Yankees And Others Await Decision As Juan Soto Chase Moves To The Offer Stage
Other than the Los Angeles Angels signing a few free agents and Blake Snell agreeing to a new deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers in a nice Wednesday night news dump, free agency is going relatively slowly.
Those expecting Juan Soto news are watching everything unfold in a seemingly three-phase sequence of meetings, offers and increased offers.
The chase for Soto’s services seems bigger than the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes a year ago because of the teams involved. Ohtani was linked to the Toronto Blue Jays in some degree that included tracking a plane he may or may not have been a passenger but seemingly was destined to join the Dodgers in a deal that was announced on the second Saturday of December, immediately after the annual convention known as the winter meetings wrapped up.
The similarities are in the money which for the Yankees involve significantly more than it took to retain Aaron Judge after his historic 62-homer season in 2022. Judge wound up with a nine-year, $360 million deal to stay with the Yankees in the final weeks of a calendar year that saw Soto reject a $440 million overture from the Washington Nationals.
Nowadays Judge is coming off 58 homers and a second MVP. He also is part of the recruiting contingent with managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner in the attempts to keep the duo intact after the sluggers combined for 99 of their 237 homers. Judge’s role is not meeting with Soto directly but giving Steinbrenner advice and strategy while working behind the scenes to make sure to re-signing occurs.
We discussed a lot of things, from Juan to other guys that are out there that I think could definitely help this team,” Judge said last week during a conference call after winning the MVP. “I just gave my input on a couple things.”
Giving input on a couple of things likely meant Judge told his boss not to worry is Soto winds up being paid significantly more, which is what anyone would expect the 32-year-old to say.
“Honestly, it ain’t my money,” Judge said on that conference call. “I really don’t care as long as we get the best players. That’s never been something on my mind about who gets paid the most. Whatever we can do to get the best players, I’ll take it. That’s what it kind of comes down to.”
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