Aside from the final total that blew even seasoned baseball executives away, the New York Mets’ signing of Juan Soto was the most predictable outcome in years on the free agent market. No offense to the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox, but they were all fighting for second place and the golf gossip from their fans that they really tried hard for.

You can break down the 15-year, $765 million contract – the largest known contract in the history of the sport – any way you want. How Soto had the chance to make his mark at Yankee Stadium by riding shotgun with Aaron Judge over the next decade. How a pure hitter with little defensive or baserunning value turned two-way unicorn Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million into a bargain just a year into Ohtani’s 10-year contract. Whether Soto is “worth it” or not.

That’s not the story of why Soto is a Met.

The story is about Mets owner Steve Cohen and how he collects art.

When Cohen bought the Mets in 2020, Assets The magazine estimated his net worth at about $14 billion. Today, his net worth is estimated at $21.5 billion, making him the 30th richest person in the United States and the richest in the MLB.

Cohen began collecting art in 2000. When he was worth just $13 billion, he explained Assets how he bought art: “I come purely from my gut. And I know it immediately. It stays in my brain. Let’s say I’m looking at a picture. When I think about it further, I know it’s something I like. If I forget, I don’t care at all.”

In 2019, for example, Cohen couldn’t stop thinking about Jeff Koons’ “Rabbit,” a three-and-a-half-foot steel cast of an inflatable plastic toy. He paid $91 million for it, the highest amount ever paid for the work of a living artist. It brought together works by Warhol, de Kooning, Picasso and others in its collection, which was valued at $1 billion years ago.

Soto was baseball’s version of “Rabbit.” Cohen kept thinking about Soto, who is such a generational hitting talent that he joined Jimmie Foxx and Mickey Mantle as the only players with 200 home runs and a .420 on-base percentage by age 25. He had to have Soto, which meant he would go get Soto.

No one would outbid Cohen, as he proved by reporting an average annual value of $51 million, $3.5 million more than what the Yankees put on the table. What should you do if a potential employer tells you they want you more than your current employer?

See, Cohen is not only the richest man in baseball, but he’s also a Mets fan. He remembers when New York was a Mets city and not a Yankees city in the 1980s. He bought the team not as a hobby, but as someone who wanted to see his team win a World Series for the first time in nearly four decades. Signing Soto guarantees him nothing; The expanded postseason crap is the great equalizer when it comes to wage disparities. But by outbidding and outbidding the Yankees for one of their own players, Cohen established the Mets as the alpha team in New York, a team that can compete with the Dodgers when it comes to financial strength.

The $765 million? This is because of Cohen’s generosity, his determination to achieve what his heart desires and his pursuit of a title. Save the Sotos WAR-per-dollar breakdown. That’s definitely not the point.

“North of where I thought,” one executive wrote of the total. “I thought it might reach $700 million, but that’s just because the Shohei deal has some anchoring effect there, even though it cost about $460 million (in today’s dollars).”

Other sports may celebrate massive signings as a sign of institutional health, with a spurious effect on attracting young athletes. Salary caps generally apply to these sports. Not baseball, where record deals spark an internal debate about whether such spending is good for the sport.

A team source sent a text message with a “stunning” emoji, pointing out that Soto, when he turns 33, will have eight years and $400 million left on his contract. “He’s the best batsman I’ve ever seen,” the source said. “But I think the LAD/NYM war will just make small markets throw up their hands at the next CBA.”

The collective agreement expires after the 2026 season.

“True,” another source said of possible tensions between the Dodgers-Mets spending axis and everyone else. “I think it’s good for the game. Even in October there is still a lot of randomness. The Mets should be a model franchise. 5 playoff appearances in 24 years is not good for a team from New York. That should change.”

Cohen isn’t done yet. He needs to solidify the Soto signing by getting a big-time pitcher and not just rely on David Stearns to work his buy-low magic on the starters.

The Yankees will turn to Plan B. A Yankees source told me hours before Soto made his decision: “Sometimes Plan B turns out to be the better plan.”

There is no replacement for Soto. In a year in which Judge was the American League’s unanimous MVP, he saw more throws in the strike zone than ever before. Why would pitchers be more aggressive toward Judge when he was so good? Because Soto got on base more often than anyone not named Judge and kept causing traffic. Ever since the Yankees made fun of Bryce Harper, they needed a left-handed power bat to compliment Judge. They finally got that bat in Soto. The result was 99 home runs between the two.

Now Soto is gone and there is no left-hander who could be such a running mate. Make no mistake, the Yankees will switch aggressively. With Alex Bregman, Pete Alonso, Anthony Santander, Teoscar Hernández and Christian Walker, the best hitters still on the market, they can mean business. But all are right-handed except for switch-hitting Santander, who hit 44 homers but is a pull-hitting, pop-up-prone slugger who batted .197 against four-seam fastballs last season.

What the Yankees need to do is move Judge out of center field to rest the big man. (Jasson Dominguez isn’t a surefire plug-and-play option there.) They could also turn their resources to Corbin Burnes or Max Fried to make this team more reliant on pitching.

Two years ago, at the age of 23, Soto rejected $440 million from the Nationals to bet on themselves. After joining the Yankees a year ago, he rejected all overtures about a contract extension in favor of betting on himself. He then recorded the best season of his life and one of the greatest platform seasons of all time heading into free agency. He loves the game and plays it with passion and without fear. He posted an OPS+ of 142 in his worst season. He is the safest investment in baseball. Cohen had to have it.

For the most part, the Yankees and Mets had never bid against each other for one of their top free agents. Cohen was the one with the paddle in hand who would keep raising it until the Yankees went bust. Forget David Ortiz trying to recruit Soto to Boston, or the Blue Jays being run by a communications company in need of some buzz, or even the Dodgers trying another heavily deferred deal. None of that mattered. I texted another executive about the simple version of how Scott Boras, Soto’s agent, broke records with this contract: “Scott had the perfect NY-NY storm. Cohen would never be outdone.”

The answer: “Exactly.”

Cohen won the bid. He got his “rabbit”. Again. We shouldn’t be surprised.