The speculation around Juan Soto’s tenure with the New York Mets has reached all-time levels of absurdity.
Soto did have a bad series against his old team, the New York Yankees, over the weekend. It’s also fair to question his lack of hustle on a late-game ground ball to second base on Sunday night. But a lot of what has transpired since the final out has been either baseless speculation or outright fabrication.
Reporters and fans alike are wondering whether Soto regrets his decision to leave the Yankees for the Mets, and that can get into dicey territory when a reporter’s opinion is taken by others as fact. But the outright falsehoods about Soto having a private jet to fly separate from the team is clearly a bridge too far.
On Monday, WFAN hosts Boomer Esiason and Greg Giannotti falsely asserted that Soto has a private jet, appearing to mishear a clip from ESPN’s Karl Ravech on the ESPN telecast. They seemingly claimed Soto was flying separately from the team on charter flights paid for by the Mets for him and his family.
ESPN’s Jeff Passan firmly refuted those claims later on Monday in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
“To clear up what others have asserted: Juan Soto does not fly separately from his New York Mets teammates on a private jet,” Passan wrote. “He flies on the team plane. There is no private-jet provision in his contract for him or his family.”
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The efforts from many to paint Soto as a me-first player who regrets signing with the Mets for the money have been obvious, both before and after the series. But blatant lies do nothing but discrediting the parts that are possible truths.
Soto went 1-for-10 with four walks and three strikeouts in the weekend series, in which the Yankees took two out of three games. The two teams will meet again at Citi Field from Jul. 4-6.
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