Latest Juan Soto rumor puts Steve Cohen in the driver’s seat

As the Juan Soto sweepstakes appears to be entering the home stretch, all five remaining teams — the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays and Los Angeles Dodgers — are scratching and clawing for any little advantage they can get. Soto's agent, Scott Boras, has them submitting contract offers blind against each other, and at this point, it's anyone's guess as to who might be in the lead or how high the bidding might go. Does Soto love being in New York? Will Cohen outbid anyone and everyone? Is the Red Sox' recent momentum real? Your guess is as good as ours, and not even the insiders have much of an idea right now.

Which is why it was so noteworthy when the Yankees appeared to get the smallest of edges earlier this week, when MLB.com's Mark Feinsand reported that New York believed it would get "final crack to match or beat" whatever the best offer wound up being. Again, none of the five finalists have any idea what any of the other four are doing. Knowing that Soto and Boras would come back to you one last time no matter where the bidding went would be a huge comfort, and a huge advantage in negotiations.

But if this free agency has taught us anything so far, it's that no one can really be sure of anything. For every report, there's an equal and opposite report. And sure enough, now it seems like it might not be the Yankees who will get the right of final refusal.

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Mets, not Yankees, could get final chance to meet Juan Soto's asking price

On Thursday's episode of Fair Territory, Ken Rosenthal gave the lay of the land for Soto as best he knew. And he explicitly pushed back on Feinsand's reporting, saying that in his opinion it would be the Mets, not the Yankees, that Boras would come back to one final time.

It goes without saying that this report, like every other one, should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Soto's camp has been impressively buttoned-up throughout this process; to the extent that there have been any reliable leaks, they've all come from the team side. Maybe the Mets have been made aware that Boras will give them one last chance to match Soto's best offer, and maybe they've passed that along to Rosenthal. Right now, though, it seems like the best anyone can do is make an educated guess.

That said, the educated guess would probably agree with Rosenthal's take. No matter where you think Soto eventually ends up, everyone can agree that Cohen has the deepest pockets of any of the finalists. And everyone can agree that he's singularly motivated to lure Soto to Queens. Rich, desperate owners are how Boras has made his fortune over the years; if the superagent is going to go back to any one of these five teams for one final bid, it's going to be Cohen, the owner he knows is most likely to be good for it.

Which doesn't mean that the Mets are destined to win out here, of course. In the end, it's likely to come down to some combination of who's willing to pay up and where Soto feels most comfortable (and most convinced he can contend for the entirety of what could be a 14- or 15-year contract). It does mean that Cohen's largesse has butted his team all the way to the front of the line, but then again, we already knew that.