The best MLB free agent of this offseason and one of the best of the last five offseasons signed the biggest contract in professional sports history when Juan Soto got 15 years and $765 million from the New York Mets to travel about seven miles from the Bronx to Queens. The move makes the Mets the best team in the National League East on paper, although they still have more to do as the Philadelphia Phillies can’t keep up, while the New York Yankees now have to fight to fill the void left by the Soto’s bat suffered a loss.

Soto is a huge improvement for the Mets, as he would be for any other team. He was the American League’s third-best hitter and second-best hitter last year with a wRC+ of 180, trailing only teammate Aaron Judge. Fifteen Mets had at least 100 PA in the majors last year, and their best hitter was Francisco Lindor with a wRC+ of 137, just ahead of Jose Iglesias, who is a free agent (and whose performance was a wild coincidence).

Soto’s best skill is his ridiculous plate discipline and resulting ability to get on base, and while the Mets’ OBP was above the NL median in 2024, they had the worst OBP of the six NL playoff teams. (It’s worth noting that the NL’s top six teams by OBP all made the playoffs.) In other words, if we go back to the Mets’ list of 100 PA in 2024, their OBP players are No. 1 and No. 3 are both free agents, so the Mets replaced them with the second-best OBP in all of baseball.

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Inside Juan Soto receives the largest contract in professional sports history from Steve Cohen’s Mets

Soto likely takes most of his offense from Starling Marte, who was barely an average hitter with a 104 wRC+ and a dismal corner defender with a minus-7 run fielding score. The outcome assumes a 7-win upgrade for the Mets if Soto more or less repeats his 2024 success, and I think that’s an average prediction given his age and skill set. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if Soto was a year or two early on this deal where he’s a 9-WAR player. Even if he settles for around 6-7 WAR in the first half of his contract, he and Lindor give the Mets a pretty high profile as a contender each season.

Soto and Lindor are a formidable one-two punch for the Mets. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

Of course, the size and length of the deal seems absurd, and I doubt anyone expects Soto to still be a $50 million-a-year player in 2039, even though he’ll be 40 by the time we leave the planet by then have not destroyed Then. All of these decade-plus deals are about spreading the money around for budget and luxury tax reasons. It might make more sense to think of this as a 10-year deferred deal, and then Soto establishing himself as a solid DH who might not hit much for average but still has some power and draws walks once he gets to his age is 30s, that’s all a bonus. Even though I talk about certain salaries being too high for the player’s expected value, Soto is as valuable as it gets, and it’s pretty clear that Mets owner Steve Cohen isn’t going to let a mere $765 million stop him , spend money elsewhere Build a champion.

The Mets also signed a few pitchers to bolster a rotation that featured three ERA-eligible starters and all three were free agency players, with one, Luis Severino, already under contract elsewhere. Kodai Senga should be back, and both Paul Blackburn and David Peterson are good fifth starters, but the Mets needed some top starters to make the team both stronger in the regular season and, more importantly, greater in October to make a threat.

Instead, they signed two projects, both right-handed hitters, who have serious trouble getting lefties out. Frankie Montas signed for two years and $34 million (the second year is a player option) after coming off a year in which he posted 0.6 bWAR/1.4 fWAR for the Cincinnati Reds and Milwaukee Brewers was worth. Lefties hit .276/.370/.497 with him in 2024, and they have hit .265/.344/.456 with him in his career. While the Reds’ home park, which favors left-handed power hitters, hasn’t helped, the problems are structural and not a coincidence. He may be able to make some adjustments to reduce the size of the platoon split, such as dropping his cutter against them and throwing more splitters, but his problems attacking lefties don’t go away. He also has a lengthy injury history that sidelined all of 2023, and his 150 2/3 innings last year marked his second-highest workload ever.

Clay Holmes is a different kind of project as he is a career reliever who the Mets signed to a three-year contract and who they want to integrate into the rotation. He hasn’t made a start since 2018 and has never been very effective in that role in the minors. He walked 11.8 percent of the batters he faced as a starter in Triple A, with less than one strikeout per inning and a 3.58 ERA. Holmes kills righties, but against lefties he has posted a .251/.359/.346 line in his career, with 2024 being the first year he lowered his walk rate against them to an acceptable level.

He’s essentially a sinker/slider guy. Although one could argue that he has both a slider and a sweeper, he does not have a pitch designed to get lefties out, as every breaking pitch he throws moves toward lefties’ hitters. Platoon split problems don’t get any better when a pitcher moves into the rotation and has to face opposing batters two or, dare I say it, even three times. Maybe the Mets think they can give Holmes a splitter or a trade to solve this problem, but there’s a risk that doesn’t pan out and I don’t understand the three-year deal regardless of their plans.

That’s all a long way to say, “Sign a really above-average starter, guys.” You’re the Mets. Sign Corbin Burnes. For a penny, for all the pounds. It doesn’t make sense to sign the best free agent hitter we’ve seen in years and then go cheap on pitching. I wouldn’t even consider bringing Pete Alonso back if that could be an obstacle to signing a top starter.

Signing Juan Soto to this deal shows everyone that it is World Series or bust, as befits the Mets. That means dealing with the rotation, which currently has exactly zero players who can be counted on to pitch a league-average 160 innings. Their main rival in the NL East, Philadelphia, has the best rotation in the National League and they will make a big addition or trade at some point. The Mets can’t bear to wait when they still have a clear weakness on the depth chart.

The Yankees bet heavily on Soto and made a pennant out of it, but there’s no replacing what they lost with his departure. There isn’t a free agent out there good enough to hold his batting gloves, and while I’ve seen progress forward from several Yankees hitters this year, including Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm Jr., they’re closing the gap compared to Internal there are no improvements. They only return two starters who managed at least a .300 OBP for them last year in Judge and Austin Wells. Their best option to shore up the offense — which is now short of the 299 times Soto did last year — might be to trade for someone who isn’t expected to be available.

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Where are the Yankees: What should they do after the failed pursuit of Juan Soto?

Maybe the Athletics’ Brent Rooker (.365 OBP), although the A’s appear to be in buying mode right now. Maybe Steven Kwan of the Cleveland Guardians (.368 OBP), although his low salary, second-half meltdown and lack of power probably make it hard to imagine anyone giving up on what the Guardians might want. The Chicago Cubs appear to want to move Seiya Suzuki, who had a .366 OBP and was a 3+ WAR player over the past two years with a walk rate that would rank second among returning Yankees.

The big winners here are the Baltimore Orioles, who just suffered a major blow against their biggest rival that they won’t be able to fully recover from. The O’s should swoop in and get another starter, whether it’s bringing Burnes back or signing someone else from the group of above-average starters out there – or even trading for someone like Jordan Montgomery, who needs to be better in 2025 once he has regular offseason and spring training. This is not the time for new owner David Rubenstein to be complacent, and the signings of Tyler O’Neill and Gary Sánchez don’t exactly help matters here.

Every AL East team should be more aggressive after Soto’s departure. If I were an Orioles fan, I would worry that signing a platoon outfielder and a backup catcher would mean the team will be the least aggressive of the four.

(Top photo of Soto: Brad Penner / USA Today)