Scott Boras Explains Juan Soto Turning Down $440M Offer

Scott Boras represents Juan Soto. So everyone involved knew that signing the 23-year-old Washinton Nationals superstar well in advance of his free agency in 2024 would be no easy task. That being said, some eyebrows were raised when the pair turned down the Washington Nationals' 15-year, $440M extension offer. 

Boras explained today, on Jon Heyman's The Show podcast, that the decision had to do both with the upheaval in Nationals' ownership, and the average annual value offered.

"The Lerner family has been a winning ownership... Now, we're without the Lerner family. Juan Soto... had people that he knows and trusted ever since his inception with the franchise. But now, that group of people has moved on and assigned the team to another group.

"Juan has said, 'I want to make sure I know who and why and what this organization is going to do'. It's kind of a 'ghost contract offer', because you're (just) saying 'here is a lump sum of money.'"

Scott Boras on Juan Soto's market value: "He's at the top, he is the best of the best, nobody in his first four years has had the success that he has had at that age, he is a great value for any franchise. We'll see which team will pay what he is worth", per @AbriendoJuego. pic.twitter.com/wqDsX5ecKU

— Héctor Gómez (@hgomez27) July 19, 2022

On the dollar side of the ledger, always the most important side for Boras, he says the offer was nowhere near Soto's value, as far as offering him what would have been the 20th largest AAV in baseball history ($29.3M per year).

"He's really separated himself to be in a very small group in major league history, of performance levels. So (he should be) at the very highest order of average annual values, and yet the proposal placed him well below the top group, in the 15-to-20 range."

Now, Home Run Derby Champ Juan Soto is on the trade market, and teams are clamoring to get a piece of the greatest young player in the game. 

Juan Soto and his new hardware. #HRDerby pic.twitter.com/xpwXTZIfkM

— MLB (@MLB) July 19, 2022

Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports