PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — With a matter-of-fact tone, Juan Soto sounded confident. In his decision to pick the New York Mets. In his ability to perform at an elite level, starting with Thursday’s season opener. In anything, really.
Especially his contract. The pressure doesn’t cloud his view of it. He sees the realization of an idea first introduced to him when he was 17 years old.
“If it’s not the best, it’s gotta be one of the best contracts ever — and not because of the money but all the perks in the contract,” Soto said in a recent interview about the years-long process that ultimately made him supremely at ease playing against the backdrop of a 15-year, $765 million deal. “I feel like there is no other like it.”
That’s because there isn’t. It’s the richest deal in sports history. It even contains special extras like luxury suites at home games, other premium seats and his customary No. 22 uniform.
Soto said he didn’t have to have any single one of the perks. He felt comfortable asking for them.
“When a player goes to free agency, he’s allowed to ask for anything,” Soto said. “So I asked. And they gave me everything I wanted. It was a big part of it. Anything I wanted in my contract — opt outs, season tickets — I got it.”
Soto knows his worth. He is the 26-year-old who shuffles in the batter’s box, stares down opposing pitchers. He owns the highest on-base percentage among active players. He might be the game’s best hitter.
Performing as the $765 million player requires more than just skill. A certain personality is necessary. Soto’s past — rejecting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Washington Nationals, spending just one year with the New York Yankees, taking the Mets’ monster offer — embodies his self-assurance.
The number surprised 17-year-old Juan Soto.
In a meeting with Soto and Soto’s family, agent Scott Boras demonstratively raised his hand.
“I want you to know what this means,” Boras told Soto’s parents. “This is what I think your son is worth.”
Five.
As in, five hundred million dollars. Soto was merely a prospect in Class A, multiple steps away from the major leagues. A year earlier, the Washington Nationals signed him as an amateur international free agent for a then-lofty bonus of $1.5 million. Now, Boras, one of the most influential figures in the industry, was saying that someday he’d command a figure no one at the time had seen.
Soto’s father laughed. His mother blurted out, “Really?”
And Soto thought to himself, “You’re crazy.”
“When you talk about a young kid who comes from the Dominican Republic — a dollar is 60 pesos in the DR — it’s a different feeling,” Soto said in a recent interview. “It’s a different feeling when you’re talking about millions of dollars. And when you’re talking about 500 million dollars, it’s just massive. When he was saying that, we didn’t know what to say.”
Sensing the stupefaction that day, Boras said, “Juan, the first thing I’m going to do is get you to believe in yourself.”
Boras met with Soto 68 times — Boras said he kept track — over the next several years leading up to the deal with the Mets. They discussed performance, mindset and value, and all the subcategories under each topic. Over time, Soto grew more comfortable with hearing about gargantuan dollar figures. His on-field success kept confirming Boras’ vision.
Soto reached the majors in 2018 as a 19-year-old and never looked back. By 2019, he had established himself as an elite hitter. That year, he helped the Nationals win the World Series.
In the National League wild card winner-take-all game that year, Soto entered the batter’s box in the bottom of the eighth inning. The Nationals trailed by two runs. Two outs. Bases loaded. Josh Hader, one of the game’s best closers, was on the mound.
Soto fouled a first-pitch fastball straight back. He stared at Hader. His eyes told a story about how much he knew he’d just missed it, how confident he was he’d still come through. The next pitch, a slider, sailed way beyond the strike zone. Soto performed his shuffle. He eyed Hader the whole time, challenging him, hyping himself up. Count: 1-1. Another high fastball. Soto connected for the game-winning hit.
The moment left a lasting impression on then-Milwaukee Brewers GM David Stearns, now the Mets’ president of baseball operations.
“It’s one of the greatest at-bats I’ve ever seen,” Stearns said.
From there, Soto kept adding to his lore. Over 850 plate appearances across 2020-21, Soto produced a 1.042 OPS.
The Nationals wanted to keep him around. By July 2022, they beefed up their offer to 15 years, $440 million.
Not enough. Boras’ hand, the one representing those $500 million, stayed in the air. Soto rejected the offer.
At first, he said, walking away from the offer was tough; this was the only team he knew. But the Nationals hadn’t come close to playing .500 since winning the World Series. Within months, Nationals owner Ted Lerner, with whom Soto grew close, died. Other stars no longer played in Washington.
“When you realize what they’d been doing for the past couple years, what the background was right after we won the World Series, it was like, do you want to keep playing that way? Are you willing to be on this rebuild with a new team and everything and make it harder for yourself?” Soto said. “At the end of the day, we are not doing this for the money, we are doing this because I wanted to win, wanted to be a part of something special. When I looked around and everything, I thought, ‘I don’t think that’s the right choice to take that money.’
“Definitely, I told them I was open about continuing to keep talking and keep getting to my number. They were saying that’s all they had, they weren’t going farther there and their mindset changed to go another way.”
Soto declining the offer set in motion the kind of short stays uncommon for stars of his caliber. Soon after, the Nationals dealt him to the San Diego Padres. Ahead of the 2024 season, the Padres traded him to the Yankees.
