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| Juan Soto hitting a home run for the Yankees on May 18. Photo by Jason Schott. |
When Steve Cohen bought the Mets three years ago, it was felt that their dynamic to the Yankees in this town would change.
On Sunday night, that reality came into stark relief.
Juan Soto, the most prized free agent of this off-season, left the Yankees after just one season and joined the Mets on a 15-year, $765 million contract - an astonishing $51 million a season.
It was revealed later that the Yankees offered 16 years and $760 million. While ostensibly, it looks like they came up just $5 million short, in reality since the contract's length would have been one year longer, it was really $56 million less.
Even though Soto led the Yankees to the World Series last season, it was assumed to be a major lift for Hal Steinbrenner to be able to put together a package to compete with Cohen.
The Yankees are the most valuable team in baseball, at $7.5 billion, but the Steinbrenner family does not have any other assets to supplement their income from the ballclub. By comparison, Cohen is worth $21.3 billion, head of a lucrative hedge fund, and entering what is thought to be a boom time in the markets.
Cohen has had no issue paying the luxury tax in his three years as owner, in which the Mets have had the highest payroll in baseball, whereas that always has been a hurdle for the Yankees, including two years ago when they re-signed Aaron Judge.
The only edge for the Bronx Bombers, and it might not have been much, was if the Yankees won the World Series.
The Yankees did win the American League pennant, with Soto hitting the game-winning home run in Cleveland to clinch it, but they lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
That five-game loss might have been the ultimate clarifier for Soto, as the Yankees were thoroughly dominated, and their patchwork lineup's many flaws came out in the Series.
Oh, and the hardest thing that Soto might have realized was that his fellow slugger, Aaron Judge, was an utter disaster in October, and his drop of a routine fly ball opened the floodgates in the deciding Game 5 against the Dodgers.
Meanwhile, the Mets took Los Angeles to six games in the National League Championship Series, and their lineup 1-to-9 proved quite formidable.
Just imagine Soto joining Francisco Lindor, Brandon Nimmo, Mark Vientos, and Jeff McNeil, and who knows, maybe they find a way to even keep Pete Alonso around. (watch for the Red Sox to be in for Pete now after missing out on Soto).
In his one year in The Bronx, Soto hit .288, with a .419 on-base percentage, a .569 slugging %, and an OPS of .989, with 41 home runs and 109 RBI, along with 166 hits, 129 walks and just 119 strikeouts.
In the postseason, Soto had three home runs and six RBI in the ALCS against Cleveland, and then in the World Series, he had one home run and one RBI (in Game 2), while hitting .313 with a .522 OBP.
Soto has won a World Series with the Washington Nationals in 2019, and for his career, in 43 postseason games, he has hit .281 with a .389 OBP, 11 home runs, and 30 RBI.
The Yankees knew he could be the final piece to winning their first World Series since 2009, and they were awfully close to that coming true, but now they have to reckon with what they sent to the San Diego Padres - headlined by pitcher Michael King and catcher Kyle Higashioka, along with pitchers Jhony Brito, Randy Vasquez, and Drew Thorpe - for what turned out to be a one-year rental. San Diego also made the playoffs last season, with King as their ace and Higashioka as their starting catcher, but like the New York teams, they lost to the Dodgers in the playoffs.
Looking at the energy the Mets generated last season, where their games became events, this decade could start to feel like the 1980s, where they own the town, and the Yankees are the ones who have to catch up to Cohen.
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