More Thoughts About the Juan Soto Deal

It's been almost three days since the news of Juan Soto being traded to the New York Mets was announced. Now, the online baseball community has reacted to the latest blockbuster deal. Let's just say that the news wasn't well received, and I'll explain the reasons why in a bit. In case you're not up to speed with this, let's recap.

Sunday night, Soto signed a 15-year, $765 million dollar deal. This is the largest contract in Major League Baseball history and in any sport. He's 26-years-old and has one World Series title and that was with the Washington Nationals in 2019. The Mets will be the fourth team in his career. Now, onto the reasons why his deal has received significant backlash.

This list (shown above) is from the MLB on Fox's Facebook page. It shows the names of players and the details of their enormous contracts. In the case of Juan Soto, the comments on this photo range from concerns about becoming an injury risk to calling the deal "insane". I've already stated my opinions about Shohei Ohtani's deal in my previous story, so I'm not going to go over it again. When I looked at this list, it had my head scratching. The players with the 10 plus year deals are something that needs to be heavily scrutinized. For example, Mike Trout's deal of $426.5 million over 12 years is atrocious. 2025 will be his 15th MLB season and is currently 33 years old. His current deal is hurting him more than it is helping, because he's so injury prone. The Los Angeles Angels are paying someone an extravagant amount of money who can't even stay healthy for at least half a season and that's the problem. Angels owner Arte Moreno still refuses to sell the team. They still believe that Trout is the future of this team, but again, it seems like he gets injured every season. Even if Trout is open to becoming a designated hitter for the 2025 season, how much longer will the Angels hold on him? These teams are paying these players ridiculous amounts of money when they don't know how well they'll perform year in and year out. Which leads me to my next point...

I gave my two cents in the comments section of the aforementioned MLB on Fox's Facebook post. The first sentence in my comment is something a majority of people have been saying since the conclusion of the World Series. I believe that all teams should have salary caps in place. In Juan Soto's case, he's not even 30 yet and I have one important question about his latest deal: What has he done in the last five years, besides winning a World Series title, to deserve a large contract like this? To put this in broader perspective, Commissioner Rob Manfred's net worth is $40 million, but makes $11 million yearly. Juan Soto will make $725 million more than the person who's in charge of the entire league. Describing Soto's record-breaking deal as shocking would be an understatement. I would describe it as ridiculous and questionable. No athlete should be paid that much money. It doesn't matter how long they've been playing in their respective sports.

Juan Soto's deal is a waste of money and if the Mets don't make it to the playoffs in 2025, they'll regret the contract that he was offered and eventually signed. I would describe contracts like Juan Soto's as band-aid contracts. A team would sign a huge superstar athlete to a long-term deal worth lots of money just for the hype, figuring that it would positively benefit a player and the organization. As I've stated in my previous story, I'm not against players seeking to be paid more. However, it has to be reasonable. You have to prove why you deserve to be paid large amounts of money. Soto's deal is nothing to be hyped up about. This would lead to price increases on concessions at Citi Field and tickets would be even more expensive, but Mets fans will still attend the games.

I don't dislike Juan Soto, whatsoever. I just don't agree with the latest deal and many people feel this way. He can sign with any team he wants to. I still maintain that a salary cap should be put on all 30 teams to avoid stuff like this happening in the future. We'll just have to wait and see if Soto's deal was worth it, come next season. Or will the 2025 season for the Mets be an epic failure?