By Amy Tennery NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Mets fans are brimming with optimism after owner Steve Cohen emptied his pockets ahead of the new season, as the team once known as sports’ lovable losers sit among Major League Baseball’s big spenders. The Mets had the largest score of the offseason when they snared […]
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MLB-Big-spending Mets bring high hopes to new season with Soto
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By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Mets fans are brimming with optimism after owner Steve Cohen emptied his pockets ahead of the new season, as the team once known as sports’ lovable losers sit among Major League Baseball’s big spenders.
The Mets had the largest score of the offseason when they snared super-slugger Juan Soto for a reported record 15-year, $765 million contract, after he spent the 2024 season sending their crosstown rival New York Yankees to the World Series.
It was a move designed to steer the Mets toward their first World Series title in nearly 40 years, as the billionaire hedge funder Cohen played hardball to re-sign beloved first baseman Pete Alonso and picked up reliever A.J. Minter.
“Juan Soto was the most spectacular signing of the year in baseball and he alone is a dynamic game-changer,” famed agent Leigh Steinberg told Reuters.
“There’s nothing more that someone could ask of a committed owner than the assembling of these players and the willingness to pay them.”
New York’s payroll puts them just behind baseball’s biggest spenders, the defending champions Los Angeles Dodgers, who are expected to spend a reported $392 million in 2025, an eye-watering sum after a blockbuster offseason across the league.
The Dodgers added to an embarrassment of riches with the signing of baseball’s biggest international free agent, Japanese pitcher Roki Sasaki.
Los Angeles are expected to start lefty Blake Snell in their home opener against the Detroit Tigers on Thursday after signing the two-time Cy Young winner for a reported five-year $182 million deal in November.
The Arizona Diamondbacks, meanwhile, picked up right-handed pitcher Corbin Burnes on a six-year, $210 million contract, reportedly the largest in team history, in December.
Such is the state of spending that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred last month moved to tamp down some fans’ frustrations.
“It’s clear we have fans in some markets that are concerned,” he told reporters. “Disparity should be, it certainly is, at the top of my list of concerns about what’s occurring in the sport.”
For Mets owner Cohen, who called the Soto signing a “seminal moment” for the franchise, circumstances forced him to adapt his thinking in pursuit of the trophy.
“You try to be somewhat measured,” he told reporters in Port St. Lucie last month. “But in the end, you have to make decisions.”
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; Editing by Toby Davis)