Francisco Lindor didn’t must say a phrase. The emojis stated sufficient.
Alongside together with his repost, Lindor included three units of eyeball emojis — a not-so-subtle acknowledgement that Soto was leaving the Yankees to turn into his teammate with the Mets.
Lindor was one among many within the baseball world and past to react to Soto’s eye-popping pact, which is ready to pay the generational slugger $765 million over the subsequent 15 years.
Soto himself appeared to rejoice the deal Sunday evening in a sizzling tub, the place his little brother, Elian Soto, poured what appeared to be a beer over his head, in response to an Instagram video shared by the youthful Soto.
“METS BABYYYYY,” Elian’s caption reads.
The contract is the most important in MLB historical past by way of years, whole worth and present-day common annual wage.
“It is certainly the biggest and most important transaction the Mets have ever made,” Gary Cohen, a play-by-play voice of the Mets for greater than three many years, stated Sunday evening on SNY.
Mets proprietor Steve Cohen paid Soto, who completed third within the American League MVP race in his lone season with the Yankees, to type a star-powered pairing with Lindor, who completed second in NL MVP voting.
A four-time All-Star, Soto hit a career-high 41 house runs final season, boasts 201 homers via seven MLB seasons and remains to be solely 26 years outdated.
Soto, who simply helped lead the Yankees to a World Sequence berth, joins a Mets crew that superior to the NLCS final season.
His contract features a $75 million signing bonus and an opt-out clause after 5 years, in response to stories. The Yankees reportedly supplied $760 million over 16 years.
“I don’t care what they paid,” former Mets catcher Paul Lo Duca wrote on X. “To take him away from the Yankees is a giant statement going forward and he’s the best all around hitter in baseball!”
Mets outfielder Starling Marte welcomed his new teammate in an Instagram put up displaying Soto in a Dominican Republic jersey throughout the 2023 World Baseball Traditional.
Mets beginning pitcher Christian Scott, in the meantime, posted a video of “The Office” characters Jim and Darryl sharing a fist bump, together with the caption “LGM” — an acronym for “Let’s Go Mets.”
Cleveland Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell, a famous Mets fan, shared a screenshot of a Facetime name with Soto, together with the caption “LFFFGGGMMMMMM.” It’s not troublesome to decipher what the “F” stands for.
And Knicks guard Josh Hart, a Yankees fan, merely wrote on X, “Damn…”
The Yankees traded a five-player package deal final December to accumulate Soto from the San Diego Padres, most notably parting with right-handed starter Michael King, who went 13-9 with a 2.95 ERA and 201 strikeouts in 173.2 innings in 2024.
The Mets and Yankees had been two of a number of deep-pocketed bidders for Soto, an inventory that additionally included the Boston Pink Sox, Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers.
Requested about Soto’s signing Monday throughout a Winter Conferences press convention, Pink Sox supervisor Alex Cora stated, “It’s good for baseball.”
