Mandatory Credit: Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images

Juan Soto Returns to Yankee Stadium as a Met

Juan Soto's Bronx homecoming...

Mandatory Credit: Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images

As Juan Soto returns to the Bronx, an unlikely chant might await him. The New York Yankees gave up five players for Juan Soto. The throw-in might be their salvation.

The Bronx will be seething Friday night, filled with the kind of vituperation only New York fans can summon. Juan Soto is coming back to Yankee Stadium, and he’ll be wearing the wrong uniform. It’s been barely five months since Soto declined to re-sign with the Yankees and instead took Steve Cohen’s $765 million to cross town and join the Mets. Five months isn’t nearly enough time for the wounds to heal.

We don't need to boo Juan Soto at Yankee Stadium, just chant “we have Grisham” pic.twitter.com/yKF4FSpOfX
— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) May 13, 2025

This is New York. They don’t forget, and they sure as hell don’t forgive. “I don’t mind,” Soto said Wednesday, standing at his locker after the Mets’ 4-0 loss to the Pirates.

He’s been preparing himself for months, saying multiple times since spring training that Yankees fans can “surprise you with anything” and that he was “expecting the worst.” The smile never left his face when he said it.

Juan Soto keeps the home run party going at Citi Field! 🍎 pic.twitter.com/SH0bstikWp
— MLB (@MLB) May 10, 2025

What Soto probably isn’t expecting is a counterintuitive chant that might just echo through the concrete corridors of Yankee Stadium: “WE HAVE GRISHAM!”

Yankee Stadium: Boo Juan Soto or Scream ‘We Have Grisham’?

Yes, Trent Grisham. The defensive specialist who was essentially a throw-in when the Padres shipped Soto to New York in December 2023, along with Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito, Randy Vásquez, and Kyle Higashioka going the other way. The afterthought in a blockbuster trade built around a generational talent.

ALSO READ: Juan Soto Admits He Was Protected by the ‘Best Hitter in Baseball’ With Yankees

And yet here we are, witnessing one of baseball’s delicious plot twists. While Soto has started somewhat sluggishly in Queens (.255 batting average, 8 homers, 20 RBIs, .845 OPS), Grisham has thrived in the Bronx, hitting .283 with 12 homers, 22 RBIs and a .995 OPS.

Is Trent Grisham Juan Soto? Of course not. The suggestion itself is absurd. Soto is a four-time All-Star who hasn’t even turned 27 yet, a hitting savant who helped carry the Yankees to a World Series appearance with 41 homers and a .988 OPS last season. But baseball is strange and unpredictable, and right now, Grisham is making Soto’s departure sting a little less than anyone could have possibly imagined.

ALSO READ: 2026 WBC Just Got a Lot Bigger, Juan Soto Is In

The Yankees have long attracted mercenaries who arrive, perform, and depart for greener pastures. But Soto represented something different, a young superstar who seemed to embrace the pinstripes, the pressure, the entire New York experience. He wasn’t just good; he was transcendent, the perfect Yankee slugger for the modern era. Until he wasn’t.

He chose Queens over the Bronx. He chose Cohen’s billions over Yankee tradition. And on Friday night, he’ll face the consequences of that choice in the form of 47,000 scorned lovers disguised as baseball fans. And now, something that would have seemed unfathomable six months ago awaits: a Subway Series where Trent Grisham might just be the more productive former Padre in New York.

Baseball, man. You just never know.

Juan Soto

Mets

Yankees

Mohsin Baldiwala

mlb

Mohsin Baldiwala is a Master’s student in Journalism and freelance content producer who got hooked on baseball through Seinfeld’s hapless George Costanza. The same reason why he’s a Yankees fan. He writes about sports because he believes it can offer a brief escape from the world’s chaos. Even if that means enduring the heartbreak of the 2024 World Series.