NEW YORK — It was not LeBron James in Miami, counting up how many championships he planned to win alongside Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh. But on a momentous day in the history of the New York Mets, Juan Soto and his new team were not shy about their ambitions.
“To try to grow a dynasty is one of the most important things,” said Soto, the day he became the $765 million centerpiece of the Mets. “What they’ve been showing me, what they want to do is become a dynasty and win for a long time. So I think, why not?”
“We’re the New York Mets. We’re going after championships,” manager Carlos Mendoza said. “A dynasty — that’s what we’re trying to build.”
Signed Soto ✍️ pic.twitter.com/l9tl03C6x2
— New York Mets (@Mets) December 12, 2024
This has not generally been the Mets’ identity. They own two championships in 63 seasons, the last of them coming in 1986 — before any player currently on their roster was born.
But that vision was embedded in the pitch owner Steve Cohen and the Mets made to Soto.
“He asked me how many (championships) in the next 10 years,” Cohen said, “and I said I’d like to win two to four.”
Those words from Cohen Thursday echoed sentiments from when he was introduced as the club’s new owner four years ago. That day, he said he’d be disappointed if the Mets didn’t win a title in his first three to five seasons as owner. In the time since, he’s walked back that remark, wishing he hadn’t put it that way.
With the timeline on that goal expiring after this upcoming season, Cohen has set a new, bigger one.
“That’s what you play baseball for, to be a championship player and try to win as many as you can,” Soto said. “At the end of the day, you can have all the stuff and everything, but if you don’t win it’s kind of hard. I want to have the best chances to win every year and try to win as many World Series as we can.”
The Mets’ pursuit of Soto was something they had contemplated as an organization as far back as during the interview process with current president of baseball operations David Stearns late in the 2023 season.
“We talked about some of the generational players in our game, and the difficulty of accessing some of those generational players,” Stearns said of those conversations. “And certainly Juan is one of them. You never know exactly where this is going to go and if he was going to get an extension of some sort, but we did know that if he was going to be a free agent, we were going to make a very strong push.”
In Stearns’ first 14 months with the Mets, the franchise has made significant strides in the right direction. In Mendoza, he hired a manager that fit seamlessly with his roster and with the market. The 2024 Mets rebounded from a moribund start to the season to surge into playoff contention, advancing all the way to the National League Championship Series. They pushed the eventual champion Dodgers one game further than Soto’s former squad, the Yankees, did with Soto already in the lineup.
GO DEEPER
For Mets fans, signing Juan Soto away from the Yankees is extra special
Soto couldn’t help but notice.
“What you were seeing from the other side was unbelievable,” he said. “The vibes and everything, the feel and future this team has had a lot to do with my decision.”
Even as the Mets handed out a contract that obliterated expectations and prior records, they preached sustainability.
“We talked a lot about both our approach to roster building and the young talent that we have coming,” Stearns said. “And our ability to continuously supplement our major league team with ownership resources while also investing heavily in our minor-league system.
“Juan’s been around enough organizations, and he’s certainly been around the league enough that he has a pretty good feel of what leads to sustainable competitiveness. And I think he felt like our vision aligned with his.”
Of course, Soto swapped boroughs, going from the Bronx to Queens, and it’s his now former organization most often tied to the word “dynasty.” He’d like to change that.
“We’ve just got to bring it to the top,” he said. “At the end of the day, championships tell you whether it’s the Yankees or the Mets’ town.”
Required reading
(Photo: Al Bello / Getty Images)
