I first wrote about the Red Sox’s reported ties to Juan Soto exactly one month ago on November 8th. My column began…
"The Red Sox… the Boston Red Sox… John Henry’s Boston Red Sox… are in on Juan Soto?
Please. Give me a break.
It’s just plain laughable.”
It turned out to be a lot less laughable than we all thought.
Breaking: Juan Soto and the New York Mets are in agreement on a 15-year, $765 million contract, sources tell @jeffpassan.
— ESPN (@espn) December 9, 2024
It is the largest deal in professional sports history. pic.twitter.com/JjwUbhEIpn
It’s true, the Red Sox didn’t wind up with Soto. That intuition was correct. The road taken to that conclusion, however, played out much differently than most anticipated.
It would be easy enough to sit here and bash John Henry and the “interest king” Red Sox for swinging and missing on yet another opportunity to sign top talent. The key difference here, though, is that every indication we’ve had thus far is that the Sox actually swung and missed this time on Soto… instead of striking out looking on three straight pitches.
By all accounts, the Sox made a real push and were really in on Soto. Their reported offer was over $700 million and he wound up going for $765 million over 15 years — a record contract in baseball history, no less. We’re not talking about a difference of a lowball $500 million offer to the $765m that Soto eventually went for.
I’ll give you that much, John. It seems like your team finally made an earnest effort here. We’ll give you a collective golf clap for that. But you know what they say, almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades…
The near miss on signing Soto will only be worthy of earnest commendation if it’s followed up by swift and significant action. OK, you missed out on Soto — just like 29 other teams. Now, it’s time to throw those bags of money into somebody else’s face.
There are plenty of formidable bats still out there — Pete Alonso, Alex Bregman, Teoscar Hernandez and Anthony Santander, to name a few. None are on Soto’s level, but some are pretty close…
Does Soto’s big-money deal with the Mets mean that Alonso is now less likely to re-sign in New York? Maybe, although the Mets were the ones who jumpstarted the free-agent spending binge a couple seasons back before reversing course with a mid-season sell-off and passing the big spending baton to the Dodgers.
Hey, at least the Dodgers didn’t get Soto, right?
Whether or not it’s Alonso, the Sox still have plenty of opportunity to pick up a key bat via free agency. Now that the Soto slug of money is freed up, though, it’s probably time to focus on signing someone like… well, Max Fried.
Now it’s time to pivot and finally sign some starting pitching. You know, the actual top need for this team coming into the offseason?
As you hoped beyond hope that Soto would give you his final rose in baseball’s version of The Bachelor, a few pretty darn good pitchers came off the market in Blake Snell (the top starter available), Shane Bieber, and heck, we’ll throw Yusei Kikuchi and Luis Severino in there, too.
But there are still other top-level arms available (Fried, Corbin Burnes, Jack Flaherty, maybe even the aging Max Scherzer or Justin Verlander if you’re desperate), and Fried is now reportedly expected to sign with either the Sox or Yankees — who will now be in PR scramble mode after losing one of the core members of their defending American League championship team.
Don’t get me wrong — in my world, there’s room for Soto or another top bat and a top starter or two. In Henry’s world, we can’t believe that’s the case — even with the recent indications that they were willing to spend on Soto — until he actually green lights Craig Breslow and his front office to do so.
There’s also the matter of the price tag Soto actually went for. As I wrote in my MLB Notebook this weekend, the fact that Soto is now officially on the books for a contract larger than Shohei Ohtani’s — the guy who routinely hits and pitches at MVP and Cy Young levels — is pretty crazy.
Juan Soto will become the highest paid player in MLB history 🤯 pic.twitter.com/dj6jikJojb
— FOX Sports: MLB (@MLBONFOX) December 9, 2024
I’ve regularly called Soto a generational talent, and I believe that. Yet that’s purely for what he can do with his bat, which is on a similar plane to Ohtani’s (although I’m still giving Shohei the edge there). But again, your worth is determined by the market, and after Ohtani set the market last winter, Scott Boras did what a good agent does and used it as a stepping stone to the next big deal.
Yet now Henry and Co. find themselves in the same situation with Mookie Betts. They weren’t willing to pay market rate for the game’s top talent. That’s all well and good if you turn around and sign a handful of the next tier guys. Remember, the team that had Juan Soto last year didn’t win the World Series — it was the team that loaded up on everyone else that did.
But that’s not the way the Sox have operated for the past half decade. The problem with not paying top talent a market rate now is that the next top free agent are only going to be more expensive. Everyone rightly points out how good the Betts contract looks now in comparison. Five years down the road, we might be saying that about Soto’s deal too…
It’s only going to get more and more expensive to have good baseball players, John. Sorry…
So for now, we’ll refrain on hitting the panic button sans Soto. But your team proceeds to lay another egg like it has for the past few offseason, then I’m sorry John… all the criticism coming your way will be entirely justified. Sign a guy like Fried, trade for Garrett Crochet and bring in a bat like Alonso, Bregman or Hernandez? Now we're talking.
One saving grace for now? Soto isn’t going back to the Yankees, and they’ll continue to be haunted by that fact as he completes his Hall of Famer career across town for the next decade and a half. At least we’ve got that going for us…
Gethin Coolbaugh is columnist for Boston Sports Journal. Follow him @GethinCoolbaugh on X/Twitter, Threads and Instagram.