Here is perhaps the greatest irony of all with the Juan Soto contract negotiations. For the first time, the Yankees have gotten a taste of what it’s long been like to be the Kansas City Royals, or the Pittsburgh Pirates, or the Cincinnati Reds.
Those teams have long fought good fights to retain important players who reach free agency. Sometimes they try playing on a player’s loyalty. Hence, the so-called “hometown discount.” Sometimes they get as creative as possible with the finances available to them.
More often than not, they’ve lost those players.
And as often as anyone, if the Yankees were interested in the player, it was the Yankees who swooped in and signed that player by blowing them out of waters that the Royals, Pirates, Reds and a few others simply couldn’t swim in.
