Juan Soto picked Mets over Yankees to ‘try to grow a dynasty’: Comparing futures of two New York franchises

Last week at Citi Field, the New York Mets introduced Juan Soto, their new franchise player and the proud owner of a record 15-year contract worth $765 million. Soto, who turned only 26 in October, slashed .288/.419/.569 with a career-high 41 home runs and a career-high 7.9 WAR with the Yankees in 2024. He traded the Bronx for Queens, and was of course asked about that decision at his introductory press conference.

“I don’t think it was the Mets over the Yankees. I think it was five teams that were right there on the table. I don’t think it had anything to do with the Mets over the Yankees,” Soto said. “… The Mets are a great organization and what they’ve done in the past couple of years — showing the ability to keep winning, to keep growing a team, to try to grow a dynasty — it was one of the most important things to me. What I was seeing from the other side was unbelievable. The past and the future this team has, it went a lot into my decision.”

Building a dynasty is a lofty and perhaps unrealistic goal, but what else is the star player supposed to say at his introductory press conference? The expectation was Soto would take the biggest offer, and sure enough he took the contract that offered the most money and also the perks with the most monetary value. Players can’t say it was the money at the press conference though. Introductory press conferences are a time for pandering and Soto pandered well.

That all said, Soto leaving the Yankees for the Mets gives us a chance to examine the two franchises and figure out which has a better chance to win championships (plural) moving forward. Soto is signed through 2039 (!) and we’re not going to look that far into the future. We can’t accurately predict what’s going to happen 15 months into the future in this game, never mind 15 years. We’ll stick to the short-term (let’s call it next 3-5 years) because, ultimately, that is most relevant.

The Yankees won the AL East with a 94-68 record and a plus-47 run differential in 2024, and lost the World Series. The Mets finished third in the NL East at 89-73 with a plus-71 run differential, and lost the NLCS. Five games separated the two teams in the standings, and that was with Soto on the Yankees. You cannot simply take Soto’s 7.9 WAR and slide them from the Yankees to the Mets, and say that’s what each team will be in 2025, of course. This sport is much more complicated than that.

Here now is a head-to-head comparison between the Mets and Yankees using four factors that will decide their World Series fates over the next few years.

Current roster

Short-term contention begins with the guys currently on the roster, and seeing as how spring training is still two months away, this is an incomplete assessment. The Yankees will add a bat between now and Opening Day, probably two, and the Mets will bring in another starting pitcher as well as re-sign or replace Pete Alonso. Here, as a snapshot in time, are FanGraphs’ 2025 projections for the two rosters as they currently sit:

The completely objective projection system sees the Yankees and Mets as two of the best teams in the game, and as essentially neck-and-neck with their current rosters. You are free to quibble with the individual projections (I’m just the messenger) but that’s what they say. At a quick glance, the two first-base projections (1.6 WAR for Yankees and 2.6 WAR for Mets) seem high.

I think that, on paper, it’s pretty clear the Yankees have the superior rotation, and that was true even before signing Max Fried. The Mets signed Frankie Montas and will give former Yankees closer Clay Holmes a chance to start, which are good value additions, but will only move the needle so much. My one quibble with Mets POBO David Stearns is his apparent unwillingness to spend big on starting pitching. He sticks to short-term deals, which is sensible, but it means you don’t get top starters. Good players win games, not good value. Owner Steve Cohen’s wealth would allow the Mets to go all-in on Corbin Burnes, if they wanted.

Anyway, the Yankees have the rotation advantage and the two bullpens are similar. Each team has a lockdown closer (Edwin Díaz and new Yankees closer Devin Williams) and a hodgepodge of talented, albeit not big-name, relievers behind them. Stearns did a wonderful job rebuilding his bullpen on the fly in 2024, something he did annually with the Brewers. The Yankees have perennially built excellent bullpens, mostly on the cheap. It’s been a while since they traded for a big name reliever like Williams (not since Zack Britton in 2018, really).

A side-by-side comparison of the two offenses, despite what FanGraphs’ projections say, looks one-sided in favor of the Mets. Here are each team’s nine regular position players with their 2025 season age:

You’d take the Yankees at which positions? Second base, right field, maybe catcher, maybe DH, maybe left field. And it’s not like right field is the landslide it normally is with Judge. Soto is right there with him, and you needn’t try hard to see Soto out-performing Judge in 2025 given their ages. As good as Judge is — he’s the greatest offensive force we’ve seen since Barry Bonds — I would take Soto’s next five years over Judge’s next five years. I don’t think that’s crazy given their ages.

The ages are relevant too. The Mets were a sneaky old team in 2024 — weighed by playing time, they had the second-oldest group of position players and third-oldest group of pitchers — though they’ve now added 26-year-old Soto to Alvarez and Vientos, two young building blocks. The Yankees are not done adding this winter and I doubt we see Rice and Grisham in their Opening Day lineup. Still, their 20-something core is Chisholm, Volpe, and Wells. Good, maybe even very good, but they’re not Alvarez, Soto, and Vientos. Both teams have a superstar in their early 30s (Judge and Lindor). The Mets have the superior 20-somethings.

