The New York Yankees are set to engage in seriously competitive bidding wars and negotiations to win the Juan Soto sweepstakes. Soto is expected to receive serious attention from a handful of the league’s biggest markets including the New York Mets and Los Angeles Dodgers.
But two American League East rivals, the Toronto Blue Jays and Boston Red Sox, have already left a good impression on Soto and his management, per insider Jon Heyman of the New York Post.
“Hear at least Jays and Red Sox owners made impressive in-person presentations to Juan Soto, but multiple team owners are yet to present and will do so in coming days,” Heyman wrote Saturday in a post to Twitter/X.
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Both the Blue Jays and the Red Sox are considered serious contenders in the Soto sweepstakes, which could surprise some after the Yankees and Mets were assumed to be the top teams for quite a while.
Soto is a special talent that requires teams to make special exceptions for his free agency. The Red Sox aren’t a team known to be willing to send $650 million to one free agent, but they’ve never had the chance to acquire Soto. And this winter is the last time they will ever have that chance.
The Blue Jays were expected to be in the Soto sweepstakes especially after they were aggressively in the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes a year ago. If they had $700 million on the table for Ohtani, they will have $650 million on the table for Soto.
To hear that both of these meetings went well for Soto and the teams involved should be alarming to the Yankees and their fan base. It’s not going to be a cake walk to return their superstar outfielder to the Bronx.
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