Juan Soto, the 26-year-old slugger whose early-career performance has been compared to Ted Williams, has been a bit of a lightening rod for controversy since he signed the richest contract in sports history back in December — a 15-year, $765 million deal that brought him from the New York Yankees across the Triborough Bridge to the New York Mets.
First, the massive contract itself is still controversial, even with the offseason largely concluded and spring training underway. Veteran baseball writer Jayson Stark of The Athletic sent a survey to 32 to MLB executives, asking which free agent signing they considered the best and worst of the 2024-2025 offseason.
He received 19 ballots back with answers to that question. Nine of the execs named Soto’s signing by the Mets as the best of this offseason — and 10 called it the worst.
Soto’s Comments Have Drawn Ire From Fans
Soto himself had little to say publicly, but the utterances he did issue also drew fire — especially when he said that New York has “been a Mets town for a long time.”
That drew irritated responses from former ESPN and NFL Network anchor — and lifelong Yankee fan — Rich Eisen who on his Rich Eisen Show program replied, “Dude, get out of here. Get out of here with that noise. …It’s a Mets town? Yeah, in your head. He just lived the Yankee life for a year.”
Nor was Soto’s cause helped when he showed up at Juan Marichal Stadium in the Dominican Republic capital of Santo Domingo, Soto’s hometown. The ballpark is home to Tigres del Licey, the reigning and 11-time Dominican Winter League champions. Soto said that playing for his hometown club has been his lifelong dream, and he revealed that under his contract, the Mets have given him permission to live that dream, at least for 10 games.
But risking injury playing in any games that do not help the Mets win pennants seems to be an unwise decision.
Soto Drops 2-Word Message on Handling Pressure
Soto reported to the Mets spring training camp on Sunday in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where he addressed the United States media for the first time since his introductory Mets press conference in December. Naturally, he faced questions about the offseason controversies, asked by a reporter, “How do you keep that pressure from building up, and dealing with the hate?”
Soto summed up his feelings in a two-word message to Mets fans who might be worried that all the outside issues could get to him.
“Winning games,” Soto answered, in a matter-of-fact tone.
The four-time All-Star then elaborated somewhat on his terse response.
“That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to talk too much,” he said. “You just gotta go out there and get the job done.”
Soto undoubtedly has a lot to live up to. Not every young hitter is compared to Ted Williams, the Boston Red Sox Hall of Famer often called the “greatest hitter who ever lived.” But those comparisons were not made frivolously.
Boston Globe columnist and statistics expert Alex Speier wrote of Soto that his “performance track is matched by almost no one in baseball history. There’s only been one other player who was so consistently dominant in the batter’s box from the day he stepped foot in the big leagues as a teenager: Williams.”
Speier reported that, measured by OPS+ which adjusts OPS numbers so that the average MLB hitter will always score 100, only two hitters in history were as productive over their first four seasons, recording an OPS+ over 140 in each year: Williams and Soto.
Williams, however, took three years off after his fourth season, to serve in the United States military during World War II.
