6 Historical Comps for Yankees' Juan Soto Ahead of $600M+ Bidding War in Free Agency

Juan Soto technically can't sign with any team he likes until Monday, but he's already made it clear his door is all the way open.

After the New York Yankees were eliminated from the World Series, somebody asked Soto if they would have a leg up in this winter's sweepstakes. He was unambiguous with his answer:

Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported on Thursday that Soto's "new magic number" is $700 million. This is coming just two weeks after Heyman had previously reported that $600 million would be the slugger's target.

Either way, these numbers are at once extraordinary and utterly unsurprising.

You might even say they're downright appropriate, given that Soto invites comparisons to some of the biggest and brightest stars Major League Baseball has ever known.

We're going to focus on six especially noteworthy comps for Soto, who just turned 26 on Saturday. Perhaps it should go without saying that these are meant to be provocative, but each is based on at least one legitimate similarity.

Let's start with one that you may or may not have heard before.

This, of course, is an unoriginal idea.

It's so unoriginal, in fact, that all sorts of explanatory articles come up if you Google "Juan Soto like Ted Williams." They're mostly from a few years ago, when Soto's career was almost perfectly mapping onto that of the Splendid Splinter.

These figures from Ben Verlander in 2022 pretty much say it all:

When it comes to walks, specifically, here's where Soto and Williams rank among players who took at least 4,000 plate appearances through their first seven seasons:

1. Williams: 20.3 BB%
2. Soto: 18.8 BB%

That is a small gap, and what makes that especially remarkable is that there's an age gap in play. This encapsulates everything through Soto's age-25 season, whereas Williams missed his age-24, -25 and -26 seasons while he was fighting in World War II.

If you just want to compare Soto through age-25 to Williams through age-25, their walk rates are basically even at 18.8 and 18.9, respectively.

It's a bummer that we can't compare Soto to Williams in terms of raw discipline, but we know that Soto stands alone among his contemporaries. He's swung at pitches outside the strike zone at a 16.6 percent clip since 2018, easily the lowest rate among all hitters who've taken at least 2,000 plate appearances.

This plus a healthy—if not quite Luis Arraez tier—habit of making contact have Soto firmly entrenched as the toughest out in baseball today. He's yet to have an OBP below .400 for any given season, and his .421 overall OBP since 2018 is the best of any hitter.

Beyond the walks, there's also an interesting power comparison to be made between Soto and Williams.

Whereas Soto has 201 home runs through his first 936 games as a major leaguer, Williams was at 209 through that same point. That is pretty close. Indeed, it's way closer than the difference between how many walks Williams (859) had on Soto (769) at the same point.

There is nonetheless a better power comparison to be made between Soto and one of his contemporaries: Mike Trout.

Both of them debuted as mere 19-year-olds, and two numbers for their careers through their respective age-25 seasons catch the eye:

• Soto: 936 G, 201 HR
• Trout: 925 G, 201 HR

Granted, this shouldn't distract from the obvious differences between Trout in the 2010s and Soto now.

Soto is not an uber-athletic center fielder who steals bases and stretches the occasional single into the occasional double. Trout's ability to do the latter in his heyday helps explain how he slugged .566 through his age-25 season, compared to .532 for Soto.

Soto has, however, converted fly balls into home runs at a better rate than Trout did in his youth. And when it comes down to it, each can claim to have slugged at least .450 in a season six times by the time their age-25 seasons were over.

As fun as it is to compare Soto to the likes of Ted Williams and Mike Trout, both present imperfect reference points in various ways.

Honestly, Soto is a lot more like Bryce Harper.

This is according to Bill James' Similarity Scores metric, which rates Harper as the most similar batter to Soto through the age of 25. Differences are there, but the two are shockingly similar in terms of games, hits, doubles, triples and home runs.

The comparison between Soto and Harper is also relevant in a more specific sense, namely in how they're left-handed hitters who can claim to have dominated at all fields despite being so young.

Here is how their directional splits through their age-25 seasons stack up:

• Right Field: 1.151 OPS for Harper, 1.014 OPS for Soto
• Center Field: .995 OPS for Harper, 1.032 OPS for Soto
• Left Field: 1.048 OPS for Harper, 1.107 OPS for Soto

The biggest difference here is in pulled balls to right field, but even there Soto (64) almost has Harper (70) matched for home runs. And with homers to the opposite field, it's no contest.

