As teams play their final Spring Training games and get ready for the opening of the 2025 regular season on Thursday, it now seems like a distant memory when, at the start of the offseason, all eyes in the MLB world seemed to be focused on one player: Juan Soto. The 26-year-old four-time All-Star was considered a generational talent and when he entered free agency after one season with the New York Yankees, helping the Bronx Bombers reach their 41st World Series, expectations ran high that the native of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, would set a new record for the biggest free agent contract ever.
Soto did just that when, after about six weeks of speculation and suspense, he agreed to a 13-year, $765 million contract with the New York Mets â the largest contract in professional sports history and one that will pay Soto a reported $51 million per year.
But is Soto actually worth it? Playing in 15 spring training games for the Mets, Soto has repeatedly heard chants of “Overpaid! Overrated!” from opposing fans â responding on one occasion with a home run launched directly at one of the hecklers.
Soto Repeatedly Questioned as ‘Overrated’
The “overrated” taunt is one Soto had been hearing even before he signed his bank-breaking Mets contract. In a 2024 poll run by The Athletic, MLB players were surveyed anonymously about who they believed was the “most overrated” player in the game. One unnamed player made Soto his pick.
“I feel like all he does is walk and hit singles, and doesn’t hit for power like he’s portrayed,” the anonymous player said, as quoted by Bleacher Report. “Also not a good fielder.”
Now, a veteran Major League scout â also speaking anonymously â has used the same adjective to describe Soto. In fact, the scout quoted in an Athletic report published on Thursday called Soto “one of the most overrated players.”
âHeâs not good defensively and heâs not a good baserunner,” the veteran National League scout told The Athletic‘s Tyler Kepner. He walks and he hits home runs every now and then. Iâm not saying heâs not good, but for me, heâs one of the most overrated players. The way we value walks today is what puts him in this class.â
The scout may have a point regarding Soto’s defense. As an outfielder for the Yankees in 2024, Soto recorded a Defensive Runs Saved number of zero, according to Fangraphs, meaning that his fielding was exactly average, not costing his team any extra runs, but failing to prevent any either.
How Soto Stacks Up as an Offensive Force
As a hitter, however, Soto is anything but average. Based on weighted runs created-plus (wRC+), a metric used to measure a hitters run-production in which the MLB average is set to 100, Soto in his career has posted a figure of 158. That means he has been 58 percent better than a league-average hitter. That’s good enough for fourth among all active players. Soto’s former Yankees teammate Aaron Judge ranks first at 174.
Soto’s 158 wRC+ number places him 12th among all hitters in Major League history. Perhaps not surprisingly, Babe Ruth ranks No. 1 all-time at 197, followed by Boston Red Sox great Ted Williams with a wRC+ of 188.
Does ranking as one of the 12 greatest hitters ever to play Major League Baseball mean that Soto is “overrated?” At a $51 million annual salary, the answer must be in the eye of the beholder. Ruth’s highest one-year salary was $80,000 in 1930 and again in 1931. According to the Federal Reserve Bank Inflation Calculator, that sum would be worth $1,506,342 today â about $49.5 million short of what Soto will collect this season.
Williams earned his highest salary of $125,000 in 1958 and 1959. That converts to $1,362,052 in today’s cash, again nearly $50 million short of Soto’s 2025 paycheck.
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