Building a contract offer for Juan Soto

We put on the hat of general managers of a Major League team whose owners have asked us to prepare a proposal to attract Juan Soto as a free agent. What elements should it have?

Juan Soto He is the most coveted free agent of the current offseason and there is no doubt that the teams that are involved in the bid to acquire his services will have to do their best to keep the player.

There is a lot of information that has been reported about what the contract is expected to be. Sotoin terms of economics, its duration and its structure, as well as the fact that the Dominican has at least five offers that he is studying carefully. For a player whose contract is expected to exceed a decade in length and exceed $500 million, the structure must be extremely complex and places teams in a compromising position, trying to balance their spending on a player and the construction of your entire roster.

Taking that into account, it is time to put on the hat of general manager of a team and create a contractual structure that is attractive to the player and his representatives, but at the same time allows the squad being operated to be functional and can continue searching. names of relevance in free agency and in the exchange market. For the purposes of the analysis, aspects such as the city where the equipment is located, or any other detail that could put at a disadvantage the offer that we will be making to retain the services of Soto.

The first thing is to determine the amount of the contract. According to information reported by Jeff Passan of AM850the expectation is that the economic total of the contract Juan Soto is between 550 and 650 million dollars in total. Among those numbers, for our offer we will offer 600 million dollars for the player. However, 100 of those millions will be offered in deferred money to be paid during the 10 years following the termination of the agreement, at a rate of 10 million per year.

In terms of duration, it has been repeatedly reported that Soto He is looking for a long contract that basically covers the duration of the rest of his career. Taking into account that we are dealing with a 26-year-old player, our offer will be for 14 seasons. This means that our contractual offer will be 600 million dollars for 14 years, which on average would represent 42.86 million dollars per year.

If you take deferred money out of the equation, Soto He will receive 500 million dollars for 14 seasons, which on average represents about 35.71 million dollars per year.

As for options, the team will accept a player option after the third season, however, the condition for this to be the case is that the bulk of the money is paid in the years following the option. For the purposes, 30 million will be paid per year, during the first three seasons and if Soto decides not to exercise his option and stay with the team for subsequent seasons, this amount will increase to 37.73 million per year (taking into account, on this occasion, the 100 million dollars of deferred money).

Although the average salary per year is relatively lower than what has been reported, it will allow flexibility to invest in other areas that the team needs to be competitive, complying with the second most frequently reported information. reported, which is the fact that Soto He wants to see a commitment from the team that hires him to try to compete year after year.

Finally, the team offers a total no-trade clause, which means that Soto could block any transaction that involves his change to the other franchises of Major Leagues.