The Juan Soto sweepstakes are taking over the MLB’s 2024 offseason this winter. The Toronto Blue Jays, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, and New York Mets are expected to be the top four teams in the pursuit to acquire him. Each of these four teams has a tremendous amount of money to spend, so it’s been very difficult to project Soto’s contract.
At what point will the biggest markets in the league say that Soto isn’t worth a certain dollar amount?
During the season, the expectation was Soto would land a contract around the $500 million to $550 million mark. But it soon jumped up to potentially breaking the $600 million threshold. Now, reports are indicating that $600 million is the absolute floor for a contract.
A few MLB insiders, including Jon Heyman of the New York Post, have suggested that Soto could land a record-breaking $700 million contract that includes no deferred money.
“It isn’t known whether official offers are being made at meetings this week, but it is all but certain the slugger will set the record for contract value currently held by (Los Angeles) Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani (his historically deferred $700 million deal is valued somewhere between $437M and $470M). Soto’s deal could reach $600 million, or possibly even a non-deferred $700 million,” Heyman wrote.
Teams will be getting very creative with Soto’s contract. We saw the absolute extreme level of deferred money with Ohtani’s contract, where he was given a $700 million with $680 million deferred.
For Soto, we could see a much more passive approach. Maybe the team that lands him offers him $500 million with $200 million deferred. Maybe it’s $600 million with $100 million deferred. Or maybe there’s no deferred money at all.
Either way, the odds that he lands a $700 million deal are becoming a very real possibility.
