Inside how the Mets won over Juan Soto: 'I think he felt like our visions aligned'

Abbey Mastracco, New York Daily News on Dec 12, 2024

Published in Baseball

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NEW YORK — There were over 20 members of the Soto-Pacheco families in attendance at Citi Field on Thursday afternoon, a group agent Scott Boras has taken to calling the “Soto Supreme Court.” They arrived in the Piazza Club to a round of applause and full spread of Latin food.

Anyone who followed Juan Soto’s free agency chronicles over the last month knows how much they factored into his decision making. Steve and Alex Cohen were aware of that, which is why they brought Alex’s father into one of the meetings with Soto and granted just about every request on their list. The Mets wanted to further emphasize that the organization not only takes care of their players, but their families too.

“That’s one of the things I always like,” Soto said while wearing a Mets jersey for the first time. “They have a lot of stuff on the table, like what they do with their players, how they communicate with the players, the relationship they have and how they’re straight up with the players. A lot of things that they showed, like Steve’s relationship with (Francisco) Lindor, with a lot of players in the team. That’s one of the things that I feel like, coming from the owner, it’s really special.”

But that familial ties weren’t the sole reason Soto decided to sign a 15-year, $765 million contract with the Mets. Little has been known about what it was that Soto and his family wanted out of his first free agency contract, but during one of Soto’s meetings with Cohen, he asked the owner a poignant question.

How many World Series championships do you want to win over the next decade?

Cohen expressed a desire to build a dynasty, and while Soto wasn’t immediately sold, that answer eventually played a big role in his decision to choose the Mets over the Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, Los Angeles Dodgers and, yes, the Yankees.

“That’s what you play baseball for, to be a championship player and try to win as many as you can,” Soto said. “At the end of the day, you can have all the stuff and everything, but if you don’t win, it’s kind of hard. So I feel like that’s what I want to do. I want to have the best chances to win every year and try to win as many World Series as we can.”

Soto needed to know that he was going to a team that could win now, and in the future, which is why he asked the Mets about everything from the farm system to the training staff to player development. He wanted to know that the Mets had the tools in place to help players harness their abilities and perform at their highest levels.

“Juan has been around enough organizations and he’s certainly been around the league enough that he’s got a pretty good feel of what leads to sustainable competitiveness,” David Stearns said. “I think he felt like our visions aligned.”

Stearns came away from these meetings with an understanding of what it is that makes Soto a generational player.

“The way he thinks about hitting is elite,” Stearns said. “I mean, this is not only a physically gifted athlete and a physically gifted hitter, this is someone who spends a lot of time thinking about his craft and observing other players. There’s a reason he’s as good as he is, and I think a lot of it is the thought that goes into his approach and how he goes about it.”

But still, Stearns was never exactly sure where the Mets stood with Soto. There were meetings at Cohen’s houses in Beverly Hills and Boca Raton. The Boca house, Cohen’s smallest in his portfolio, is still manse enough to house nearly an entire baseball team. There were catered lunches for personal touches.

But there was little indication as to which way Soto was leaning, even as the Mets departed for Dallas on Sunday.

“I would have put [our chances] under 50 percent, for sure,” Stearns said. “I knew there were multiple clubs still sitting at very high levels and I think throughout our conversations, he was very much an information gathering [mode], so he wasn’t really expressing his opinion about what he liked or what he didn’t like. He was very much listening.”

As the bargaining began, the money became greater and greater, surprising even Stearns. But when Cohen hired Stearns last fall, he did so with the idea that they would pursue Soto. Stearns revealed Thursday that this had been the goal the entire time.

Sunday night, they got the call from Boras. Their goal had been reached. The work they put into their presentations, the long-term plans to win and the accommodations made for his family — it had all paid off.

“This was a competitive process. There were many teams involved, and it was hard to know where you stood,” Steve Cohen said. “And it was a moving target, right? Things were changing by the day, so there were moments when you start questioning whether you’re going to be successful at this ...

“But in the end, I got the call.”