Soto heading to Queens, adding another challenge in NL East

Good morning, Nationals fans. For those of you who weren’t up late Sunday night and missed the news … Juan Soto is going to be a New York Met. For a very long time. For more money than any professional North American athlete has ever received.

Hours before the Winter Meetings officially commenced in Dallas, Soto and the Mets agreed to a 15-year, $765 million contract, per every prominent national baseball reporter on the planet. Yes, that’s 15 years and $765 million. That’s $51 million per year, on average, until he turns 41. It exceeds Shohei Ohtani’s previous record-setting $700 million deal with the Dodgers from last winter by a healthy margin.

And it brings Soto back to the National League East, making him the latest in a long line of former Nats greats to sign a massive new contract with a division rival.

Soto’s signing was going to sting for Nationals fans, no matter where he wound up. But it probably would have stung less had he chosen to stay with the Yankees, or instead bolted for another American League East franchise like the Red Sox or Blue Jays. The Mets, though? That’s a tough pill to swallow for many.

In the end, Steve Cohen proved once again he’s the major league owner more desperate to win a World Series than any other in the sport. The Mets haven’t hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy since 1986. Only seven franchises are mired in longer championship droughts. Desperation (and tens of billions of dollars made in hedge fund management) is a powerful tool this time of year. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it drives an owner to dole out more than three-quarters of a billion dollars to one player in a sport where one player traditionally isn’t the difference between winning and losing.

The Nationals were a desperate franchise prior to 2019, with Ted Lerner signing Max Scherzer to the then-largest contract ever given to a free agent pitcher, among other high-priced moves during that era that ultimately put the team in position to win its long-awaited first title.

That’s not where they are right now. They want to start contending again, and they continue to have hope internally they can do that in 2025, but to date we haven’t seen what exactly that will look like in real terms. They may be in pursuit of other big-name free agents, but there’s little indication they were serious players in the Soto Sweepstakes this winter, not at that ultimate price.

Two years ago, the Nats tried to keep Soto in a curly W cap for the rest of his career, offering him a 15-year, $440 million extension. He turned it down, opting instead to wait for 2 1/2 years, believing he would make out better financially in the long run thanks to baseball’s arbitration and free agency system.

He indeed made out better financially. A whole lot better. As almost every young, star ballplayer does.

The Nationals knew this, too. That’s why they made the decision to trade Soto in August 2022, recognizing there was little-to-no chance he’d agree to an extension before reaching free agency, and thus dealing him while his value to the Padres was sky-high. San Diego (a desperate franchise itself in search of its first World Series title) gave up the biggest package of prospects in baseball history, reshaping the Nats roster for years to come.

Three of those prospects are now cornerstone big leaguers in D.C.: James Wood, CJ Abrams and MacKenzie Gore. Robert Hassell III could join them sometime in 2025. Jarlin Susana could make it sometime further down the road.

Along with homegrown players Dylan Crews, Luis Garcia Jr., Jacob Young, Jake Irvin, DJ Herz and Mitchell Parker, the Nationals have a core group of youngsters in place, believing they could be ready to take a major step forward in the coming year and return the franchise to contender status.

There are still several notable roster holes, of course. They need a first baseman. They need an experienced starting pitcher. They need multiple relievers, including a closer. Perhaps by the time they depart Dallas later this week, they’ll have addressed at least one (if not more) of those needs.

Either way, the real challenge comes in late March, when this young Nats team embarks on a critical season in its rebuilding process, all while competing in one of the toughest divisions in baseball. One that became even tougher late Sunday night when another franchise legend decided to make his long-term home back in the NL East.