Over Thanksgiving week, online reports ran wild with rumors that superstar free agent slugger Juan Soto had already signed a contract. Those reports were false, but became so rampant that Jeff Passan, ESPN’s leading baseball insider, took to his social media accounts to shoot them down.
But one online report stated that the Boston Red Sox had upped their offer to Soto, making a bid for his services that hit at least $600 million over 12 years. That report, it now appears, was accurate.
On Tuesday, veteran Major League Baseball reporter Ken Rosenthal, writing for The Athletic, offered his own independent confirmation of the report — adding that the Red Sox were not alone in their mega-offer to Soto. All of the clubs interested in the 26-year-old Dominican Republic native have issued offers in the same range, Rosenthal along with reporters Evan Drellich and Brendan Kuty revealed.
Soto Decision Could Come As Early as This Week
“The clubs publicly known to be most serious about Soto are the New York Mets, New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers. The two people briefed on the negotiations said that all remaining contenders have made offers above $600 million,” the reporters wrote. “The expectation within the industry is that Soto will make his decision by the end of the Winter Meetings, which begin in Dallas on Sunday, and possibly even before the meetings kick off.”
So the Red Sox apparently still face stiff competition in their quest to land this offseason’s top free agent.
One problem they face, however, is that according to the Athletic report, Soto has already begun scratching certain destinations off of his list.
“When you’re going through these things, he’s just got a lot of information to meld through,” Scott Boras, Soto’s high-powered agent, was quoted as saying. “We’ve had meetings with a number of franchises. He’s begun the process of eliminating teams and doing things. Juan is a very methodical thinker, so we’ll see, but I don’t think anything is imminent in the near future.”
Boras’s claim that no decision is “imminent” would appear to contradict Rosenthal’s reporting that baseball experts feel Soto could make up his mind as early as this week, before the Winter Meetings begin on December 8.
A separate report earlier this week, by Randy Miller of NJ Advance Media, named the Red Sox as the “favorite” to land the generational hitting star.
How Good is Juan Soto, Really?
How good is Soto? His career OPS (on base percentage plus slugging percentage) of .953 places him third among all active players, behind only his 2024 Yankees teammate Aaron Judge (1.010) and the Los Angeles Angels Mike Trout (.991). Soto ranks a notch ahead of the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani (.946).
Soto’s career OPS places him 23rd on the all-time list. He is tied for that spot with Todd Helton, who played his entire 17-year career with the Colorado Rockies and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2024.
In 2024, Soto’s 41 home runs ranked fourth in MLB and third in the American League. His offensive Wins Above Replacement (WAR) number of 7.9 — meaning the number of wins a player is worth compared to a typical “replacement level” player — ranked Soto fifth in baseball.
