Juan Soto is still talking about Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees, but according to Mike Francesa, the Mets don’t mind.
Yankees fans haven’t forgotten about Soto’s one season in the Bronx, and it’s clear that he hasn’t either. Just 15 games into his first season of a 15-year $765 million contract with the Mets, Soto spoke with Mike Puma of the New York Post and acknowledged some differences from his time with the Yankees. Mainly, life without protection from Judge.
“It’s definitely different,” Soto told The Post before his game Monday night. “I had the best hitter in baseball hitting behind me. I was getting more attacked and more pitches in the strike zone, less intentional walks and things like that. I was pitched differently last year.”
The Mets are fresh off signing Juan Soto to a 15-year, $765 million contract that he opted to leave the Yankees for. While it seems fair to assume they would prefer he stop talking about the Yankees, Mike Francesa disagreed. Tuesday morning, Francesa downplayed the comment on his podcast, going so far as to claim this is the attention the Mets sought when they signed Soto.
“From a Met ownership standpoint, they like this,” Francesa said. “Why? They want the back page. They want to matter. They want to be the team. Which is not easy to do against the Yankees. But they want to do that and that’s why they went out and sprung for this guy. To fill the ballpark. To create buzz. ‘Oh, our big hitter only has two home runs after 16 games, even though we’re 11-5. Boy, that’s a big story.’ Colossal. If he had said, ‘I don’t think I can hit without Judge,’ that’s a little different. He didn’t say that. Cause he doesn’t think that.”
Francesa said Soto’s slow start was “much ado about nothing.” And he’s right. It’s only 15 games! If the Mets were 5-11, Soto’s struggles would be a bigger story. But at 11-5, the Mets have undoubtedly helped to mask Soto’s slow start, which is why his comments about Judge were so jarring. No, Soto isn’t hitting in front of the best hitter in baseball anymore, but he is still hitting in front of a pretty good one in Pete Alonso, who is off to a red-hot start this season.
The Mets aren’t sounding the alarm on Soto, who has just two home runs and six RBIs through 16 games. And maybe they do like seeing the interest in their $765-million player land them on the back pages. But Soto’s comments were an unintentional slight at Alonso. And there’s no way the Mets like seeing that.