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SAN ANTONIO — With the GM Meetings nearly over and the MLB offseason stirring to life, longstanding speculation about Juan Soto’s free agency has become reality: The Mets and Yankees are hot for him.
It’s what everyone expected, and now it is happening. But there is nuance to it.
Here are notes on both teams and Soto after the initial few days:
— The Yankees loved having Soto this year, and are obviously launching a massive push to retain him. While team brass viewed Soto as a pleasant teammate, hard worker and startlingly poised and mature person for a 25-year-old, they also see him as a bit inscrutable.
A master of misdirection on questions about his preferences and future, Soto has left even many Yankees people guessing. In this respect, his free agency recalls Aaron Judge’s, when the front office and ownership were left guessing about Judge’s preference between the Yanks and the San Francisco Giants.
— Having said that, there is definitely a sense around Soto that he enjoyed the Yankee experience and will return if the team presents what he considers a fair offer. The notion that Soto will simply go to the highest bidder no matter what appears oversimplified, but the Yankees will certainly have to come close. From a player perspective, Soto has a responsibility to future generations of free agents to continue to push salaries upward.
— This, of course, is where the Mets could come in. The team has the ambition, resources, and payroll flexibility to make the top offer to Soto. There is an enormous amount of informed speculation going around that they are planning to do so. I definitely have the impression that the Mets are willing to be very aggressive financially here.
But there is nuance to that, too. Having covered Steve Cohen for four offseasons now, I’ve noticed that in order for him to go all in on a free agent, he needs to sense that the person is genuinely interested in the Mets. He was willing to pay Max Scherzer an historic annual salary, and offer Yoshinobu Yamamoto a record deal for a pitcher because he had met with these players, and determined that signing them was at least possible.
Last fall, when star free agent manager Craig Counsell seemed transparent in his aim to use the Mets to drive up his own price, the Mets sniffed it out and actually made the low offer to Counsell, even less than the Milwaukee Brewers.
In other words, upcoming meetings between the Mets and Soto will be extremely important in determining if the Mets will indeed follow through on their intention to pursue Soto aggressively. They won’t allow themselves to be used.
— In a similar vein, I don’t sense that the Mets feel that their only successful offseason involves signing Soto. Cohen did not hire David Stearns primarily as a big game hunter, but as an executive skilled at finding hidden value on the market. There are plenty of different paths that he and his front office can travel this winter.
— Finally, I don’t sense that the shortcomings in Soto’s game are giving either team much pause. He is a one-dimensional player — but that one dimension is Ted Williams level. I have asked folks from both the Yankees and the Mets if it bothered them to commit historic dollars to a Hall of Fame-level hitter who does not play the outfield or run the bases well. It’s not quite inevitable that Soto will be a designated hitter for much of his 30s, like Giancarlo Stanton, but it’s not difficult to imagine that outcome.
Still, his skills as a hitter — specifically, the otherworldly quality of his at-bats — are apparently enough to inspire the big boys of baseball to ignore the holes in Soto’s game, put on their big boy pants and pay big boy money.