New York Mets proprietor Steve Cohen is scheduled to fulfill with free-agent outfielder Juan Soto and Soto’s agent, Scott Boras, subsequent week in Southern California, based on the New York Put up. Soto and Boras are anticipated to fulfill with different homeowners and braintrust teams between now and every time Soto makes his choice.

The Mets are extensively thought of to be one of many prime suitors for Soto, becoming a member of a race that figures to additionally contain different heavy spenders, just like the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers, amongst others. Cohen has met with different precedence free brokers prior to now, together with a number of instances with right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Regardless of these conferences, Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers.

Soto, 26, was lately ranked by CBS Sports activities because the finest free agent available on the market. In components of seven big-league seasons to this point, he is amassed a profession .285/.421/.532 slash line (160 OPS+) with 201 dwelling runs. His contributions have been price an estimated 36.4 Wins Above Substitute, based on Baseball Reference’s calculations. That very a lot places him on a Corridor of Fame trajectory regardless of his youth.

On that word, it is price declaring that just one participant in Main League Baseball historical past has amassed extra WAR by way of their age-25 season than Soto and in addition reached free company of their mid-20s: Alex Rodriguez, who signed a then-record 10-year, $252 million pact with the Texas Rangers. Rodriguez’s deal got here through the winter of 2000 and was negotiated by — who else? — Boras.

Boras informed reporters on Wednesday that Soto intends to prioritize signing with a staff whose proprietor is dedicated to successful. One ventures to guess that any proprietor prepared to pony up for Soto’s providers, nonetheless many a whole lot of hundreds of thousands upon a whole lot of hundreds of thousands it’s going to require, might be deemed a match.