Around the time of the failed negotiations with Washington, Boras sat in his California office and wrote down on a sheet of paper a number he deemed more suitable. He placed the sheet of paper inside his drawer. Recently, he wouldn’t say what the number was, only that in relation to what Soto ended up getting from the Mets, it was “close.”
Before Soto ever played a home game in the Bronx, he had decided to enter free agency at the end of the 2024 season.
“Right when I got to the Yankees, that was a mindset that I had,” Soto said. “I thought to myself, ‘You know what, now, I am in my last year. I am going to prove who I am. I am going to go out here and do my best.’ I knew there was going to be a lot going on, there were going to be a lot of question marks. That was the point where I said, ‘OK, I’ll be focused on baseball and make sure I get the best free agency I can have.’”
Soto said he never wavered.
“There’s a lot of temptations out there that were probably able to grab some of my mindset and try to change my mind,” Soto said. “But right when I got to the last year, I was like, ‘OK, I made it all the way here — I’m not going to waste it.’”
Soto met with Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner last July. At some point, Soto told the Yankees brass that he didn’t think signing an extension months before free agency made sense.
“In the middle of the season, we told them, look, we’ve been waiting six years for this moment,” Soto said.
The confidence, again, paid off. Soto authored one of baseball’s best platform seasons: 41 home runs, .288 batting average, .989 OPS. With a third-place finish for the Most Valuable Player, he helped the Yankees reach the World Series.
Then, in an unprecedented move for baseball in New York, he left the Yankees for the Mets. Other players have changed jerseys. A star in his prime leaving a shot at Monument Park to play in Flushing? Never happened. Until Soto.
“Definitely, (the Yankees) were number one on my list,” Soto said. “But they couldn’t make it.”
In his meetings with Stearns and Mets owner Steve Cohen, Soto wore an inscrutable expression. Cohen figured Soto would pick another club; the Yankees loomed as the favorite. But Soto absorbed all the information. In Cohen, Soto saw an owner willing to spend and invest to ensure his club stayed competitive. In the Mets, Soto saw the brightest long-term future.
“This was a serious process for him,” Stearns said. “He understood he was making a very big decision. He treated it with the appropriate level of sincerity and due diligence.”
In one of Soto’s first meetings with Boras after the 2024 season, the agent insisted that teams would view the star as a special opportunity, a perennial MVP candidate in his mid-20s, someone worth investing in, in unmatched ways.
Soto asked Boras, “Are you sure there’s going to be a lot of teams fighting for me? They’re going to be in the fight, in the race?”
Boras told him, “100 percent.”
Approximately two-thirds of the league ended up reaching out.
“What do you mean, 20 teams?” Soto asked Boras.
Boras said, “Yep. They all reached out.”
Soto said, “Oh, my God. That’s a good start.”
The wildest part for Soto was when teams started to share offers. He realized how much money they were willing to spend. He wondered how long he should wait before making a decision. For those steps, he leaned on Boras.
“When everything got crazy, it was the same thing; Every little thing that he was explaining to me was happening,” Soto said. “That impressed me the most.”
But when it came down to finally making a choice, Soto said the thoughts that ran through his brain belonged solely to himself.
“It wasn’t his voice,” Soto said. “My mind was full of my voice.”
Soto’s first spring training with the Mets offered a small taste of the ramifications of his decision. A dozen cameras followed his every step as he walked onto the field for his first batting practice. In his first at-bat of the first exhibition game, he hit a home run. The Mets drew 106,027 fans to Grapefruit League games at Clover Park, their highest attendance ever in Port St. Lucie.
The Mets ended their spring training schedule with a game against the Yankees. When Soto walked to the plate for his first at-bat, the crowd at Clover Park greeted him with a vociferous mixed reaction. There were some boos. There were a lot of cheers.
“Yankees fans, they can surprise you with anything,” Soto said with a smile when asked after the game what he expected to happen in the regular-season Subway Series, “so I am expecting the worst.”
He is ready to deal with whatever may come from fans, like he is with everything else. The expectations. The contract. Hitting behind Francisco Lindor, in front of Pete Alonso, Soto is paid what he is being paid to help make the Mets not just the best team in New York, but a perennial power. The Mets want to ditch their old habit of losing in unimaginable ways. Last year’s trip to the National League Championship Series was a big step. Soto’s presence offers the promise of more.
He is different. Soto’s level of confidence, those who know him well say, is what separates him even from other members of baseball’s tiny group of inner-circle stars. Soto has done things others haven’t (and likely never will). He rejected hundreds of millions of dollars years ago, only to agree to hundreds of millions of dollars more.
“There are likely very few humans on the planet,” Stearns said, “who have the ability to turn down the type of contract that Juan turned down earlier in his career and then immediately go forward without ever looking back and wondering, ‘What if?’”
It’s the kind of person who is ready for what’s next.
(Illustration: Will Tullos / The Athletic. Photos: Rich Storry, Mary DeCicco / Getty Images)
