Juan Soto free agency, suitors is good for MLB business

Until Juan Soto makes his free-agency decision, many of the brand-name MLB front offices will have a $700 million elephant in their budgets and a fraction of that in their 2025 payrolls. Soto knows this. His agent, Scott Boras, knows this, too.

The generational outfielder remains the coveted gem of free agency — the aura from his 2019 World Series ring and previous extension finickiness only elevated by his MVP-if-it-weren’t-for-Aaron-Judge 2024 season in The Bronx — and the focal point of what the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Red Sox, Giants and the proverbial “mystery” teams will dedicate their attention to in the coming weeks.

But with meetings with the Mets, Yankees, Red Sox and highly motivated Blue Jays already scheduled, the Soto sweepstakes have urgency attached to them. Just as Shohei Ohtani’s did — albeit with more secrecy — before he signed his 10-year, $700 million megadeal last December. Just as Gerrit Cole and Stephen Strasburg did in 2019, Corey Seager did in 2021, and Trea Turner and Xander Bogaerts and Aaron Judge did in 2022. These pursuits, regardless of how straightforward they seemed, ended before the calendar flipped to the following year and gave other teams time to pivot if they didn’t win them.

That doesn’t always happen in MLB free agency, though. Unlike the NFL and NBA, where the frenzied first day of the signing period is a calendar date that carries meaning, the baseball offseason can drag … and drag … and drag until spring training nears and some of the cycle’s biggest names remain unsigned. It’s a buzzkill. It twists the knob on the hot stove to the lowest setting possible.