Juan Soto is beginning to narrow down the teams he’s negotiating with before baseball’s winter meetings next week.
As a free agent likely to receive a record-setting contract, Soto has met with the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox, and Toronto Blue Jays.
“When you’re going through these things, he’s just got a lot of information to go through,” said Soto’s agent, Scott Boras, on Tuesday after a news conference for the Los Angeles Dodgers to introduce Blake Snell, another one of Boras’ clients.
“We’ve had meetings with a number of franchises. He’s begun the process of eliminating teams and doing things, and so he’s — Juan is a very methodical thinker. So we’ll see. But I don’t think anything is imminent in the near future.”
Soto is the top player available among this year’s free agents. A four-time All-Star, he finished third in AL MVP voting after hitting .288 with 41 home runs, 109 RBIs, and 129 walks for the Yankees. He has a .285 career batting average with 201 home runs, 592 RBIs, and 769 walks over seven seasons in Major League Baseball.
Soto turned down a $440 million, 15-year offer from Washington in 2022, leading the Nationals to trade him to San Diego, which later traded him to the Yankees last December. Soto then teamed up with Aaron Judge to help the Yankees reach the World Series, where they lost to the Dodgers.
Boras rejected the idea that high-spending teams like the Yankees and Dodgers are simply buying championships.
“I would say that, as George Steinbrenner said, whatever you do to compete, the fact that I can compete in a different way than others, so be it,” Boras said, referring to the late Yankees owner. “I don’t think that has anything to do with the number of trophies that hang over your stadium. I don’t think fans remember that.”
