The New York Yankees didn’t re-sign Juan Soto, but they still had to spend part of the MLB Winter Meetings talking about the newest addition to the New York Mets.
One interesting wrinkle that emerged after the Yankees’ posthumous attempt to re-sign Soto was the question of stadium suites and whether the player should pay for them. According to Jon Heyman of the New York Post , one thing that set the Mets’ offer apart was a free suite at Citi Field.
The Yankees declined to offer the same in their own stadium, citing the precedent of past greats paying for suites:
The Yankees shouldn’t be blamed for offering a whopping $760 million but not moving on the suite. The Yankees felt they couldn’t give the suite to Soto when [Aaron] The judge pays for his suite and even Derek Jeter paid. They were willing to discount the apartment, but did not change their precedent.
“[Mets owner Steve] Cohen didn’t think much of the suite. When he has his eyes on the prize, he is exceptionally focused.”
When given a chance to respond Wednesday, Cashman stuck to his guns, via NJ.com:
“Some of the top players who make us a lot of money, if they want suites, they’ll buy them,” Cashman said.
He went through the Yankees’ process for providing stadium seats for wives and family members, adding that a suite is also available due to weather and other factors.
“If they ever want to be up, they have a choice to be down or up and be protected and enjoy it,” Cashman explained. “We have a great family room set up with childcare. It’s a great and safe facility for taking care of families and things like that. But of course, when we have a roster with a lot of great players and top players, we went through the process of previous negotiations where that could happen, and we did this. We will honor them. So I don’t regret anything.”
It’s easy to berate or mock the Yankees for potentially giving the Mets the upper hand in their pursuit of Soto, but that’s like Homer Simpson looking for peanuts.
Soto wanted a suite at his home stadium. The Mets were willing to give him a lot of money and a free suite. The Yankees were willing to give him a lot of money and the option to buy an apartment. If the suite was that important to Soto, he could have asked the Yankees for more money and bought the suite, because money can be exchanged for goods and services, and Soto was going to get a lot of money again.
In the end, the Mets’ compensation offer was worth far more than $765 million, thanks to extras like salary escalators, opt-outs and benefits, including, yes, a package. The Yankees tried to beat that value without the added value of a freebie package, and apparently they’re fine with that decision, because there really shouldn’t be much of a functional difference between, say, $760M without the package and $755M and the freebie package ($5M is an estimate of how much costs a suite of a player older than 15 years).
The question was never like Soto wanted to receive his full compensation from the Yankees. This is all a very small part of a complicated process, and the package is probably more relevant as a reflection of Cohen’s commitment to sign one of the best free agents in recent memory.