Juan Soto agreed to a reported 15-year, $765m contract with the New York Mets on Sunday night, the largest contract in the history of professional sports by total value. But as well as the brain-frying amounts of cash involved, it also represents a shift in the dynamics of baseball.
The obvious thing to say is that $765m is an obscene amount of money, which it is. But baseball salaries were obscene long before Soto’s deal was agreed. The 26-year-old got $65m more than the Los Angeles Dodgers committed to Shohei Ohtani last winter, albeit over a contract that is five years longer. Soto’s contract, various reports on Sunday indicated, does not include the kind of deferred payments that comprised almost all of Ohtani’s pay from the Dodgers. Soto’s contract is a generational haul and could upend the balance of power in an already strong National League East.
