With key Mets departures, Juan Soto shoulders immense pressure to lead the team's resurgence and define the 2026 MLB season.
It is not an understatement to say that the 2025 MLB season ended with a brutal collapse for the New York Mets.
In the first half of the season, the Mets looked like an NL East favorite and, perhaps, a World Series contender. In the end, they missed the playoffs, leaving plenty of questions. Manager Carlos Mendoza stuck around for at least another year, but Pete Alonso, Edwin Diaz, Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil are all playing elsewhere in a flurry of departures from Queens.
That means a lot of pressure on $765 million man Juan Soto. The Mets won the Soto sweepstakes last offseason, signing him to a historic 15-year, $765 million deal.
In 2025, Soto hit .263 with 43 home runs and 105 RBIs, which are good numbers. But, the pressure is on for Soto even more with some key exits.
Will Leitch of MLB.com named 10 players who will define the 2026 MLB season, and one of them was Juan Soto.
"Soto’s first season in Flushing ended in disappointment, but you sure can’t blame him for it. He was all the Mets had paid for and more, hitting a career-high 43 homers and, amazingly, tied for the NL lead in stolen bases, with 38. (Less surprisingly, he led the Majors in walks as well, for the fourth time in the past five years.) For all the justified love for Francisco Lindor, this is going to become more and more Soto’s team as the years go along. With that, Soto can hope to put the team’s fraught late-season history behind it and lead a transition to the next era of Mets baseball. He’s a future Hall of Famer already. Now it’s time to become, to steal a moniker, Mr. Met."
Right now, the Mets look to be far from done in free agency, or at least that's the hope.
They could still land some big free agents, or make a trade, but with the way things have gone so far in Queens, there isn't a ton of hope for the improvement of this roster as a whole, especially compared to the expectations at the start of the offseason.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that Soto is somebody that could make or break the season for the Mets, and he needs to play at a high level in hopes of this team getting that sour taste out of their mouths and returning to playoff baseball.