Juan Soto is set to become the highest-paid athlete in professional sports, having reportedly inked a 15-year, $765 million contract with the New York Mets. The Dominican phenom signed the deal after one of the most highly-anticipated free agent periods ever, in which he reportedly fielded offers from the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, and Toronto Blue Jays.
The money involved in the deal is gargantuan by just about any standard. It outstrips the previous largest contract in pro sports, handed out just last year by the Dodgers to Shohei Ohtani, and will pay out more over the life of the contract than LeBron James and Tom Brady have earned in salary over their entire careers.
Further analysis of the deal only serves to back up that impression. If you average out the annual value of the deal to $51 million per season, and assume that Soto continues at or around the level of production he has managed over the past two seasons, he is still set to make an astonishing amount per game played, at-bat taken, hit produced, and time spent playing the game of baseball.
Appearances: Soto will earn about $320,000 per game
In the regular season, Soto played 162 games in 2023 and 157 in 2024, giving him an average of 160 games per season. If he is similarly available in 2025, Soto will be set to earn $318,750 per game, set against the $51 million average annual value of the contract (the actual pay structure is likely different).
Soto is 26 years old, so there is no reason to believe that he will dip below these or other availability-related numbers anytime in the next few seasons, barring major injury.
Production: Soto will earn $89,000 per at-bat, and $327,000 per hit
Soto stepped into the batters box 568 times in the 2023 regular season and 576 times in 2024, giving him an average of 572 plate appearances per year. Set against that same $51 million number, that means Soto will earn $89,161 each time he steps up to the plate in 2025, assuming he has a similar number of attempts.
As for his production once hes there? Soto generated exactly 156 hits in both 2023 and 2024. If he repeats that for a third consecutive year, he will have earned nearly a third of a million dollars $326,923 per regular season hit.
The numbers are similarly eye-popping for other outcomes. Again assuming similar production as 2023 and 2024 and with the contract value annualized to $51 million per year, Soto is set to earn $389,313 per walk, $411,290 per strikeout, and $1,342,105 per home run.
Time: Soto will earn over $120,000 per hour
The average nine-inning, regular season MLB game lasted just under two hours, 40 minutes in 2024 and 2023. Assuming that stays roughly the same and Soto plays 160 games in 2025, he will be set to earn about $121,198 per hour.
Just in case you were curious, that extrapolates out to about $2,020 per minute, and about $34 per second.
Soto also played an average of 1,338 innings in the field over the last two seasons, all of them as an outfielder. That means hell earn $38,117 per inning spent in the outfield.
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