Soto Sensation

Mets newest superstar creating World Series buzz at spring training

BY BERNIE WOODALL

Each year, Jim Fertitta buys 50 seats for each New York Mets spring training game at Clover Park. Fertitta, president of the New York & St. Lucie Mets Booster Club, distributes the tickets to booster club members at face value. He makes not a dime.

Some years, when pitchers and catchers report for spring training — which was Feb. 12 this year — he has plenty of tickets left to be claimed. If they are unsold as game time nears, he gives them away to law officers or firefighters or a couple of fans sitting in lesser seats than the ones he gets next to the Mets dugout on the third base side.

This year, all 50 tickets for all Mets 16 spring training games at Clover Park were gone by early January.

“Juan Soto is the reason I’m out of tickets,” said Fertitta, a 68-year-old Port St. Lucie resident who retired after 30 years as a maintenance worker for Martin County schools. “I always had tickets left in the past. It’s Soto. Once they signed Soto, the tickets just went.”

 SEMINAL SIGNING

In December, Soto, 26, was lured away from the New York Yankees by a 15-year, $765 million contract, the largest contract in sports history. The moment was not lost on Mets majority owner Steve Cohen, who since taking over the Mets in 2020 has spent freely as the team strives for its first World Series championship since 1986. “This is a seminal moment in franchise history,” Cohen said when Soto signed.

The Mets are celebrating their 64th year, marking their 38th season of holding spring training in Port St. Lucie. The signing of Soto changed the landscape of Major League Baseball, wrote Washington Post sportswriter Barry Svrluga in December. “Cohen will take a back seat to no one,” Svrluga wrote. “Any player he targets has to pick up his call. The Mets are a destination like they have never been.”

The Mets have had high expectations before because of offseason player signings, but they have not made the World Series since 2015, before Cohen’s ownership. There have been high-profile Mets signings before, including shortstop Francisco Lindor in 2021, starting pitcher Max Scherzer in 2022, and starting pitcher Justin Verlander in 2023. Of those three, only Lindor, who finished second in the NL’s most valuable player balloting last year, remains a Met. Soto was third in the American League MVP voting in 2024.

It was just a week before the opening of spring training that the team re-signed fan favorite Pete Alonso, 30, the all-star first baseman, to a two-year, $54 million contract. Since his rookie year with the Mets in 2019, Alonso has 226 home runs, second only in the Major Leagues to the 232 called by New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge.

 HIGH HOPES

Fertitta said that even without the Soto signing, the spring training New York Mets would be a big draw this year because of their exciting finish in 2024. The Mets rallied at the end of the season to squeak into the playoffs, then upset National League Central Division champ Milwaukee and the Philadelphia Phillies, the champs of the Mets’ East division, before bowing to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers.

Baseball Prospectus in the week of the opening of Mets spring training predicted the Mets would go 92 wins and 70 losses this season, one game behind the predicted finish for the Atlanta Braves in the National League’s eastern division. But that’s still the third-best predicted finish among all 30 major league teams, behind the Braves and the Los Angeles Dodgers at 104-58, who have stacked their team with a collection of All-Stars. The same website showed 2024’s NL East champions, the Philadelphia Phillies, 6.5 games behind the Mets.

Adam MacDonald, St. Lucie Mets spokesman, would not claim this spring training will set a record for attendance. But he did say, “We do expect this season to be one of our better turnouts.” Even before any of the New York Mets reported to Port St. Lucie, there were three sellouts on the spring training schedule: opening day Feb. 22 against the Houston Astros, March 13 versus the Boston Red Sox, and March 24 with the New York Yankees. More sellouts can be expected, said Rick Hatcher, president of Play Treasure Coast Sports Tourism.