Mets’ Soto arrives, happy long-term future secure
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Jorge Castillo
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — More than two months after signing the richest contract in professional sports history, Juan Soto reported to work Sunday for the first time as a member of the New York Mets not yet having fully digested the life-changing, $765 million commitment.
“Not yet,” Soto said with a smile. “I’m still thinking about it and everything. It’s unbelievable. I’m really happy for that. I’m really happy to know where I’m going to be for the next 15 years.”
Soto arrived for his first day of spring training a little after 7 a.m. ET on Sunday, the day Mets position players were asked to report. He underwent the usual physical before putting on a uniform and emerging for a workout to a horde of media and fans.
He chatted with manager Carlos Mendoza by the bullpen mounds. He stretched on one of the several back fields, bantering with his new teammates and hearing greetings from fans.
“Welcome to the team!” one man exclaimed a few times. “Bring us to glory!”
Soto took batting practice in a group with veterans on the main field at Clover Park, and effortlessly lined balls around the diamond. He launched one ball nearly over the batter’s eye in straightaway center field. It was business as usual even if it wasn’t.
“It’s exciting,” Mendoza said. “You could see it. All the people. There’s a lot more cameras. As soon as he stepped on the field, he was walking toward the cage, you could just feel it. And when he stepped in that batting cage with all the boys who were there … heads turned around. It was like, ‘OK. Here he is.”’
For Soto, Sunday represented the beginning of some long-awaited stability. The Mets are his fourth franchise in fewer than three years. His impending free agency had been a subject that lingered over him from the moment it was leaked that he had turned down a 15-year, $440 million contract extension from the Washington Nationals — the organization that signed him out of the Dominican Republic as a teenager, called him up for his major league debut at 19 and won a World Series with him in 2019.
In July 2022, the Nationals traded him to the San Diego Padres, who traded him to the New York Yankees in December 2023. Soto’s one season in the Bronx was a tremendous success. He clubbed a career-high 41 home runs with a .989 OPS, helped fuel the Yankees to their first World Series appearance in 15 years and finished third in the American League MVP race, setting the stage for a free agent frenzy at age 26. In December, he chose to cross over to Queens, marking the end of the uncertainty.
“It feels pretty good to be sitting here, that I’m going to be here for a long time and be sitting in the same chair for a long time,” Soto said. “It’s really exciting. I can’t wait to see how it goes through the years and how we can enjoy it and embrace it every year.”
For Starling Marte, Soto’s arrival represented a demotion. Marte, the Mets’ primary right fielder the previous three seasons, enters spring training slated for a lesser role in a platoon at designated hitter against left-handed pitchers, with the occasional start in the outfield for the final year of his four-year, $78 million contract.
The 36-year-old Marte said the team was transparent with him during the offseason, informing him after signing Soto that he could be traded. But a move for the 13-year veteran never happened.
“Nobody wants to be traded from a team where they’ve spent some years,” Marte said in Spanish. “The comfort that you feel with the team and the staff, you get used to that. But at the same time, you want to play every day. … Wherever they need me, I’ll be here doing my best each day.”
Soto, meanwhile, will replace Marte as the team’s every-day right fielder, with some designated hitter sprinkled into his workload, Mendoza said. Where Soto will hit in the lineup is less clear: Mendoza said he expects him to bat either second — behind All-Star shortstop Francisco Lindor — or third. Soto said he’ll bat wherever the team prefers.
“I started that conversation today,” Mendoza said.
Off the field, Soto, who was surrounded by older stars in his previous stops, will take the next step as a franchise cornerstone and veteran leader, given his status and contract, even if he doesn’t seek it.
“I’m here to be the same guy I’ve been since day one,” Soto said. “That is Juan Soto. Now I’m just with a different uniform, but I’m going to be the same guy.”
That guy, the Mets hope, will help the organization win its first World Series in nearly 40 years in 2025, and more championships beyond that. For now, he’s the new guy again, introducing himself to everybody and beginning what he expects to be his final transition to a new club for years to come.
NASCAR driver Katherine Legge said she has been receiving “hate mail” and “death threats” from auto racing fans after she was involved in a crash that collected veteran driver Kasey Kahne during the Xfinity Series race last weekend at Rockingham.
Legge, who has started four Indy 500s but is a relative novice in stock cars, added during Tuesday’s episode of her “Throttle Therapy” podcast that “the inappropriate social media comments I’ve received aren’t just disturbing, they are unacceptable.”
“Let me be very clear,” the British driver said, “I’m here to race and I’m here to compete, and I won’t tolerate any of these threats to my safety or to my dignity, whether that’s on track or off of it.”
Legge became the first woman in seven years to start a Cup Series race earlier this year at Phoenix. But her debut in NASCAR’s top series ended when Legge, who had already spun once, was involved in another spin and collected Daniel Suarez.
Her next start was the lower-level Xfinity race in Rockingham, North Carolina, last Saturday. Legge was good enough to make the field on speed but was bumped off the starting grid because of ownership points. Ultimately, she was able to take J.J. Yeley’s seat in the No. 53 car for Joey Gase Motorsports, which had to scramble at the last minute to prepare the car for her.
Legge was well off the pace as the leaders were lapping her, and when she entered Turn 1, William Sawalich got into the back of her car. That sent Legge spinning, and Kahne had nowhere to go, running into her along the bottom of the track.
“I gave [Sawalich] a lane and the reason the closing pace looks so high isn’t because I braked midcorner. I didn’t. I stayed on my line, stayed doing my speed, which obviously isn’t the speed of the leaders because they’re passing me,” Legge said. “He charged in a bit too hard, which is the speed difference you see. He understeered up a lane and into me, which spun me around.”
The 44-year-old Legge has experience in a variety of cars across numerous series. She made seven IndyCar starts for Dale Coyne Racing last year, and she has raced for several teams over more than a decade in the IMSA SportsCar series.
She has dabbled in NASCAR in the past, too, starting four Xfinity races during the 2018 season and another two years ago.
“I have earned my seat on that race track,” Legge said. “I’ve worked just as hard as any of the other drivers out there, and I’ve been racing professionally for the last 20 years. I’m 100 percent sure that … the teams that employed me — without me bringing any sponsorship money for the majority of those 20 years — did not do so as a DEI hire, or a gimmick, or anything else. It’s because I can drive a race car.”
Legge believes the vitriol she has received on social media is indicative of a larger issue with women in motorsports.
“Luckily,” she said, “I have been in tougher battles than you guys in the comment sections.”
Legge has received plenty of support from those in the racing community. IndyCar driver Marco Andretti clapped back at one critic on social media who called Legge “unproven” in response to a post about her history at the Indy 500.
“It’s wild to me how many grown men talk badly about badass girls like this,” Andretti wrote on X. “Does it make them feel more manly from the couch or something?”
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