{"id":680930,"date":"2026-04-22T09:57:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T09:57:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/680930\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T09:57:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T09:57:17","slug":"the-mets-need-juan-soto-the-765m-man-with-the-765m-mandate-to-help-a-team-that-cant-help-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/680930\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mets need Juan Soto \u2014 the $765M man with the $765M mandate \u2014 to help a team that can\u2019t help itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 As the numb, shivering remnants of the crowd shuffled home Tuesday night, the scoreboard operator put one player\u2019s image on the massive scoreboard at Citi Field. Pictured next to the March\/April schedule, a tale of woe for the New York Mets, was Juan Soto. He was not smiling.<\/p>\n

The Mets have lost a dozen games in a row, none more ghastly than this one, a gobsmacking 5-3 flop<\/a> against the Minnesota Twins. No team has ever had a 12-game losing streak and reached the playoffs. Then again, no team has ever paid a player as much as the Mets are paying Soto.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Soto will return to the roster after missing 15 games with a right calf strain. The Mets won their first three without him, then have lost the rest. They have hit .217 in Soto\u2019s absence, with nine home runs. Only one team in MLB, the Boston Red Sox, has hit fewer.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to help us a lot,\u201d said Francisco Lindor, whose three-run homer gave the Mets their only runs Tuesday. \u201cHe\u2019s a guy every lineup wished they had. We can\u2019t wait for him to come back and do his thing. At the end of the day, I just hope everyone doesn\u2019t put all the pressure on him, because that would be a little unfair. But I know he is going to help us tons. It\u2019s one of the top three hitters in the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lindor is right. It\u2019s more than a little unfair to expect Soto to help a team that can\u2019t help itself. But Soto is a $765 million man with a $765 million mandate. Owner Steve Cohen signed him to win the World Series that has eluded this franchise for 40 years.<\/p>\n

Before the game, Cohen described himself as \u201cconcerned, calm and focused\u201d \u2014 which beats indifferent, panicked and distracted, but doesn\u2019t really say a whole lot. Like everyone else, Cohen is eager to see how the lineup responds once Soto returns. It can\u2019t get much worse, anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t think we were going to be having that much of a hard time scoring runs without him,\u201d the embattled manager, Carlos Mendoza, said after the loss. \u201cBut again, as I said before the game, it\u2019s hard to put a lot on Soto. But it\u2019s going to be good to have him in the lineup.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the best players regularly led their teams to championships, Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. would have done it many times. None ever did. In the late 1990s, when Griffey came to realize that the Seattle Mariners were missing their window to win with him, he would explain the team\u2019s struggles with three words: \u201cI bat third.\u201d It was a cryptic but deceptively simple point.<\/p>\n

In baseball, all you can do is wait your turn. Eight times out of nine, somebody else gets to hit. Soto could have bashed four homers Tuesday, and if no one did anything else, the Mets would still have lost.<\/p>\n

Soto, of course, is familiar with the World Series. Winning was part of his appeal to Cohen. Before coming to Flushing, Soto helped carry the Washington Nationals to a title in 2019, the San Diego Padres to a championship series in 2022 and the New York Yankees to a pennant in 2024. With the Mets, he goes home for October.<\/p>\n

Last season was a typical Cooperstown-quality season for Soto (43 homers, 38 steals, .921 OPS) with a typical Metsian outcome, a playoff spot squandered down the stretch. Now the Mets are threatening to make that \u201cFamily Guy\u201d clip<\/a> come true: With a week left in April, is the season over already?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot get complacent or be happy with what\u2019s going on,\u201d Mendoza said before the game. \u201cBut at the same time, like, \u2018Hey, man, breathe a little bit here.\u2019 Everybody talks about how tough New York can be. Here we are. But you just have to embrace it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soto embraced the biggest pile of cash ever given to an MLB player. Now he can embrace the superhuman demands of that contract by doing what is impossible in baseball, by design. He has to elevate the team by himself.<\/p>\n

The Mets seem alarmingly dependent on him. The Twins gutted their bullpen at the trade deadline last summer, but three relievers spun four perfect innings Tuesday. The Mets sent 23 batters to the plate after Lindor\u2019s home run. They managed a single and two walks and made 20 outs.<\/p>\n

Nolan McLean was perfect for five innings but wobbled in the sixth and seventh, letting the Twins tie the score and eventually forcing Devin Williams into it. In his last three outings, Williams has allowed a grand slam in Los Angeles, blown a save in Chicago and lost in New York \u2014 a coast-to-coast calamity.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, I\u2019d say all three outings were something different, you know?\u201d said Williams, whose ERA is 9.95. \u201cToday I didn\u2019t have command. Couldn\u2019t throw my changeup for a strike. It\u2019s tough to be one-dimensional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only the Mets could take their most thrilling moment of the decade, get rid of the hero and sign the guy who lost the game. But Pete Alonso\u2019s triumphant homer off Williams in the 2024 first-round clincher in Milwaukee seems like a long time ago.<\/p>\n

Williams also started poorly for the Yankees last April but showed enough for his old boss, Mets president of baseball operations David Stearns, to sign him for three years and $51 million as part of a major overhaul.<\/p>\n

Five newcomers \u2014 Bo Bichette, Jorge Polanco, Luis Robert Jr., Marcus Semien and top prospect Carson Benge \u2014 took spots in the lineup. They have combined to hit .204, and Polanco is out with a wrist contusion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a lot of veterans in here, and we\u2019ve been through this marathon a lot of times,\u201d Semien said. \u201cIt\u2019s not fun what has happened, but we know that the way to get out of it is to move forward. If you\u2019re not optimistic, this is the wrong business to be in.\u201d<\/p>\n

For fans with long memories, optimism is a lot to ask. The Mets have tried a splashy makeover before, under very similar circumstances. After a deep postseason run in 2000 \u2014 when they won the NL pennant \u2014 the Mets missed the playoffs in 2001. They responded by trading for Roberto Alomar, Jeromy Burnitz and Mo Vaughn, and rearranging some of the pitching staff.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t work. The 2002 Mets crashed to last place, but at least they waited a while to fall apart. That team entered August with a winning record, but lost 12 in a row later that month and soon cost the manager, Bobby Valentine, his job.<\/p>\n

For all that has happened since then, the Mets haven\u2019t had another 12-game losing streak until right now.<\/p>\n

Good luck, Juan Soto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 As the numb, shivering remnants of the crowd shuffled home Tuesday night, the scoreboard operator…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2398],"tags":[5,4,415,61,414,71,4222],"class_list":{"0":"post-680930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-nationals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-nationals","11":"tag-new-york-mets","12":"tag-washington","13":"tag-washington-nationals","14":"tag-washingtonnationals"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116447773470008541","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}