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Juan Soto may have to clear expensive CBA hurdle to wear Brett Baty’s No. 22 as a Met

juan-soto-may-have-to-clear-expensive-cba-hurdle-to-wear-brett-baty’s-no.-22-as-a-met
Juan Soto may have to clear expensive CBA hurdle to wear Brett Baty’s No. 22 as a Met

If Juan Soto wants to wear his No. 22 with the Mets, it could become a very costly ask. 

Right now, Brett Baty wears No. 22 on the Amazin’s and traditionally if Soto, as a new member of the Mets, would want the number on his new team he would work out a deal with Baty to swap for the jersey number. 

However, there could be an additional hurdle that needs to be cleared for Soto to potentially get his No. 22, which he’s worn his entire MLB career. 

Juan Soto may have have a few hurdles to clear to get to wear No. 22 with the Mets.
Juan Soto may have have a few hurdles to clear to get to wear No. 22 with the Mets. Getty Images

MLB has been enforcing a little-known rule in the collective bargaining agreement that requires player number changes to be requested prior to July 31 of the previous season, otherwise a player would have to purchase the existing inventory of merchandise wearing his old number. 

The rule tripped up a plan for Twins star Joe Ryan to give Carlos Santana his No. 41 after Santana signed in Minnesota last offseason. 


Follow The Post’s coverage of Juan Soto’s historic megadeal with the Mets:


The rule is in Attachment 19 of the current CBA under the uniform regulations section and states: “A Player will not be permitted to change his jersey number even if such request is approved by his Club unless the request was received by the Office of the Commissioner no later than July 31 of the year preceding the championship season in which the jersey number change would take effect.” 

Two exceptions are listed in the rule that allows a player to change a number after the deadline, one of which is if the player who previously wore the number changes teams. 

The other is if “the player (or someone on his behalf) purchases the existing finished-goods inventory” with that number. 

In the case of Ryan and Santana, MLB was asking Santana to pay the estimated value of all jersey, caps, T-shirts and replica uniforms in their licensing inventory and in their retail partners, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune.  

That estimate equaled over $225,000, causing Santana not to pursue the number change. 

It’s unclear what an estimated cost could be if Soto and Baty attempted to swap numbers, but Mets home replica jersey prices start at $134 on the MLB website. 

Brett Batty wore No. 22 for the Mets last season.
Brett Batty wore No. 22 for the Mets last season. Robert Sabo for NY Post

Soto jerseys are available for pre-order with the No. 00 already and any issue would be avoided if the Mets end up trading Baty. 

But baseball has been on top of it in recent years, with Carlos Correa telling the Star Tribune that he had an attempted number change halted by MLB during his time in Houston because the league had too much merchandise with his No. 1 on it. 

He changed to No. 4 when he signed with the Twins ahead of the 2022 season. 

Ex-Yankee Gary Sanchez had an issue when he wanted to wear No. 24 after being traded to the Twins. 

The number had been worn at the time by outfielder Trevor Larnach and MLB got involved, first wanting to bill the players almost $25,000 for the merch, but after the Twins objected and lawyers became involved the league dropped their objection. 

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