Soto has already hit 37 balls out to left field. The 32-year-old Harper is only at 44 for his entire career, and only 20 of those came before his age-26 season.

To be fair, nobody on record is Soto's equal in this regard. Said records only go back so far, but they show that the next-closest lefty hitter in oppo home runs through age-25 is Rafael Devers with 21.

After Harper, the next left-handed hitter on Soto's Similarity Scores list is Ken Griffey Jr.

Oh, yeah. We're going there.

The same caveats that apply to the Mike Trout comparison also apply here. In his youth, Griffey was an athletic dynamo who was just as fun to watch in the field as he was in the batter's box. Soto is a bat-only player whose defense is often painful to watch.

All the same, Soto through age-25 and Griffey through age-25 makes for a fun offensive comparison. Notably, they're basically neck-and-neck in slugging and runs batted in.

Plus, we're talking about two lefty hitters with eerily similar numbers against lefty pitchers through their age-25 seasons:

• Griffey: 1,260 PA, 57 HR, .884 OPS
• Soto: 1,309 PA, 56 HR, .857 OPS

This is an underrated aspect of Soto's game. Whereas the average left-on-left OPS has been in the .600s since he came into the league in 2018, he's at .857 for his career. That puts him smack in between Bryce Harper and Shohei Ohtani.

Soto is coming off a season in which he was even more of a pest to left-handed pitchers than he was to right-handed pitchers. His OPS was lower against the former, but he got to them for a higher walk rate (18.6 vs. 17.9) and a much lower strikeout rate (11.9 vs. 18.9).

To this point, only Soto's regular season numbers have been in focus. And why not? They're pretty great like that.

But as he's been reminding everyone this October, he's also the kind of hitter who doesn't lose much in the postseason.

Soto has had more exposure to the playoffs than your standard 26-year-old, playing in 43 games overall. And he's used this exposure to put up numbers that pretty much mirror what Mickey Mantle did in the playoffs at the same age:

• Mantle: 38 G, 11 HR, .919 OPS
• Soto: 43 G, 11 HR, .927 OPS

Again, caveats apply.

Mantle played all 38 of those games in the World Series between 1951 and 1958. It was in those years that he earned five of the seven rings that he got in 18 seasons as a Yankee. Soto doesn't quite have that kind of legacy, as a Yankee or otherwise.

Still, this is uncanny stuff. And even if he isn't on par with Mantle as a World Series hitter, this is another area where Soto stands out from his contemporaries.

Only 19 players have ever taken at least 50 plate appearances in the World Series and posted an OPS over 1.000. Soto is one of two active players on that list, with the other being George Springer.

So, when was the last time that a historically great hitter entered free agency at the absolute height of his power?

You could argue Bryce Harper or Manny Machado after 2018, but they were iffy on the "historically great" front and not necessarily at the height of their powers. The same equation likewise wasn't balanced for Jason Heyward after 2015 and Adrian Beltré after 2004.

Instead, you have to go back to Alex Rodriguez after the 2000 season.

He was already a batting champion and a member of the 40-40 club when he reached free agency as a mere 25-year-old. The Texas Rangers rewarded him accordingly, doubling the biggest contract ever for a pro athlete in signing A-Rod to a 10-year, $252 million deal.

Adjusted for inflation, a modern version of that deal would net Soto about a $450 million guarantee. And this is an era where longer deals than 10 years are possible, for which Harper's 13-year contract with the Philadelphia Phillies is a relevant model.

A 13-year contract worth $45 million per year gets Soto to $585 million. If he and his agent, Scott Boras, push to match Shohei Ohtani's present-day average of roughly $46 million, then a 13-year deal comes to $598 million.

That's as close to $600 million as it gets, and getting to this point merely required putting precedent-related puzzle pieces together. When the Yankees and other teams actually start bidding on Soto, they'll be bidding against the competition and not against history.

As such, it's more than likely that Soto's eventual contract would make even the Rodriguez of 24 years ago blush.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.