Sources: Mets land Soto on 15-year, $765M deal
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
Superstar outfielder Juan Soto and the New York Mets are in agreement on a 15-year, $765 million contract, sources told ESPN on Sunday night, the largest deal in professional sports history.
The deal includes an opt-out after five years and no deferred money, sources said. If Soto chooses not to opt out, his deal will go up $4 million per year — from $51 million to $55 million — for the remainder of the contract, meaning the total value could exceed $800 million.
The contract also includes a $75 million signing bonus, sources said.
The 26-year-old Soto, whose prodigious power, discerning eye and postseason bona fides created a free agent frenzy among some of the game’s blue-blood teams, joins a Mets squad that made a surprising run to the National League Championship Series last season and is now poised to contend for years to come.
Following a standout season with the New York Yankees in which he guided the team to the World Series and finished third in American League MVP voting, Soto’s presence in the free agent market drew significant interest. While the Mets, Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers were among the final bidders, teams across the financial spectrum — including the lower-payroll Kansas City Royals and Tampa Bay Rays — explored signing Soto, covetous of his special bat.
The Yankees fielded a competitive offer — a 16-year, $760 million deal with an annual average value of $47.5 million and no deferrals, sources told ESPN’s Buster Olney. Ultimately, though, Soto decided on the Mets.
In seven major league seasons, the 6-foot-2, 220-pound Soto has hit .285/.421/.532 with 201 home runs and 592 RBIs and has accumulated more than 36 wins above replacement. Despite below-average corner-outfield defense, Soto distinguished himself with the best command of the strike zone since Barry Bonds, allowing him to hunt and punish pitches over the plate.
The $765 million guarantee exceeds the $700 million the Dodgers gave two-way star Shohei Ohtani on a 10-year deal last winter. While 97% of Ohtani’s salary will be deferred for 10 years, Soto’s deal contains no deferred money, lifting the net present value of his deal well above Ohtani’s.
The contract, agreed upon after a monthlong sprint that included face-to-face meetings, three rounds of bidding and agent Scott Boras leveraging Soto’s talent to drive the price to stratospheric levels, further validated Soto’s decision in 2022 to turn down a 15-year, $440 million offer from the Washington Nationals, who had signed him as a 16-year-old out of the Dominican Republic and watched him blossom into one of the best players in the major leagues. Soon after Soto rejected the Nationals’ overtures, they traded him to the San Diego Padres, starting a whirlwind 2½-year stretch that saw Soto moved twice.
He had arrived in Washington at 19 years old, a touted prospect who rocketed through the Nationals’ system and debuted earlier than expected because of injuries to outfielders on the major league roster. In the first at-bat of his first start on May 21, 2018, Soto crushed a first-pitch fastball 422 feet to the opposite field. Over the next six seasons, he would hit more than half his home runs to center field and left field, a rare ability that epitomized his gifts at the plate.
In a game where the imbalance between pitching and hitting places offense at a premium, Soto illustrated year after year why so many evaluators revered his skill set. During his first full season in 2019, he hit three home runs in the World Series to lead the Nationals to an upset win over the Houston Astros. In the shortened 2020 season, Soto hit .351/.490/.695 with 13 home runs in 47 games and would likely have won the National League MVP award had a positive COVID-19 test and later an elbow injury not caused him to miss about a quarter of the season.
Soto thrived in 2021, walking 145 times, the only person this century to reach that threshold outside of Bonds. Washington’s attempts to keep him in the nation’s capital included multiple extension offers, all of which Soto turned down, leading to one of the biggest trades in baseball history at the 2022 deadline: Soto and first baseman Josh Bell to the Padres for outfielder James Wood, left-hander MacKenzie Gore, shortstop CJ Abrams, outfielder Robert Hassell III and right-hander Jarlin Susana.
In San Diego, Soto shook off a mediocre-by-his-standards final two months to rebound with a career-high 35 home runs and an NL-leading 132 walks in 2023. With free agency a year away and San Diego’s attempts to extend Soto rebuffed, though, the Padres dealt him and center fielder Trent Grisham to the Yankees at the 2023 winter meetings for right-handers Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Randy Vasquez and Jhony Brito, and catcher Kyle Higashioka.
With the Yankees, Soto found the best version of himself. Batting second in front of Aaron Judge, he hit .288/.419/.569 with 41 home runs, 109 RBIs, an American League-leading 128 runs and 8 WAR. During the postseason, he was even better, slashing .327/.469/.633 with four home runs, nine RBIs and 12 runs in 14 games. His extra-innings home run in Game 5 of the AL Championship Series sent New York to its 41st World Series.
The timing couldn’t have been better. The two most sought-after free agents this century have been Alex Rodríguez, a 25-year-old shortstop whose $252 million contract in 2000 doubled the previous high, and Ohtani, a boundary-breaking phenomenon whose skills and marketability helped him exceed the previous standard by a sum larger than Rodriguez’s entire deal.
