Nobody can be surprised or should be surprised at how the big game — for now the biggest game, really — with Juan Soto came out in the end, or that Steve Cohen won it. Or with Cohen staking his claim to officially being the baddest owner on the planet. Cohen is the Mets fan who is trying to turn around all of the bad parts of Mets history, and willing to money-whip the rest of the baseball world to do it. The wisdom on this comes from Damon Runyon, who once wrote that the race isn’t always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.
Strong in this case meant the guy at the table with the most money. Not the Yankee brand, whatever that even means anymore. Not the Yankees always having been the big brother to the Mets little one, with only two exceptions – 1969, 1986 – since the Mets came into existence. Cohen has more money than any other owner in American sports, even more than the people who own the Dodgers. And he was willing to spend whatever it took to get the guy he wanted. Once in baseball they said there was money, and then Yankee money.
Now it’s Cohen money. This is the way it was when Steve Ballmer, who was bidding with some other big, bad rich guys to get the Los Angeles Clippers. Ballmer wanted the team. He finally threw down two billion dollars and said that everybody else could call off the contest line. It was his money. Now it’s Cohen’s. He might be a pirate. But he’s the Mets’ pirate. He wins here. The Yankees lose. You start and end there, because where else would you? We’ve known for a long time that the Yankees can no longer bully the rest of baseball, not the way they used to when they were the ones out-spending the world. But what became official on Sunday night is that their brand no longer wins the day, certainly not at these prices.
And by the way? Hal Steinbrenner left it all on the field here, he did, no matter how much hang-wringing there is from fans of his team today. He was willing to offer Soto twice – TWICE – what he just paid Aaron Judge, the greatest Yankee home run hitter since Babe Ruth; twice the $360 million that Steinbrenner paid the guy who has become the face of the Yankees the way Derek Jeter was before him. I don’t think that Hal thought when this all began that he would end up offering more than $700 million, which is where I was always sure this thing was going to land. He did. Cohen was swinging the biggest wallet here, and the biggest wallet won, something he showed by essentially going past $800 million everybody stopped counting.
Scott Boras, Soto’s agent, wanted to break a record, and did, same as he did when Alex Rodriguez got $252 million to sign with the Texas Rangers. He got Soto more than Shohei Ohtani got in total value from the Dodgers, more than any athlete in the history of team sports has ever gotten. The difference in the final bids wasn’t going to affect a single day of the rest of Soto’s life, obviously. But that’s not the way Boras keeps score, and never has been.
When John Henry and Tom Werner and the late Larry Lucchino got the Red Sox over 20 years ago it was Lucchino, a truly great baseball man and visionary, who understood that you can’t win the past from the Yankees, because nobody can. But Lucchino’s mission statement was simple and basic enough: We’re going to start a new fight with the Yankees, one that starts now, let’s go. And since the Red Sox did start that fight, they have won four World Series and the Yankees have won one. Yankees won the last baseball century? Just in terms of the Series, the Red Sox are winning this one.
Steve Cohen wants that. He wants to win the battle for Baseball New York, of course, he’s made that clear from the start. More than that, he wants what the Red Sox have had over the first quarter of this century. And if you really are surprised that he is running the Mets in the same hardball fashion he’s run his hedge funds, than you haven’t been paying close enough attention.
This isn’t about how this would have played out when George Steinbrenner were still at the top of his voice – are we really still trope-ing our way there? – and his own wallet-swinging game. Even he wouldn’t have been able to out-spend Steve Cohen if it came down to that. It’s why this really is more about the guy who won Soto than the guy who lost him. Steve Cohen got what he wanted, and who he wanted. Now we see how Hal Steinbrenner – and Brian Cashman – respond.
The Yankees didn’t go after Bryce Harper when they had a shot at Harper, when Harper would have been a perfect fit for the Yankees and for Yankee Stadium; when he was a free agent about the same age as Soto is now. It was a monumentally bad business decision, whatever the financial considerations were at the time. Now, with Soto on the other side of town — and turning the Yankees into the Other Team in town in this case — it is up to Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman to respond. In Cashman’s case, and in the words of the great George Young, it’s time for the guy Hal clearly thinks is some kind of guru to start guru-ing.
This isn’t about what the Soto contract will look like down the road. This is about how much it’s worth to Cohen now, to his own brand, his own ego, and his own ambition. This past season, the Mets’ record against the Yankees was 4-0. Make that 5-0.