How much would Juan Soto impact Mets, Yankees and other suitors?

The chase against Juan Soto appears to be nearing its end. As the biggest domino of the offseason shakes, it’s a good time to illustrate what’s at stake when it falls.

From a pure baseball perspective, Soto’s impending decision should draw interest from all 30 teams. Newsflash: Soto is really good. Plus, he’s only 26 years old, and the team that signs him should be able to watch him continue to build on his Hall of Fame career over the next decade or more.

That makes one interpretation of his impact obvious: If you sign Soto, he makes you better. If you don’t do that, you won’t be as good as you would be if you had.

We know that Soto will make any team that signs him about five wins better, all else being equal. This number varies somewhat, but this is a good miniature number – the difference between Soto and the player his acquisition would push down the depth chart.

However, not every team can afford to pursue him, and the competitive context is different for every team that can. That’s what we want to focus on today – the competitive context. These five wins are more important and in different ways depending on which contender they are.

So let’s talk about some of these applicants. The rumor mill has given us five leading options – teams that are believed to have already forwarded offers to Soto and super agent Scott Boras. These are the Yankees, Mets, Dodgers, Red Sox and Blue Jays.

To this quintet we will add three teams:

• The Phillies, just because you never know when Dave Dombrowski will step in.

• The Giants, because they are typical of teams that arguably should be more aggressive in the Soto market (and others) but haven’t shown much sign of that happening yet.

• The Royals, who were briefly linked to Soto early in the trial because they had reportedly called about him. But the Royals are the typical type of mid-tier team in a not-big-market that could reap an outsized gain from such a bounce. That won’t happen, but it’s vivid to see the impact a player of Soto’s value could have on clubs.