For Juan Soto and the Mets, it's a family affair

Of course it’s about the money. You don’t sign the biggest contract in North American professional sports history by not caring about the money. And of course it was about the vision. Juan Soto is, after all, 26 years old, and being trapped in a losing franchise for 15 years is a great way to languish in a hell of your own making.

But lest we become too cynical, it really does sound as if it's about more than that, too.

When the Mets held Soto’s introductory news conference at Citi Field on Thursday afternoon, there were signs of that everywhere. More than 30 members of Soto's family showed up to the packed-out Piazza Club, the menu was purely Latin American — pernil, maduros, dulce de leche — and one word kept cropping up time and again.

Family.

It’s OK to roll your eyes. Baseball is, after all, a business. And sure, family is important, but you can do a whole lot for them based solely on a $765 million contract alone.

But while the “family” narrative benefits Soto’s image — particularly after he spurned the Yankees with his decision to head across town — it also doesn’t seem manufactured. And it’s a credit to owners Steve and Alex Cohen’s savvy that they were able to tap into that.

One of the first things Steve did Thursday was thank his son, Josh, for putting together a hype reel that Soto really enjoyed (“My favorite part was the video,” Soto said, smiling). He thanked his 93-year-old father-in-law, Ralph, for making the cross-country trip to be part of the recruiting party. And he thanked Alex for her long-established efforts to make the Mets a family-friendly franchise. The subtext was clear: “See, Juan? We’re all about family here.”

There were other things, too. The decision to give the Soto family a suite of its own was a grand gesture and a pivotal one, Soto said — “My family is really important to me and without them, I probably wouldn’t be here. So I feel like that was really nice coming from [Cohen] . . . I think it was one of the biggest things,” he added — and the AP reported that the Mets threw in personal security for spring training and home games, four luxury seats behind home plate and travel assistance for road games.

All of it came together to telegraph one tantalizing sales pitch: When Soto signed here, he was welcomed into the fold. President of baseball operations David Stearns — very famously not a stupid man — hammered the point home: “We’re thrilled to bring his family into ours,” he said.

There’s evidence to back all of this up. Soto’s agent, Scott Boras, said that every decision went through “The Supreme Court of Soto,” which was his cutesy name for what genuinely sounds like an intimidating cadre of advisers. It’s made up of his parents, his sister and “eight or nine uncles,” Boras said.

And then there was just plain logic. According to Soto and Boras, it came down to five teams, and none of them were lowball offers. The desire to go back to the Yankees appeared high, and Soto repeatedly said he enjoyed his time in the Bronx. Stearns himself said that pretty late in the proceedings, he believed the Mets' chances to be below 50%.

But when the money is pretty much the same across the board, other factors move to the forefront. The primary one was easy: Soto said he believes in the Mets’ vision and their desire for a dynasty and that he thinks he has the best chance at winning the most championships in Flushing. The fact that the Mets were able to get to the NLCS with very few expectations last season is a credit to this, and that was during the so-called "bridge" year.

“When you realize that the economics of it are achievable from many directions, then you start to really labor into what is most important to you,” Boras said. “The comforts of him and his family were at the forefront of the decision about where they all felt they could be comfortable together as Juan experienced his amazing career ahead of him.”

Cohen knew that. He didn’t amass his incredible wealth by being naive about the idea that businesses are built on the backs of people,  and that those people have emotions and desires that go beyond what they can buy.

Ironically, a billionaire probably knows this more than most. The fact that Cohen took some of those billions and put it toward a passion project — essentially a really expensive hobby — shows that he knows that money is only as valuable as how it makes you feel.

And so, instead of meeting Soto at a hotel or a restaurant, he brought him to his mansion in Beverly Hills. Instead of balking at the Supreme Court of Soto, he said, "Welcome to the family.’' And instead of sitting there wondering where everything went wrong, he sat in front of a throng of Soto’s family members, Mets staffers and assembled media to officially announce one of the biggest coups in sports history.

“When I look at my family, I think they’re going to have the best time [here] and that’s what I look at and what they showed me,” Soto said. “They always talk about family. They always talk about stick-togetherness and stuff like that, and that’s one of the things that opened my eyes . . . That’s when I started thinking about all the love that they can give me, for me and my family.”

They say that money can’t buy you love. But in this case, it certainly helped.

By Laura Albanese

laura.albanese@newsday.com@AlbaneseLaura

Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.