Prior to Soto’s contract, the longest deal in baseball history was Fernando Tatis Jr.’s 14-year pact with San Diego. The prospect of locking in the remainder of Soto’s prime — not to mention any milestones he could pass on the way to the Hall of Fame — appealed strongly enough that the teams in the bidding were willing to match the 15 years he received.
If any résumé warrants that sort of commitment, it’s Soto’s. He is already a four-time All-Star, four-time Silver Slugger, batting champion, Home Run Derby champion and World Series champion. His .421 career on-base percentage is tops in baseball since he debuted. His .532 slugging percentage is seventh. His .953 OPS and his 158 wRC+ are fourth. Soto’s 769 career walks are the most for a player through his age-25 season — 99 more than second-place Mickey Mantle.
The sustained excellence allowed Soto to thrive in the arbitration system, in which he made $54 million over the past two seasons. Add that to his new $765 million deal and Soto reaped $379 million more than he would have made had he accepted the Nationals’ final extension offer.
“You cannot base a centurion player’s value on other players,” Boras said at the time. “You have to base it on financial markets.”
The markets spoke loudly on Sunday night. And they said the largest deal ever belongs to Juan Soto.
ESPN’s Jorge Castillo contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES — Veteran forward Evander Kane made his season debut for the Edmonton Oilers in Game 2 of their first-round Stanley Cup playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings on Wednesday night.
Defenseman John Klingberg also returned from a lengthy injury absence as the Oilers attempted to even the series.
Kane is a 15-year NHL veteran who hasn’t played for the Oilers since Game 2 of the Stanley Cup Final last June. He had surgery last September to repair a sports hernia, and he underwent knee surgery in January.
Kane was slotted on to the Oilers’ second line alongside Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman.
Klingberg hasn’t played since suffering a lower-body injury while blocking a shot March 27 in Seattle. The Swedish veteran signed with Edmonton in January after going unsigned early in the season, but he played in only 11 games while dealing with multiple injuries.
The Oilers are hoping Klingberg can help their blue line, which frequently struggled in the Kings’ 6-5 victory in Game 1.
Jeff Skinner was scratched by the Oilers to make room for Kane. The 15-year NHL veteran forward made his Stanley Cup playoff debut in Game 1, recording an assist.
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Ryan S. Clark
Chris Drury and the New York Rangers agreed to a multiyear contract extension on Wednesday, keeping him at the helm of the team’s hockey operations after missing the playoffs for the first time since the 2020-21 season.
“I am pleased that Chris will continue to lead the Rangers hockey operations in his role as president and general manager,” Madison Square Garden chairman and CEO James Dolan said in a statement. “Over his tenure, Chris has shown passion for the Rangers, relentless work ethic and a tireless pursuit of excellence.
“While we are all disappointed in what transpired this past season, I am confident in his ability to guide this organization to success.”
Drury, 48, took over as general manager and president of hockey operations at the start of the 2021-22 season. The Rangers reached the playoffs in his first three seasons.
His future was one of a few items that remained in question, with the intent that the Rangers would use this offseason to reload in their bid to return to the playoffs. The team also is facing a third coaching search in four seasons after firing Peter Laviolette following his two seasons.
“I am honored to sign this contract extension and continue in this position with the team I grew up supporting,” said Drury, a former Rangers captain who played four seasons with the team. “As I said when I began in this role nearly four years ago, there isn’t a more special organization in hockey, and I look forward to continuing our work this offseason to help us reach our goals for next season and in the coming years.”
After winning the Presidents’ Trophy and reaching the Eastern Conference finals under Laviolette in the 2023-24 season, the Rangers started 12-4-1 this season, only to lose the next five games. That started a chain reaction of inconsistent play that ultimately led to the Rangers finishing six points out of the final Eastern Conference wild-card spot.
While the Rangers sought to make the playoffs, Drury also made it known they were open for business in December. That’s when they traded captain Jacob Trouba, who still had a year left on his contract, to the Anaheim Ducks. A few weeks later, they traded Kaapo Kakko, the No. 2 pick in the 2019 NHL draft, to the Seattle Kraken for defenseman Will Borgen, who would then sign an extension with the Rangers.
A month before the trade deadline, the Rangers reacquired J.T. Miller in a trade with the Vancouver Canucks. The Rangers also traded defenseman Ryan Lindgren to the Colorado Avalanche and forward Reilly Smith to the Vegas Golden Knights while adding defensemen Carson Soucy in a separate deal with the Canucks.
Still, the Rangers lost four consecutive games in early March before having two three-game losing streaks that further damaged their chances in the Eastern Conference wild-card race.
Now that Drury has a new contract, he’ll be charged with trying to improve a roster that PuckPedia projects will have only $9.67 million in available cap space. K’Andre Miller, Zac Jones and Matt Rempe are part of the club’s eight-player restricted free agent class, while the Rangers have only two unrestricted free agents in Nicolas Aube-Kubel and Calvin de Haan.
Drury will be looking for a coach in what is expected to be a competitive market. Anaheim and Seattle also fired their coaches, and three other teams — Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia — ended the season with interim coaches. The Canucks declined the option on coach Rick Tocchet, but they have offered him a new, more lucrative contract.
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