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Yanks Pivot to Fried While Small Markets Worry Amid Soto Buzz
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- Yanks Pivot to Fried While Small Markets Worry Amid Soto Buzz
DALLAS—After word spread of Juan Soto 's record-breaking 15-year, $765 million agreement with the New York Mets on Sunday night, veteran manager Terry Francona echoed the feeling of many people at the Hilton Anatole, where Major League Baseball figures have congregated for the Winter Meetings.
"I was shocked. My goodness," said Francona, who is back managing the Cincinnati Reds after a one-year health sabbatical from Major League Baseball.
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Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy agreed.
"I was probably like everybody: stunned," Bochy said after Soto shunned returning to the New York Yankees . "Any time you break a barrier, you go, 'Whoa, where is it going to stop?' Man, he's a tremendous player. He had a lot of leverage."
Meanwhile, some observers from small-market clubs saw the Soto contract as a worrisome example of a league that features a few haves and many more have nots.
Soto was supposed to have his physical in New York on Tuesday where the deal is expected to be finalized later in the week. Already, his move has had a ripple effect on the annual Winter Meetings, with negotiations elsewhere springing to life, particularly among the rich teams that missed out on him.
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The Yankees went right back into the market Tuesday and agreed to terms with left-hander Max Fried on an eight-year, $218 million contract, according to multiple reports. They offered Soto $760 million, so they still have money to spend.
The free agent market is still bulging with 228 on the market heading toward the Christmas holidays, including such household names as Justin Verlander , Max Scherzer , Paul Goldschmidt , Teoscar Hernandez , Alex Bregman , Corbin Burnes and Pete Alonso . Only 32 have signed as of Tuesday night.
The Soto sweepstakes came down to the Mets and Yankees with the Boston Red Sox and defending World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers on the periphery. The Philadelphia Phillies were also involved.
The fact that so few teams can participate in high-end talks was delineated again by the fact that 25 of the 30 Major League teams didn't even participate in the auction conducted by Soto's agent Scott Boras.
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That disparity is aching to be addressed, said Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo.
"It's at the level of ownership," he said. "If they need to figure out how to level the playing field, I think they should. At the end of the day, we know we're challenged financially. Things have been different for us than the Mets and Yankees and Dodgers and some other clubs."
Ownership is discussing how to more equally disperse regional television money now that close to a third of the clubs have lost their local television packages.
Commissioner Rob Manfred spoke at length about the television issue at the recent owners' meeting. There was also some talk again about trying to collectively bargain a salary cap with the players' union when a new contract must be negotiated during the 2016 season. The current five-year deal expires after that season.
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Practically, a salary cap and floor have always been a non-starter for the players. And it might take a two-year lockout to break the union, a baseball executive with knowledge of labor issues said.
In the last negotiations, the owners locked out the players after the 2021 season, but folded without a cap just before the 2022 season was set to begin. With some rescheduling, not one of the 162 games were lost because of the labor problems.
The result now is that salaries are higher than ever with a few teams spending big and the others trying to exercise some fiscal restraint.
The D-backs, for example, lost the World Series to Texas in 2023 and are struggling to maintain their own roster and last year's middle of the pack $219 million payroll. Right now, they have $131.9 million spent on seven players.
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They're having trouble re-signing or replacing three key free agents— Christian Walker , Joc Pederson and Randall Grichuk—who combined for 61 homers and 194 RBIs and were paid an aggregate of $26.4 million. Walker turned down a qualifying offer. Pederson and Grichuk rejected their end of a mutual option.
The holes on the roster are not allowing Lovullo to sleep much at night.
"Do they land back on our team? I don't know what that answer is," he said. "We have some space to fill potentially with Joc and Walk moving on. That's a lot of offense. Yeah, it could be overwhelming to think about, but we'll figure it out."
For teams like the D-backs, getting involved in chasing Soto or Shohei Ohtani , who signed last year with the Dodgers for 10 years at $700 million, is purely fantasy.
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Even the San Francisco Giants , who made a run at Ohtani, sat out the Soto derby—and they're a franchise with a deep pocket ownership that once courted and signed eventual all-time home run king Barry Bonds.
"My first thought is that my oldest kids will be 28 when Soto's done playing [in 2039]," said Buster Posey , their former World Series-winning catcher who's newly in charge of baseball operations. "That really puts it in perspective."
Posey's first foray in the market was committing $182 million over the course of seven years to former Milwaukee shortstop Willy Adames . It's the largest deal ever signed in Giants history surpassing a nine-year, $167 million contract paid to, you guessed it, Buster Posey, who discovered that little factoid near the end of the negotiations.
"I didn't think twice about it," he said. "We're just trying to put great players on the field for the city of San Francisco."
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The Giants are also interested in Burnes to replace Blake Snell , who turned down a player option and signed with the Dodgers for five-years at $182 million, $65 million of it deferred.
The Red Sox, who also have money to burn, were in Soto's final mix and still thought they had a chance until the news broke Sunday night the Mets had won the derby. Alex Cora, the team's manager, said their group was in a restaurant when it happened and patrons began buzzing.
"It's good for baseball, that's the way I see it," he said. "I think everybody was waiting for this to happen, and obviously it was interesting the way everybody reacted when it happened."
Like the Yankees, the Red Sox are moving on to scour the market sans Soto.
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"We have plan A, plan A1, A2, A3, A4," Cora said. "There's a lot of ways to accomplish what we set out to do. We've been talking about winning the division and making it to the playoffs. There's different avenues, different ways. We're going to attack them and hopefully we can execute."
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