Juan Soto found a new home with the New York Yankees as the winter meetings ended Wednesday night, while Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto were still up for grabs as team officials headed home with the bulk of their offseason business yet to be done.
Juan Soto found a new home with the New York Yankees as the winter meetings ended Wednesday night, while Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto were still up for grabs as team officials headed home with the bulk of their offseason business yet to be done.
Soto, an All-Star slugger who can become a free agent next fall, was dealt from the San Diego Padres to New York with Gold Glove center fielder Trent Grisham for right-handed pitchers Michael King, Jhony Brito, Randy Vásquez and Drew Thorpe, along with catcher Kyle Higashioka.
“It’s very difficult to make a deal where we’re trading a player the caliber of Juan Soto, but if we did that we wanted to make sure we shored up a bunch of needs. We were able to get some depth, with quality,” San Diego general manager A.J. Preller said.
The deal was the second blockbuster involving the 25-year-old Soto in less than two years. The three-time All-Star is likely to get a salary around $32 million after batting .275 with 35 homers, 109 RBIs and a .930 OPS in his only full season with the Padres.
Soto joins a Yankees outfield that projects to have fellow star Aaron Judge in center and newly acquired Alex Verdugo in the other corner as New York attempts to rebound after missing the playoffs for the first time since 2016. Soto has a 1.274 OPS in nine career games in the Bronx.
“Soto and Judge are Gotham’s new dynamic duo,” agent Scott Boras said.
Ohtani, the unique two-way star, is expected to get a record contract of $500 million-plus. His agent, Nez Balelo, didn’t travel to the Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center, preferring to stay away.
While Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts acknowledged meeting with Ohtani at Dodger Stadium before heading to Nashville, other teams were mum. Some fans tried to use flight-tracking programs to determine Ohtani’s whereabouts, and Toronto general manager Ross Atkins sparked speculation of a get-together at the team’s spring training facility in Dunedin, Florida, when he switched a media availability on Monday to Zoom.
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