Andrea Sereni for www.corriere.it
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He turned down a $ 440 million contract. Juan Soto is 23 years old and a professional baseball player. He plays in Mlb (Major league baseball), the US league, in the Washington Nationals. The team that welcomed him when he was 16, and that now had proposed a pharaonic contract renewal: 440 million for the next 15 years. Translated: $ 29.33 million per season. Soto said, “No, thank you. I’m not enough”. The result? The Nationals put it on the market.
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The hefty offer was the third offer that the capital franchise had sent to Soto, and would have made him the highest-paid player in baseball history. It wasn’t enough to convince him. A refusal that seems incredible: it probably is, but behind the no there is a precise reasoning. Soto, born in Santo Domingo in 1998, is one of the brightest stars in the Mlb, and is only 23 years old. The salary of 29.33 million a season in American baseball is high but not insane. There are twenty other players who have a higher annual salary (not considering the duration of the agreement).
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Furthermore, by signing the renewal, Soto would have closed himself in a sort of golden cage: by committing himself up to his 38 years, he would not have been able to monetize if he were to further improve. In the NBA, a parallel universe no less rich and following than the MLB, Steph Curry earns almost 50 million dollars a season (and like him at least 4-5 other players). High salaries that continue to rise over time. And that goes for both basketball and baseball.
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At the moment the Dominican is under contract until 2024 with the Nationals, the team with the worst record in the MLB, and earns 17.1 million dollars. Washington general manager Mike Rizzo, who explicitly said in June he wanted to build a winning team around him, has now dumped him. Soto is followed by the St. Louis Cardinals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Yankees, the San Francisco Giants and the Seattle Mariners. He has bet on himself. Together with his powerful agent, Scott Boras, he will choose where to continue his career.
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