The Juan Soto free-agent buzz has started, with the 26-year-old outfielder being the topic of a lot of talks at baseball’s general managers’ meetings in San Antonio. The fuss over him is quite warranted, as he is the number one agreed-upon free agent and already headed for the hall of fame with one championship ring and two championship appearances to his credit.
The only other position players who signed free agency entering their age-26 season have been Bryce Harper and Manny Machado six years ago. And as such, he is expected to transform the team that hires him in a big way. Soto batted last season with the Yankees with an average of .288, hitting 41 home runs (4th in the teams), on-base plus sharing (OPS) .
419 (second) and slugging percentage (SLG) 569 (4th). He also ranked fourth on wins above replacement (WAR) with an 8.1 rating. That latter number is valuable for the bookmakers too since Soto will shift the win total for the team that will sign him. “He’s the better position player on the planet; third is Shohei Ohtani, and fourth is Aaron Judge,” Halvor Egeland, a trader at BetMGM, told The Athletic.
He may stay out of the field a little bit to shield other hitters in the lineup; he takes so many pitches and he’s always on base. He’s one of the few guys that make alarms go off when he comes out of the lineup.”The Juan Soto free-agent buzz has started, with the 26-year-old outfielder being the topic of a lot of talks at baseball’s general managers’ meetings in San Antonio.
The fuss over him is quite warranted, as he is the number one agreed-upon free agent and already headed for the hall of fame with one championship ring and two championship appearances to his credit. The only other position players who signed free agency entering their age-26 season have been Bryce Harper and Manny Machado six years ago. And as such, he is expected to transform the team that hires him in a big way. Soto batted last season with the Yankees with an average of .
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288, hitting 41 home runs (4th in the teams), on-base plus sharing (OPS) .419 (second) and slugging percentage (SLG) 569 (4th). He also ranked fourth on wins above replacement (WAR) with an 8.1 rating. That latter number is valuable for the bookmakers too since Soto will shift the win total for the team that will sign him.
“He’s the better position player on the planet; third is Shohei Ohtani, and fourth is Aaron Judge,” Halvor Egeland, a trader at BetMGM, told The Athletic. He may stay out of the field a little bit to shield other hitters in the lineup; he takes so many pitches and he’s always on base. He’s one of the few guys that make alarms go off when he comes out of the lineup.”
Avello said he grasped the rationale behind the field betting, a category in which both World Series teams from 2023 fell into. “Houston could be in the mix,” he said. Arizona could be in the mix because a guy like Soto could put them over the top. The Texas Rangers is a team we are not even listing here.
” But even if all of that were true, just how much could Soto tilt the odds in the potential suitors favor? Here’s how oddsmakers view this young superstar as a potential boost in offering their World Series odds and how many games Soto may be worth to those teams out of The Athletic’s Juan Soto Free Agency Tiers.