Dominican slugger Juan Soto’s 15-year deal worth a record US$765 million has turned the New York Mets from a punchline to a club with punching power.
Soto’s reported deal, the largest in North American professional sports history, has yet to be confirmed, reportedly because a final physical has not been taken, but the free agent move by Soto, who played for the New York Yankees last season, has already excited Mets fans and soured supporters of their Bronx-based rivals.
A joke on the US television show Saturday Night Live had Soto considering the Mets only as a charity move to help the needy, but less than 24 hours later, Soto had signed a rich deal and the Mets were seen as championship contenders.
Photo: AP
A bidding war for Soto came down to the Yankees, who reached the World Series for the first time since 2009 with Soto in the lineup, and the Mets, who won their first playoff series since 2015, but lost to the eventual champions the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League Championship Series.
In the end, Mets owners Steve and Alexandra Cohen outspent Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner, and 26-year-old outfielder Soto is to shift from Yankee Stadium to Citi Field and the American League to the National League.
The National League will not be unfamiliar territory for Soto, who won a World Series crown in 2019 with the Washington Nationals, who traded him in 2022 to the San Diego Padres, who traded Soto to the Yankees in December last year.
NBA Cleveland Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell, a long-time Mets fan whose father works for the club, posted a photo on social media of Soto smiling and making a peace sign shortly after reports of the deal became public.
Soto’s deal would eclipse the US$700 million record MLB contract for 10 years that the Los Angeles Dodgers signed with Japanese star Shohei Ohtani in December last year.
The Dodgers, Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox were other clubs that had reportedly been in the bidding for the Dominican star.
Soto batted .288 last season for the Yankees with 41 home runs, 109 runs batted in and 129 walks.
Soto’s first chance to play against the Yankees will come when the Mets visit Yankee Stadium on May 16 to open a three-game series.
Soto joins a Mets that fell two wins shy of reaching the World Series for the first time since 2015. The new goal will be winning a World Series, something the Mets have not accomplished since 1986.
For the Yankees, who had made keeping Soto a top off-season priority, the focus shifted to other free-agent possibilities, including first baseman Pete Alonso or outfielders Teoscar Hernandez and Anthony Santander.
New Taipei Kings guard Jeremy Lin on Friday was named the Taiwan Professional Basketball League’s (TPBL) Player of the Month, the first domestic player to win the award, while the Hsinchu Toplus Lioneers are to welcome their third head coach in less than a year. Lin averaged 22 points, 5.4 rebounds and 6.6 assists over five games in October and last month, helping the Kings to second in the standings with a 4-2 record as of Friday. The Kings last night defeated the Lioneers 96-78 to move level with the top-of-the-table Formosa Dreamers (5-2), while in the night game, the New Taipei
TO NO AVAIL: The Denver Nuggets’ Serbian center Nikola Jokic surpassed his 53-point performance in the 2023 Western Conference semi-finals against Phoenix The Washington Wizards withstood a 56-point explosion from Denver star Nikola Jokic to beat the Nuggets 122-113 on Saturday and snap their 16-game NBA losing streak. Jokic, who won his third NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) award last season, posted a career scoring high — surpassing a 53-point performance in game four of the 2023 Western Conference semi-finals against Phoenix and a 50-point regular-season best against Sacramento in 2021. The Serbian big man added 16 rebounds and eight assists, but it was all to no avail as Washington, buoyed by 39 points from Jordan Poole, won for the first time
Taiwan on Wednesday finished with 15 medals at the World Taekwondo Poomsae Championships in Hong Kong, taking home four gold, five silver and six bronze medals across the age group divisions. Taiwan ranked third on the medal table after South Korea with 17 golds and the US with eight golds at the five-day competition. “Your athletes have proven themselves as the best in the world,” World Taekwondo president Choue Chung-won said at the closing ceremony of the martial art contest that was attended by a record 1,727 athletes from around the world. On the first day of the competition at the Hong Kong
Taiwan’s Lin Cheng-jing won a bronze medal in the clean and jerk in the women’s under-49 kg division at the 2024 IWF World Weightlifting Championships in Bahrain on Saturday. Lin won her first medal at a World Weightlifting Championships for lifting 107kg in the clean and jerk in her weight class, 2kg more than Rosegie Ramos of the Philippines. However, Ramos won bronze for the combined lift after topping Lin by 5kg in the snatch. Ri Song-gum of North Korea won gold in the division’s combined lift with a total of 213kg, while Xiang Linxiang of China took silver with
RSS