JUan Soto agreed to a reported 15-year, $765 million contract with the New York Mets on Sunday night, the largest contract in total value in professional sports history. But beyond the enormous sums of money involved, it also represents a change in the dynamics of baseball.

It’s obvious to say that $765 million is an obscene sum, and it is. But baseball salaries were obscene long before Soto’s deal was agreed upon. The 26-year-old received $65 million more than the Los Angeles Dodgers committed to Shohei Ohtani last winter, albeit on a five-year longer contract. According to various reports on Sunday, Soto’s contract does not include the type of deferred payments that made up almost all of Ohtani’s wages from the Dodgers. Soto’s contract is a generational change and could upend the balance of power in an already strong National League East.

The Mets, who lost to Ohtani’s Dodgers in the National League Championship Series in October, will be a threat to the NL pennant for the foreseeable future. And in signing Soto, owner and hedge fund magnate Steve Cohen has dealt a devastating blow to the crosstown Yankees, who enjoyed exactly a year of Soto’s brilliance before losing him to their Subway Series rivals. For most of major league history, it was the Yankees who made such deals, while the Mets established themselves in their role as the lovable underdogs of the city. But Cohen is rich even by sports owner standards: $21 billion is a funny way to change a team.

Soto’s free agency was a blockbuster moment, an impending event that caused teams to rearrange their plans over the course of several years. The Washington Nationals, Soto’s first team, traded him in 2022 and collected a number of talented prospects after it was clear they couldn’t come to terms with one of the best hitters to ever hit the free agent market . Soto had transformed the Nationals, helping lead them to their first World Series title in 2019. The San Diego Padres made the same calculation when they brought Soto to their own collection of young talent after he spent the 2023 season in Southern California. Soto’s profile only rose when he arrived in New York in 2024, when he posted a .288/.419/.569 slash line with the Yankees and became the apple of Cohen’s eye.

That the market would shower Soto with such riches will come as no surprise to the rest of the industry. Soto is one of baseball’s all-time greatest hitters, and his early debut – he was 19 years, 207 days old when he first started in a league where many great players don’t break through until their mid-20s – was one Success he was an unusually young free agent.

Soto will play three more seasons in his 20s, and everything about his profile so far suggests he will age well. He has played at least 150 games in all five full seasons he has played in the Major Leagues. (He played 47 of 60 games for the Nationals in the Covid-shortened 2020 season.) Soto has stayed healthy, and his strengths don’t depend on maintaining his running speed as he ages. Soto was a superstar despite being a mediocre outfielder and not doing much as a baserunner.

Instead, Soto has almost certainly built a Hall of Fame career with the twin pillars of strength and discipline. He is the most patient Batter of his era who regularly ranked at or near the top of the major leagues in base-on-balls percentage and refused to swing on pitches outside the strike zone. Pitchers know that the only way to get Soto out is to challenge him, and that in itself is problematic because of his thunderous swing. Soto’s three-run home run in the top of the 10th inning of Game 5 of the American League Championship Series last season showed the bond he creates for pitchers: There isn’t always a base for Soto to hand over, and often the decision to For him, this results in a baseball disappearing over the fences.

Soto led the National League in tackles three times during his season with the Nationals and San Diego Padres. He was second in the American League this year, behind only teammate Aaron Judge. He leads all active hitters in career on-base percentage (.421). If “times staring at a pitcher while shuffling around in the batter’s box and grabbing his crotch” were a statistic, Soto would lead the league in that statistic every year, too. No one in baseball has Soto’s relaxed yet fierce demeanor on the field.

It’s even funnier when Soto takes the bat off his shoulder. Since 2018, his rookie season, Soto ranks fourth in all of baseball in FanGraphs’ environmentally adjusted Runs Created statistic, a few points ahead of the great Ohtani. His 201 home runs in those seven seasons are the ninth-most in that span.

That would be enough to make Soto one of the best players of any generation. But what makes him such an outlier is his youth. Those 201 home runs rank tied for eighth any times for a player aged 25. Needless to say, everyone on the list ahead of Soto is either in the Hall of Fame (Jimmie Foxx, Eddie Mathews, Mel Ott, Mickey Mantle, Frank Robertson), soon-to-be (Albert Pujols) or just is absent because he tested positive for steroid use (Alex Rodriguez, the all-time leader with 241 home runs in his age-26 season). Nothing is promised, but Soto may only be halfway through his time as an elite hitter. And even if he’s no longer elite, his legendary eye will give him more productive seasons.

Could the signing be a disaster for the Mets? Sure, you could play devil’s advocate. Although Soto is only 26 years old and has already appeared in four All-Star Games and led two franchises to their first World Series appearances in many years, winning one of them, no signing is without risk. Aside from the risk of a catastrophic injury — which the Mets almost certainly have insurance for — the defensive metrics have Soto rated somewhere between decent and downright terrible in right field, and it’s entirely possible he struggles , maintaining a spot in the corner outfield as he moves deeper into his career. He’s now a slightly below-average base runner, and he won’t slow down until he nears his 40s.

By the end of Soto’s contract, he would have to defy the typical aging curves to still be a solid player. It could be that at the end of the deal there will be years where Soto is briefly involved feels like an albatross.

But it should be well worth it considering how exciting Soto will be in the near future and how many years in the top game a player of his rare profile should still have ahead of him. The Nationals tried to give Soto a mega-deal in 2022, but he rejected a 15-year, $440 million offer that ended up being a low-ball offer. The Padres realized after a year that they weren’t willing to keep him once he hit free agency. So they also took advantage of him as a trade and left the Yankees to spend a strange year with Soto in right field. It was fascinating to have Soto in the lineup, but it was terrifying to imagine the Yankees of all teams are no longer allowed to keep him afterwards. The move will be a blow to the psyche of Yankees fans. His departure to the Mets – so long synonymous with dysfunction and lack of performance in New York – will only make it worse. Sometimes little brothers can usurp the throne: just look at what Manchester City have done to Manchester United in the Premier League in recent years.

In that sense, Soto’s signing doesn’t just end a few weeks of free agency drama. It removes years of uncertainty about which franchise would receive the majority of the career of one of the best young hitters to ever pick up a bat. With that out of the way, all you have to do is watch Soto hit – or more often than not, run.