Hour 2: Soto and Lindor

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This is The Michael Kay Show podcast.

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Listen live weekdays at one on the Espn New York app and your smart speaker.

**Michael Kay** (0:41)
Welcome back to the show everybody. It's The Michael Kay Show, two hours every day from one to three. We thank you for joining us. You can watch us on the Espn New York YouTube channel, and it's brought to you by our good friends at The Parisman Firm. Now, I saw a couple of people on social media. They love that The Parisman Firm is sponsoring the YouTube channel, but they are shocked that Parisman is actually spelled P-E-R-E-C-M-A-N.
They thought it wouldn't be spelled that way. So that's a value of advertising everybody. Not only do they get their name out there, but because it's actually on the YouTube screen, to my left and to my right as you're watching right now, you could see, Parisman is spelled P-E-R-E-C-M-A-N.
We all know how to spell Espn. It's right there, Espn. So you could listen to us on the Espn New York app and the Espn YouTube channel as we mentioned and 880 Espn New York. So a lot of ways that you can consume us, whichever way you do, we certainly thank you for that. Let's talk a little Mets. We never got a chance to really hit on it yesterday. So Steve Cohen, in his interview with Joel Sherman and John Heyman, said that the Lindor-Soto problems of last year have been taken care of and they're not an issue anymore. Okay. Now at the time, I said that was a little problematic for him to say because there had never been any confirmation that there were problems last year, just rumors that nobody substantiated. And I said that it was also going to lead to those two gentlemen being asked about it. And when they were asked about it, they kind of threw their multi-billionaire owner under the bus and said, there were no issues last year at all. So who's lying and who's telling the truth? And then Soto had a very strange comment when he said, it's not like you meet a girl and you start kissing her right away. Well, sometimes you do.
Sometimes you do, Juan. So you have to give it time. So they both said there were no issues at all and there's no issues this year. But there are other angles to that story that there seem like there are issues. Why was Soto's locker moved to the other side of the room, where Lindor is not in his sight? And Lindor said that he likes Soto a lot. He admired him from afar. But there's also the story that he's the one player that didn't reach out when Soto signed the deal with the Mets. Why not? Is that true? I mean, there's so many unanswered questions to that. But both of these guys are kind of obfuscating. And now the question is, should they be broken up? Now they say that there's no issue at all. But there's obviously an issue or was an issue because the owner said it. Now they're denying it. Also they're on separate sides of the room, which would tell you that there might be an issue.
There's nobody on the offensive side of the New York Yankees that is not inside of Aaron Judge.
And the pitcher's kind of on the same corner and things like that. Stanton's right next to Judge, who's next to Belange, who's next to Goldschmidt, who's next to McMahon, who's next to...
On and on. I don't want to go down every part of the aisle. But Austin Wells, whatever the case may be, they're all within striking distance of each other. But Soto and Lindor are on different sides of the room. So to me, that says a little something because they used to be on the same side of the room, kind of catty corner from each other. So if you're the Mets, do you try to break them up? I don't mean patch them up because they say there's no issue, but it looks like there might be. So a lot of people are saying, well, you have to trade Lindor. Well, here's the one problem. I don't think either of them are easily tradeable. Like if you offered Soto back to the Yankees now, I don't know if they would take them. They certainly wouldn't give them the suite and the clothing for the mom or stuff like that because that was an issue before. And they'd want the Mets to eat part of the salary. Now, I think the Mets actually thought that this was a five-year deal, that Soto was going to become a free agent again when he was 31 because he's going to opt out. And the Mets could not give him the $5 million raise for the next 10 years. But now they're between the rock and the hard place because if there is a cap, he's not opting out. He's not getting that money any or else. And if there's a cap, then they've got to pay him another $50 million over the length of the contract, $5 million more for the last 10 years each year. So I don't know if he's tradable. And they both have no trade clauses. But if in fact Lindor is miserable, and I'm not saying he is, his nickname is Mr. Smiles, I think of the two, the guy that you could probably move is the guy that has five years left on his deal rather than the guy who has 13 years left on his deal.