Juan Soto. There¡¯s no one like him.

It¡¯s not just the money he¡¯s going to make with the New York Mets ¡­ though that¡¯s obviously, um, unusual. It¡¯s the specific way that Soto got to the largest payday in professional sports -- and where this contract will potentially now take him -- that is so bizarre.

In terms of his skill set, Soto is not unique in the way that two-way wonder Shohei Ohtani is. And though there are very few players in history who have been as great at the plate as Soto has through his age-25 season, there have been some players that great ¡­ even if none of them got a 15-year, $765 million contract.

But Soto¡¯s path to this unprecedented moment in baseball business history is itself unprecedented. Soto has taken the most weirdly winding road a generational superstar has ever traversed.

The Mets will be Soto¡¯s fourth team in only his eighth Major League season. That¡¯s the kind of movement that, in many situations past, might have qualified as a red flag. Players passed around like a hot potato might have a performance wart that multiple coaching staffs could not fix or a character flaw that drains a clubhouse.

That¡¯s simply not the case with Soto. Heck, the Yankees had him in their clubhouse for the 2024 season, then offered him $760 million over 16 years. So they must like him.

No, the color associated with Soto is not red but green. Getting paid handsomely for his services was his priority not just in free agency, but long before he even reached free agency.

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Here¡¯s how he got here.

A Super Two superstar

Soto signed with the Nationals as an amateur international free agent out of his native Dominican Republic in July 2015 at age 16. His signing bonus was $1.5 million -- a pittance in the big picture. But he reached the big leagues in 2018, at the age of 19. And he debuted on May 20, which is interesting for two reasons.

1. Soto¡¯s first home run came the following day, May 21. But on June 18, he went deep in the resumption of a suspended game from May 15, which means that, technically, Soto¡¯s first career home run came before he even debuted! (We told you he¡¯s special.)
2. The Nats did not delay Soto¡¯s debut into June, as many teams do when being careful with a prominent prospect¡¯s service time. This put Soto on a path to early arbitration eligibility. It would prove crucial.

In that 2018 season, Soto earned a prorated portion of the league minimum of $545,000 while finishing second in the NL Rookie of the Year voting with a .923 OPS.

The following year, he made $578,300 while finishing ninth in the NL MVP race and helping the Nats reach and win the World Series.

In the COVID-shortened 2020 season, he made a prorated portion of a $629,400 salary.

And the following winter, Soto reached arbitration for the first time as what¡¯s known as a ¡°Super Two¡± player, meaning he had more than two but fewer than three years of service time and had served enough days in the bigs to qualify for four seasons of salary arbitration eligibility instead of the usual three.

During Soto¡¯s first round of arbitration, in January 2021, he and the Nats avoided going to a hearing by settling on an $8.5 million salary -- 70% more than the $5 million Soto had been projected to earn by the reputable site MLB Trade Rumors (MLBTR).

Pause right there. Because that¡¯s where the seeds of this Mets contract were sown.

Soto fell $3 million shy of Cody Bellinger¡¯s record for a first-time arbitration-eligible player ($11.5 million with the Dodgers in 2020, though he would wind up only making a prorated portion of that due to the pandemic). But Soto was two years younger than Bellinger had been at the time of that deal. He had reached arbitration at the unusually young age of 22, which put him in unusually perfect position to bet on himself.

Just saying no

The following offseason, prior to 2022, the Nationals approached Soto about a contract extension. Reportedly, their offer that winter was for 13 years, $350 million.

At the time, it would have been the third-largest guarantee (before accounting for inflation) in MLB history.

Soto turned it down, and for good reason. He was projected by MLBTR to earn $16.2 million in only his second round of arbitration (he actually wound up getting $17.1 million), with two more years of arbitration still ahead. It seemed a certainty that he would eclipse the $27 million in average annual value that the Nats were offering by the time he finished arbitration, let alone what he could command as a free agent.

So Soto opted to continue to go year-to-year with his contracts. The Nats eventually upped their offer to 15 years, $440 million, and Soto turned that down, too. It would have been only the 20th-largest contract in terms of average annual value ($29.3 million), but because it would have topped Angels superstar Mike Trout¡¯s $426.5 million as the richest total value contract in MLB history, people were aghast that Soto would say no to that much money when word about the offer leaked.

(To protect the guilty, we won¡¯t share anybody¡¯s old social media posts about this here.)

And so, spurned by the then-23-year-old Soto in extension negotiations and leery of going through another two rounds of arbitration with a player whose cost was skyrocketing while their club embarked upon a rebuild, the Nationals put Soto on the trade block.

Strange swaps

The Nationals¡¯ decision to deal Soto was a historic one.

Soto amassed 21.3 Wins Above Replacement, as calculated by Baseball-Reference, in 4 1/2 seasons with the Nats. Prior to the 2022 Trade Deadline, there had never been a trade in MLB history involving a player aged 23 or younger with at least 20 career WAR.

