ESPN: Juan Soto, a $600 million free agent, has “begun eliminating teams” for the Yankees.
The public is aware that there are only five teams left in the Juan Soto sweepstakes. The Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, New York Mets, and Toronto Blue Jays are those clubs. Although the exact amounts of the Soto bids have not been made public until this stage of the discussions, we may presume that they are at least $600 million. Every remaining team in the Soto sweepstakes has a bid of over $600 million on the table, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. However, Rosenthal also stated that agent Scott Boras claims that Soto has started the process of removing clubs, which implies that there could not be five bidders remaining.
“When you’re going through these things, he’s just got a lot of information to meld through,” Boras said on Tuesday. A number of franchises have met with us. He has started the process of accomplishing things and getting rid of teams. We’ll see since Juan is a very logical thinker, but I don’t believe anything is going to happen very soon.”
Determining what this truly implies is difficult. It may indicate that Soto has started to rank the teams he would like to visit, while still allowing all five teams to be considered. It may also indicate that, for whatever reason, Soto has thrown out a team or two from the competition entirely. Right now, all we have is conjecture. Soto is anticipated to sign a contract for well over $600 million with one of the five teams mentioned above within the next week or two.
