Why Juan Soto's contract with the Mets might not herald the start of a 'Superteam Era

The ink on Juan Soto's record-setting 15-year contract with the New York Mets has dried, less than two months after a Yankees-Dodgers World Series set off a ratings bonanza. It's a bad time to be a small-market team.

FS1's Colin Cowherd recently posited that MLB was about to enter a "Superteam era" that could be a blessing for the sport.

“Baseball is going to go through a really good decade,” Cowherd said on his podcast. “The gap between the haves and the have-nots … has gotten wider, and it’s actually helped baseball.”

Cowherd isn't wrong to point out that having a handful of big-market behemoths to generate fan interest — love 'em or hate 'em — can boost a league's popularity. Having a star like Soto play for the Mets, another on the New York Yankees (Aaron Judge), and another on the Los Angeles Dodgers (Shohei Ohtani) couldn't be scripted much better by the MLB marketing department.

Still, we have to resist the temptation to treat MLB like the NBA when drawing a straight line from the offseason to the postseason.

A so-called "superteam" can't emerge from a handful of high-profile free agent signings. The crux of a dynasty begins with the last 20 players on a team's active roster, not the first six. The first six might sell tickets. The other 20 win championships.

That's a pithy way of pointing out that while the Dodgers' All-Star first baseman Freddie Freeman might have been the MVP of the World Series, their unheralded utilityman Tommy Edman was the MVP of the National League Championship Series. They staved off elimination in the NL Division Series against the San Diego Padres not with a heroic starting pitching performance, but a bullpen game.

String a few of those unlikely performances together, and you have a baseball dynasty. Soto and Judge can only hope the rest of their teams' rosters are good enough for the next decade to compete for championships every year. Otherwise, no one will mistake the Mets and Yankees for "superteams."

Why Juan Soto's contract with the Mets might not herald the start of a 'Superteam Era'

By J.P. Hoornstra | 9:20 PM EST