Yes, it was worth it.
The author is speaking on behalf of the New York Yankees, albeit without their sanction, with regard to the Juan Soto trade of December 2023. Typically, there's no cause to state that a trade for the likes of Juan Soto is a worthwhile endeavor, but right about now some may be reappraising the Yankees' decision to pull off the Soto swap with the Padres.
That's because Soto, after that one lonesome season in the Bronx, has agreed to a leviathan-sized contract with the crosstown New York Mets – one that will pay him at least $765 million, none of it deferred, over 15 years. Hal Steinbrenner, Brian Cashman, and the Yankees made a game effort at bringing Soto back, but in the end Mets owner Steve Cohen was too motivated of a buyer (and Soto's agent Scott Boras took full advantage). The temptation for Yankee partisans will be to malign that Soto trade as having not been worth it since it cost the team talent, didn't land them a ring, and served as a trampoline into a free-agency process that took him to the Mets. While such revisionism is tempting given the frustrations newly in place, it's misguided.
To recap, the Yankees to get Soto from the San Diego Padres roughly a year ago parted with Jhony Brito, Kyle Higashioka, Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Randy Vásquez. In addition to Soto, the Yanks also got fly-catcher Trent Grisham. The young-ish players in that mix certainly don't appear to be of consequence for the time being. Yes, King is a loss that may sting for some time, but he's also now 29 years of age with four years of MLB service time. Let's also see if his breakout excellence of 2024 as a big-league starter is sustainable. Nominal cost, that.
This right now looks like a reasonable and perhaps even modest return from the Pads' perspective. It's a return that reflects the fact that the Yankees were getting only one year of Soto's services in the deal. For comparison's sake, the Padres you'll recall acquired Soto from the Washington Nationals at the 2022 trade deadline. At that point, Soto brought with him more than two years of team control, and in dealing him the Nats landed three players who may change the arc of the franchise – CJ Abrams, James Wood, and MacKenzie Gore – plus two more prospects in Jarlin Susana and Robert Hassell III who may also have lasting impact at the highest level. That's a drastically higher price than what the Yankees paid, which is as it should be given the service-time disparity.
Now consider what Soto gave the Yankees this past season. In 157 games, he slashed .288/.419/.569, which was good for a career-best full-season OPS+ of 178. He hit 41 homers, easily topped 300 total bases, drew 127 unintentional walks against 119 strikeouts, and touched home plate an American League-leading 128 times. Soto also had a 2024 WAR of 7.9. You can't directly compare the theoretical wins of WAR to the actual wins in the standings, but it seems safe to say without Soto's contributions the Yankees would not have fended off the Baltimore Orioles for the AL East crown. Maybe they still make the postseason without Soto, but they almost certainly don't make it as far.
Speaking of which, Soto did the heavy lifting during the Yankees' deep October run. In the Division Series triumph over the Royals, he had a .389 OBP. Against the Guardians in the ALCS, Soto punished the ball with a 1.373 OPS across the five games and hit three home runs. One of them was this at the conclusion of an epic, high-intensity at-bat:
Then in the World Series against the Dodgers, Soto batted .313/.522/.563 with a homer, seven walks, and just two strikeouts. He also scored six runs. Yes, the Dodgers prevailed in five, but they out-scored the Yankees by just a single run across the entire series. It was much more fraught than the series tally would suggest, and that's largely because of Soto, whose production soared as Aaron Judge's cratered.
Beyond the on-field excellence and beyond how Soto's ruthless patience from the two hole may have helped Judge author an MVP campaign in 2024, there's also his star power. Soto is an electric presence at the plate with a recurring knack for the big moment. He also manages to make the typically banal act of taking pitches into good television. Whatever "it" is, he has it. It's probably little wonder that the Yankees, coming off a deeply disappointing 82-80 season in 2023, managed to increase home attendance in 2024. Superstars draw fans.
Yes, losing him, especially to the Mets, is a body blow to the Yankees and their rooters, but that doesn't turn Soto's lone season in the Bronx into some kind of organizational mistake. The risk was always that he'd reach the market and wind up elsewhere, and that's precisely what happened. That doesn't undo what Soto did for the Yankees in 2024, which was to lift them to their first pennant in 15 years. Revisionist hands are not allowed to touch that.
