The Juan Soto saga could’ve never been.
Soto would’ve never left the San Diego Padres if the franchise’s owner hadn’t succumbed in his battle with cancer in 2023, according to Scott Boras, superstar agent for the Yankees’ superstar slugger.
“If [Padres owner] Peter Seidler were still alive, none of this would be happening,” Boras told USA Today in an interview published Monday. “Juan would have been with the Padres. He never would have been traded to the Yankees.”
Boras’ comments to USA Today come just one day after The Post’s Jon Heyman reported that the Dodgers are going to be bidding on Soto, 26, when he enters the free agent market in the coming weeks.
The bidding is expected to begin the day after the World Series concludes.
All signs indicate that the Dominican outfielder will sign one of — if not the — most lucrative contracts in sports history. The “floor” figure currently floating around hovers around $500 million; in addition to the Yankees and Dodgers, the Mets and Blue Jays are also considered favorites in the impending sweepstakes.
And yet, as Boras says, there’s a world in which the four-time All-Star never left San Diego.
“Peter [Seidler] and I were knee-deep in Juan Soto [contract] discussions,” Boras said. “Well advanced. His illness really stopped the process because we knew the organization would be different. He wanted to push it through even though he was ill.”
“I have a text message from [Seidler] four days before he died, ‘Be back online real quick,’” Boras said.
Seidler, who joined the Padres’ ownership group in 2012 and became the team’s largest stakeholder in 2020, passed away at age 63 in November 2023. Soto was dealt to The Bronx less than a month later.
His year in pinstripes has been everything Brian Cashman and company could have hoped for.
Soto has set personal bests in plate appearances (713), runs (128), hits (166) and home runs (41), and upped his game even further in October— adding four home runs and hitting .350 across the Yankees’ 11 postseason games heading into Game 3 of the World Series on Monday night.
As Boras says, that was the impact Seidler saw in Soto when he acquired him from the Nationals and envisioned for him far into the future.
“Peter was not trading Juan Soto. No way. He kept saying, ‘I traded for a franchise. I’m not giving him up.’ He couldn’t believe [the Nationals] traded Juan Soto. He loved Juan,” Boras said.
New York sure does, too.
