Sure sounds like Yankees missed golden opportunity to keep Juan Soto from Mets

It's been a few months since the New York Yankees lost out on the Juan Soto chase to the New York Mets. Steve Cohen offered more money – it really is quite that simple – and won the bidding war with Scott Boras's top client. Soto will be a Met for the next 15 years (assuming he doesn't get traded or opt out), and should earn $765 million in the process.

The Yankees offer was right there in the end, but Hal Steinbrenner was never going to win a bidding war against Cohen. For the Mets, signing Soto was personal, rather than merely about improving their baseball team. The same can be said about Soto, who was reportedly upset with Yankees security throughout the season, and didn't receive a personal box at Yankee Stadium for his friends and family. These are things the Yankees do not do. I will not be the deciding factor as to whether that is right or wrong.

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Yankees had a chance to knock Mets out of the Juan Soto chase

Back in late January, Jon Heyman went in-depth about the Mets talks with Soto, suggesting they were nearly out of the running right away.

"Back in the topsy-turvy Soto talks, where three rounds of bidding were established, the Mets nearly fell out in Round 1," Heyman wrote. "After the Mets initially bid around $500M — word is, they first suggested about $41M a year for 12 years before eventually coming up 50 percent — they were informed they were in last place, or thereabouts, among five big-market teams bidding. At that moment, it appeared the Mets might exit quickly. But as we now know, the perseverance of Cohen and Co. paid off big time."

Mets didn't make a second mistake with Juan Soto

The Mets and Cohen obviously course-corrected their offer, and were given that opportunity by Boras. However, during that brief window one could argue the Yankees missed their chance to keep Soto in pinstripes. By leveraging the Mets offer against them, Steinbrenner and Cashman should've made the argument that their NYC competition disrespected Soto. Instead, the Mets quickly got back into the Soto chase and never looked back.

"After putting themselves in the middle of things by Round 2, the Mets wound up winning that historic free-agent lottery. They did so by bidding competitively, learning all they could (they correctly surmised it was between them and the Yankees in the end; not all bidders did) and especially by smartly stressing family. (We don’t really still believe that measly $5M gap won the day, now do we?)," Heyman continued.

The Mets made a memorable comeback in the Soto negotiations, and perhaps that was their plan all along. Nonetheless, the Yankees had every opportunity to keep one of the best players in baseball and faltered more than once.