We are very fortunate to witness Juan Soto’s career. His new contract with the Mets is historic for a whole host of reasons and leads to so many funny comments.

Soto is a four-time All-Star and just turned 26 years old. He will play for his fourth MLB team on Opening Day. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Soto would be the first player to make at least four All-Star teams and play for all four teams before turning 27.

Let’s delve deeper into the context. Here are 13 stats and facts about Soto’s new contract and what makes him so great.

The contract
We have to start with the conditions. At 15 years and $765 million, this is the largest contract in North American professional sports. The largest baseball contract to date by total value was Shohei Ohtani’s 10-year, $700 million deal with the Dodgers starting in 2024. Before the last two years, it was Mike Trout’s 12-year, $426.5 million deal with the Angels. dollars in 2019.

At 15 years, this is the longest contract in MLB history, surpassing a mark set when Fernando Tatis Jr. signed a 14-year extension with the Padres in 2021. The longest free agent contract to date was Bryce Harper’s 13-year deal with the Phillies in 2019.

Meet the Mets
Soto is no stranger to Citi Field, having started his career with the Nationals and won the Wild Card Series there in 2022 with the Padres. The longest home run of his career occurred on August 12, 2020 at Citi Field and traveled 466 feet. Combined with his 463-foot home run two days earlier, these are the fourth and fifth longest home runs at Citi Field, according to Statcast (since 2015).

He hit a career-high 41 home runs for the Yankees last season. No player had a 40-hour season for both the Yankees and Mets. In fact, Darryl Strawberry, Carlos Beltran and Curtis Granderson are the only players with more than 40 career home runs for each of the franchises.

Soto, as mentioned above, is 26 years old and has not only played for three teams – he has made the postseason with all of them. He was already the youngest player to reach the postseason with a third team. Now he is aiming for this with a fourth team. Only one player has played in a postseason game for a fourth team before turning 30: 29-year-old Delmon Young for the Orioles in 2014. Soto will get three chances to break that record.

Not only did he make the postseason with these three teams, but he also scored a goal for each team in the playoffs. The record for most different teams to hit a postseason home run is four, held by Russell Martin, JD Martinez, Mike Napoli, Nelson Cruz, John Olerud, Reggie Sanders and Ron Gant. Of course, this is Juan Soto, so not only does he have one home run for each team, he has at least two. He is one of nine players to hit multiple postseason home runs with three different teams. With four teams, no one has managed this yet.

According to Elias, the slugger made the All-Star Game in three consecutive seasons with three different teams, one of 10 players to do so. No player has ever done it in four consecutive seasons with four different teams. No player has appeared in a fourth-team All-Star game before the age of 31, regardless of the series. Here too he is 26.

We’ll give him a few days to settle in before predicting how many metrics he could end up as the franchise leader in, but we have to talk about his specialty: walks. Soto has drawn 769 walks in 936 games over the first seven years of his career. The Mets’ franchise record for walks is 762 by David Wright in 1,585 games over 14 years.

The great Juan
There are so many ways to show how Soto’s career so far earned him this contract. In 2024, he hit 41 home runs and 129 walks. It was his fourth season with at least 25 home runs and 125 walks. That’s the fourth-highest total in MLB history, trailing only Barry Bonds (10 such seasons), Babe Ruth (10) and Ted Williams (eight). He and Williams (five) are the only players with more than two such seasons in their first seven years in MLB.

His 2020 season is also worth considering. In the 60-game season, Soto played in 47 games and slashed .351/.490/.695 with 13 home runs and 41 walks. If we split those over 150 games, which is Soto’s fewest in a 162-game season excluding his year of action, that’s 41 home runs and 130 walks. In other words, almost exactly his 2024 production. We’ll never know what could have been, but that would have given him perhaps five 25-125 seasons.

Soto has 201 career home runs, tied with Albert Pujols for sixth place before the age of 26, behind only Jimmie Foxx (222 HR), Eddie Mathews (222), Alex Rodriguez (216), Mel Ott (211) and Mickey Mantle (207). ). And again: If 2020 had been a full season? The prorated numbers above would mean 28 more home runs, moving him to the top of the list. He also has 23 career multi-homer games, the second most before the age of 26, behind Ott’s 24.

He had an on-base percentage of at least .400 in each of his first seven career seasons. This streak is tied with Ferris Fain for the fourth-longest streak to start a career among AL/NL players in the live-ball era (1920). He’s on the hunt for Ted Williams (first 17 seasons), Frank Thomas (eight) and Wade Boggs (eight).

As mentioned above, Soto has 769 career paths. That’s the second-highest by a player before the age of 27, behind Mickey Mantle’s 797. In other words, he’s just 29 runs away from breaking the under-27 record, and as a 26-year-old he hasn’t even yet played one game in the regular season.