trio of $300 million players in Cole, Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, so tacking on Soto making more than double that was a daunting task financially for a team with more holes to fill.
Steinbrenner was determined to re-sign Soto anyway and believed he came up with the dollars to do it. Cashman, who had difficulty wrapping his brain around those astronomical bids, declined to be specific when asked if Steinbrenner exceeded the GM’s recommendations.
“I just would say Hal went above and beyond to try to find a way to keep Juan Soto in pinstripes,” Cashman said. “But there’s a lot of different ways to figure this thing out, so we’re just going to have to figure it out a different way without Juan.”
And somehow cope with Soto now playing in Queens.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.