Juan Soto arrives at Mets camp, and so do the $765M expectations
Mets’ Juan Soto talks to reporters during a spring training workout in Port St. Lucie, Fla., Sunday, Feb. 16, 2025. Credit: Newsday/Alejandra Villa Loarca
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla.
Juan Soto dressed like everyone else upon Sunday’s arrival at Clover Park. Same gray travel pants, royal blue batting practice top with the script New York lettering and cap adorned with the grinning Mr. Met sporting sunnies.
That’s where the similarities ended, however.
Among the players working out in Port St. Lucie — or any that will put on a Mets uniform probably over the next decade — Soto stands alone.
There’s no other way to say it. Plainly put, the Mets’ 2025 roster will feature a 25-and-1 dynamic this season, as Soto is unlike any other player the franchise has employed in its 64-year history, largely due to having the largest contract ever awarded in professional sports: $765 million over 15 years.
The number is so huge, the payout so mind-blowingly massive, that it’s nearly impossible to quantify what Soto should deliver this season (or in the 14 that follow). How can you put expectations on a phenomenon that we’ve never witnessed before?
We know what Soto is capable of in the batter’s box. But when you attach a record-breaking salary like that to a player, then stick him in a fanatical fish bowl like Citi Field, trying to end a 38-year World Series drought, rational thought goes out the window.
Soto comes to Metropolis as a baseball Superman, but unlike the Mets’ new rightfielder, the Man of Steel wasn’t paid three-quarters of a billion dollars to save the city. As great as Soto is, he’s being handed a record sum to perform a very challenging job, and when it comes to the Mets, multiply that pressure by 10.
Of course, that question came up Sunday during his opening news conference, but it’s one Soto has answered many times previously.
“I’m not trying to do more than what I have done in the past,” he said. “Just going to keep being the same guy, try to do the same thing I’ve been doing year after year. Keep grinding, keep playing hard every day and try to help the team take it all the way.
“Not only one player is going to take a team to the World Series. It takes a lot. It takes a whole 26-man roster to go to the World Series and win it. So that’s what I’m going to do. It’s no more expectation than that. I’m just going to do the same thing I’ve been doing for the past seven years.”
Soto is factually correct. Baseball is different from the other sports. He can’t put a team on his back like Patrick Mahomes or LeBron James. Even MVP runner-up Francisco Lindor couldn’t carry the Mets to the World Series by himself last October. The separator for Soto, fair or not, is that his free agency was so overhyped and his contract so overinflated that the expectations have gotten pumped up with helium, too.
Not only that, but Soto is coming off a career-best season across town — his perfectly timed walk year helped by the fortuitous pairing with Aaron Judge — and his October heroics were a major reason why the Yankees got to their first World Series since 2009.
This season, according to FanGraphs’ Steamer formula, Soto is projected to hit .282 with 35 homers, 97 RBIs, 114 runs scored and a .958 OPS.
That would be a slight dip from his 2024 production, when he had eventual MVP Judge batting behind him, but pretty much on pace with his 162-game averages over his first seven years. With Soto sandwiched between the multithreat Lindor atop the order and presumably Pete Alonso, one of the game’s most prolific power hitters, he should be as dangerous as ever.
Even with the anticipated transition period that big-money free agents have coming to Metsville, Soto has the big advantage of hopping over from the Bronx. He also has the experience of two trips to the World Series and the ring he won with the Nationals in 2019.
That can help lighten the weight of his $765 million contract, to whatever extent it’s possible to do so.
“There’s definitely a mental side of that you’re going to have to overcome,” Brandon Nimmo, the longest-tenured Met, said about Soto’s monster contract. “But I think the best way to look at it is there’s a reason that they’re giving you that [money]. And honestly, it’s because the last [seven] years, we’ve seen that he’s a top-three hitter in the game and he’s done it year in and year out. Even his down years are years that anyone would love to have.
“So I think for him, it’s just realizing that’s who he is, and he doesn’t have to be anybody other than Juan Soto in order to prove that contract. That’s why he was brought here. That’s why everybody wanted him.”
Nimmo’s logic is spot-on. But this Soto, the one in the Mets’ uniform, has taken us to a different stratosphere. More than a dozen photographers and TV cameras followed his every step Sunday at the Mets’ complex, and the rows of fans went two deep at the fences around Field One just to watch him stretch.
If it’s any consolation for Soto, at least he didn’t have to answer any questions about free agency, a topic that hounded him for years. That won’t pop up again until he creeps closer to his first opt-out, which comes after the 2029 World Series.
We’d expect Soto to get the Mets a ring or two by then, right?
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.