Advantage: Mets right now. Among the four factors we’re looking at, the current roster is far and away the one most subject to change. What we see right now is not what we’ll see when the regular season begins on March 27. I’m an offense guy and I think the Mets have the superior lineup and offensive depth, enough to make up for the Yankees’ pitching (particularly in the rotation) advantages. Pitchers get hurt. It’s what they do. Offense is a bit safer and more reliable when projecting into the future.

Farm system

The Mets and Yankees both received tremendous contributions from their farm systems in 2024. Vientos began the year in Triple-A (because the Mets signed J.D. Martinez) and finished it as their No. 3 hitter in the postseason. Gerrit Cole got hurt in spring training and Luis Gil stepped into his rotation spot, and won Rookie of the Year. Wells took over as the Yankees’ primary catcher and was a Rookie of the Year finalist. Both teams traded prospects at the deadline. Their farm systems were impactful.

The farm system rankings we have right now, which were made soon after the trade deadline in August, give the Mets the edge in the prospect department:

In their September top 100 prospects update, Baseball America ranked one Yankee (Domínguez at No. 5) and four Mets: Jett Williams (No. 46), Brandon Sproat (No. 61), Christian Scott (No. 63), and Ronny Mauricio (No. 73). Domínguez is the best prospect between the two teams, but the Mets have more high-end talent and greater depth as well. Generally speaking, big-market teams plug their top prospects into their big-league roster and trade depth prospects at the deadline or in the offseason.

Both systems had their share of adversity in 2024. Yankees outfielder Spencer Jones struggled to make contact and top pitcher Chase Hampton got hurt. For the Mets, Williams and Drew Gilbert were limited by injuries, and Scott had Tommy John surgery in September, which will sideline him for most if not all of 2025. These are not elite, best-in-the-league kind of farm systems. They’re closer to middle of the pack, and frankly, there’s not a huge difference between, say, the 13th-ranked farm system and the 18th-ranked farm system.

Advantage: Mets based on the rankings, both the overall farm system rankings and top-100 prospect rankings.

Spending

All you need to know about each team’s spending habits is the fourth competitive balance tax (CBT) penalty tier, which kicks in when a team exceeds the CBT threshold by at least $60 million, is nicknamed the “Steven Cohen tax” and not the “Hal Steinbrenner tax.” To be sure, the Yankees run high payrolls every season, but they haven’t had baseball’s highest payroll in a 162-game season since 2012. Their CBT payroll reached $300 million for the first time in 2024. The Mets got there in 2022.

The Yankees and Mets both have the ability to spend lavishly — the Yankees because they generate more revenue than any team in the sport and the Mets because of Cohen’s personal wealth — and both will rank near the top of the league in spending well into the future. The difference between the two teams is Cohen acts like a fan and spends to win, whereas Steinbrenner runs the Yankees more like a business, with profits a greater priority than he’ll ever admit publicly. We’ve seen Steinbrenner go the extra mile to get players (Cole and Judge both signed record contracts in recent years, and the Yankees offered Soto $760 million), but he has a limit. If Cohen does, we haven’t seen it yet.

Advantage: Mets. The Yankees have not had a higher payroll than the Mets since 2021. Will it happen again in the next five years? In the next 10 years? That this is even a question means this category is advantage Mets.

The competition

The Yankees and Mets play in the same city but they’re not on-field rivals. They play in different divisions and different leagues, and those divisions and leagues will factor into their World Series hopes. For example, the Mets are much more likely to run into the powerhouse Dodgers in the postseason than the Yankees. They also must contend with the Braves and Phillies, two fellow World Series contenders, in the NL East. The Mets play in a more challenging environment, at least on paper.

Even without Soto, the case can be made the Yankees are the best team in the American League. The Orioles have an excellent core but seem disinclined to raise payroll and support that core with high-end free agents. The Red Sox are on the rise as well, but again, ownership’s self-imposed austerity is an obstacle. The Astros are trending down, the Mariners seem incapable of seizing the moment, the AL Central lacks a powerhouse, and the Blue Jays are never as good as the talent on their roster says they should be. The National League is superior to the American League right now and it is not unreasonable to believe that will remain the case another few years.

Advantage: Yankees. I think you could argue baseball’s four best teams are in the NL right now, and three of those four teams are in the NL East. The Mets play in a deeper division in a deeper league, and figure to have a more challenging path through the postseason than their crosstown rivals.

The Mets have the advantage in three of our four factors, which do not carry equal importance. In terms of short-term success, the current roster matters more than the farm system, and long-term the owner’s willingness to spend matters more than the competition within your division and league. It’s hard to know what your team will look like in a year or two. Another team? Forget it. You’re stacking variables on top of variables.

I’m going to say this again: The offseason is not over, and both the Mets and Yankees will change their rosters between now and Opening Day. Their rosters will certainly change over the next year, the next five years, the next 15 years. The Mets look to be better positioned to win the World Series in the near future than the Yankees, as Soto implied during his press conference, but that does not guarantee a title, nor does it mean the Yankees are hopeless. In short, New York baseball is in a great place right now.