The Padres paid the midseason trade price for Soto and first baseman Josh Bell, sending along a package of players that included youngsters CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, James Wood, Robert Hassell III, Jarlin Susana and veteran Luke Voit (a package that¡¯s looking strong for Washington). After the season, San Diego agreed with Soto on a one-year contract worth $23 million to avoid arbitration.

San Diego was never seen as a long-term destination for Soto, because the Padres had a lot of money tied up into other players and were merely hoping Soto could be the final piece of a World Series-caliber club. They lost the NLCS with Soto in 2022, then missed the playoffs entirely in 2023. Rather than go through another round of arbitration with Soto and take him into his walk year, they dealt him and outfielder Trent Grisham to the Yankees on Dec. 7, 2023, for a package of controllable pitchers in Michael King and Jhony Brito, prospects Drew Thorpe and Randy V¨¢squez, and backup catcher Kyle Higashioka (a package that¡¯s looking strong for San Diego).

By this point, we were all kind of numb to Soto getting swapped. But this trade was also a first-of-its-kind.

When Soto debuted with the Yankees on Opening Day 2024, he became the first player to make three or more All-Star teams and change teams twice prior to turning 26, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. In short, no one had been traded twice while being that young and that good.

A free agent unlike any other

Soto had a massive walk year in the Bronx (.989 OPS, career-high 41 homers with 109 RBIs and 129 walks), and it was his big swing that put the Yankees into the World Series for the first time since 2009. Years earlier, backed by the arbitration system and his unusually young and productive place within it, he had bet on himself, and now he was ready to cash in.

In the Soto Sweepstakes, $500 million was a formality, $600 million became a floor and $700 million eventually emerged as the cost of doing business. It came down to the two New York teams -- a player¡¯s bargaining-table dream. Mets owner Steve Cohen, one of the richest people on the planet and a passionate collector of art, was not going to be outbid for this artist at the plate, and Soto wound up with the richest deal in any sport, ever.

Not only that, but contrary to how things might seem or be reported, Soto completely blew away the previous richest contract in MLB history by a wide margin. Yes, it¡¯s true that Ohtani inked a record-setting (at the time) 10-year, $700 million deal with the Dodgers one year ago, but 97% of that cost is deferred to from 2034-43. The present-day value of Ohtani¡¯s deal has been calculated by Cot¡¯s Contracts at $460.8 million.

Soto beat that by 66%.

So now Soto will make history of a different sort. Not just with the contract but simply by suiting up for the Mets.

Soto has 36.4 career WAR as he joins his fourth team in his eighth season. In the Expansion Era (weeding out weird early-baseball circumstances), there have only been two other players with at least 30 WAR through eight seasons who played for as many as four teams:

• Bartolo Colon, 1997-2004 (Indians, Expos, White Sox and Angels)
• Mark Teixeira, 2003-2010 (Rangers, Braves, Angels, Yankees)

But even there, the comparison falls flat, because Teixeira reached free agency at 28 and Colon at 30. They didn¡¯t generate nearly the free-agent fervor that Soto (and his age) did.

And now that he¡¯s locked arms with the Mets, Soto has a chance to do something that, while not unprecedented, is certainly unusual.

Home sweet home?

Let¡¯s be clear: Though Soto has a full no-trade clause in his Mets contract, he also has an opt-out after five years. So maybe there¡¯s still another strange twist yet to come in this saga.

But for now, it seems reasonable to assume he¡¯s going to be in Queens for a while.

This leads to all sorts of wonderful possibilities for the Mets moving forward. Soto already has 201 home runs, which puts him on pace to hit Nos. 300, 400 and 500 sometime in the next decade. He¡¯s at 934 hits through 936 games, which puts him on track to reach 3,000 during the length of this deal. If he really is the player we expect him to be -- i.e., a first-ballot Hall of Fame kind of player -- then it would stand to reason that the cap on his plaque would be with the club for whom he chose to play and achieve his major milestones.

And that would be an interesting ending for this baseball vagabond. It¡¯s a backwards kind of career in a sport in which players often debut and spend long periods with one team and bounce from place to place in a latter stage of their playing days.

Soto could possibly join this fun Elias Sports Bureau list (again, limited to the Expansion Era) of players who suited up for at least three teams prior to joining a team with whom they spent at least a decade.

? Manny Mota: Giants, Pirates and Expos, then 13 seasons with Dodgers
? Lou Piniella: Orioles, Indians and Royals, then 11 seasons with Yankees
? Joe Niekro: Cubs, Padres, Tigers and Braves, then 11 seasons with Astros
? Gene Garber: Pirates, Royals and Phillies, then 10 seasons with Braves
? Jamie Moyer: Cubs, Rangers, Cardinals, Orioles and Red Sox, then 11 seasons with Mariners
? Jos¨¦ Bautista: Orioles, Rays, Royals and Pirates, then 10 seasons with Blue Jays

A strange list (featuring precisely zero players who received a $765 million contract) and a strange path.

But it¡¯s the one Soto chose to walk by successfully betting on himself in a big way.