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NEW YORK (AP) — Juan Soto appears on a timetable to decide on where to sign either before or during baseball's winter meetings in Dallas, which run from Dec. 8-12. Soto met with the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays, a person familiar with the negotiations said last week, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because details were not announced. Soto's agent, Scott Boras, asked teams to submit initial offers by Thanksgiving, a second person familiar with the talks said, also on condition of anonymity because it was not announced. Soto is the top player available among this year's free agents . A four-time All-Star, Soto finished third in AL MVP voting after hitting .288 with 41 homers, 109 RBIs and 129 walks. He has a .285 career average with 201 homers, 592 RBIs and 769 walks over seven major league seasons. Soto turned down a $440 million, 15-year offer from Washington in 2022, prompting the Nationals to trade him to San Diego, which then dealt him to the Yankees last December. Soto then combined with Aaron Judge to lead New York to the World Series, where the Yankees lost to the Dodgers . In his pitch to teams, Boras highlighted that Soto joined Mickey Mantle as the only players with seven RBIs in a World Series at age 21 or younger when he was with Washington, and at 20 became the youngest player with five postseason homers. Soto's .906 postseason OPS through age 25 topped Mantle (.900) and Derek Jeter (.852). Soto is likely to seek a record contract, topping Shohei Ohtani's $700 million, 10-year agreement with the Los Angeles Dodgers last December. That might not mean Soto gets more than $700 million, though. Because Ohtani's deal included $680 million in deferred money payable through 2043, it can be valued by different methods. For instance, Ohtani's contract is valued at $46.1 million per season ($461 million total) under MLB's luxury tax system, which used a 4.43% discount rate. The players' association uses a 5% rate, which puts Ohtani's contract at $43.8 million per year. For MLB's regular payroll calculations, a 10% discount rates values Ohtani's deal at just $28.2 million. Which means if Soto gets even $462 million without deferred payments, there's an argument that his deal is the most valuable in MLB history. By average annual value, pitchers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander are tied for second in baseball history at $43.33 million as part of contracts they signed with the New York Mets, deals that expired at the end of the 2024 season. In terms of total value, Ohtani surpassed outfielder Mike Trout’s $426.5 million, 12-year contract with the Los Angeles Angels through 2030. MLB’s longest contract is outfielder Fernando Tatis Jr.’s 14-year deal with the San Diego Padres through 2034. The Mets, Yankees, Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies all are likely to enter 2025 having paid luxury tax for three straight years, putting them at the highest rate: a 50% surcharge on payroll between $241 million and $261 million, 62% from $261 million to $281 million, 95% from $281 million to $301 million and 110% for each dollar above $301 million. Toronto may have dropped below the initial tax threshold this year, pending final figures next month. If the Blue Jays did fall under, their rates next year would reset to 20%, 32%, 62.5% and 80% for the four thresholds. If Soto reaches or announces an agreement at the winter meetings in Dallas' Hilton Anatole, it would be a familiar location for a big Boras deal. Alex Rodriguez's record $252 million, 10-year contract with the Texas Rangers was announced in December 2000 at what then was called the Wyndham Anatole Hotel. A-Rod's deal more than doubled MLB's previous high, a $121 million, eight-year contract between pitcher Mike Hampton and Colorado that was announced just two days earlier. “In two days, we’ve doubled a new highest salary,′′ said Sandy Alderson, then an executive vice president in the commissioner’s office. ”I don’t like the exponentiality of that." Rodriguez was 25 at the time of the agreement with Texas, a free agent before entering his likely prime, like Soto. Third baseman Alex Bregman, first basemen Pete Alonso and Christian Walker, and outfielders Anthony Santander and Teoscar Hernández are among the significant bats available to pursue and likely would interest some of the teams who fail to sign Soto. Bregman and Alonso, like Soto, are represented by Boras. AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB
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Insurgents reach gates of Syria’s capital, threatening to upend decades of Assad ruleNvidia has become one of the world's most valuable companies thanks to strong demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) server chips from big tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. However, one tech giant that is not a major Nvidia customer is Apple, and a new report attempts to explain why this might be. The Information 's Wayne Ma today outlined Apple's historically "bumpy relationship" with Nvidia, but much of the bad blood dates to the 2000s and early 2010s, when Steve Jobs was still CEO and Macs used Nvidia graphics. It is unclear how much these past issues matter today, if at all, and the report acknowledges that Apple's current relationship with Nvidia "isn't entirely acrimonious." Two examples of the companies getting along include Apple's recent collaboration with Nvidia on machine learning research , and Nvidia showcasing the Apple Vision Pro when it announced a new software framework earlier this year. Apple has mostly rented access to Nvidia GPUs through the cloud from companies like Amazon and Microsoft, and it is reportedly developing its own AI server chip as a longer-term solution, but neither of those things prove that Apple still has an "allergy" to Nvidia as the report states. As has been the case for more than a decade, and even more so in recent years, Apple simply wants to develop as many in-house chips and technologies as possible for many reasons, including lower production costs, improved integration between hardware and software, and reduced reliance on external suppliers. So, this seems less about Apple avoiding Nvidia in particular, and more about Apple owning the whole widget in general. This trend has been playing out for many years now. In addition to Apple long designing its own iPhone chips, the company started releasing its own Mac chips in 2020, in a transition away from Intel. Apple's long-rumored 5G modem is expected to begin rolling out in iPhones next year, in a move away from its current supplier Qualcomm. Apple is also reportedly developing its own Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip , a move that will impact Broadcom. So while Steve Jobs may have once pretended an Nvidia executive was no longer in the room during a meeting, as the report states, it seems most likely that Apple simply has no need to directly purchase GPUs from Nvidia. Apple is clearly fine with renting access to the GPUs from cloud providers until its in-house chip is ready. The report is nevertheless an interesting read, and it reinforces how Jobs was very good at holding a grudge when he was unhappy with a situation.President Joe Biden vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have created new judgeships during future presidential administrations Monday night, barring President-elect Donald Trump the opportunity to appoint a maximum of 22 new federal district court judges during his second term. Biden cited House GOP leadership’s decision to delay taking up the legislation until after the election and concerns regarding the motivations behind Republican lawmakers’ support for the bill as his rationale for opposing an expansion of the country’s federal judicial branch, according to a veto statement published on Monday. “S. 4199 would create new judgeships in States where Senators have sought to hold open existing judicial vacancies,” Biden wrote in a statement. “Those efforts to hold open vacancies suggest that concerns about judicial economy and caseload are not the true motivating force behind passage of this bill now.” (RELATED: John Kennedy Says Questioning Biden Judicial Nominees Is ‘Better Than Sex’) Republican Indiana Sen. Todd Young, the primary sponsor of the Judicial Understaffing Delays Getting Emergencies Solved (JUDGES) Act of 2024, torched the Biden administration’s veto announcement in a thread on X on Monday night. “This decision is just another example of why Americans are counting down the days until President Biden leaves the White House,” Young wrote on X. “Issuing this veto is partisan politics at its worst. The JUDGES Act is a fair bill with strong bipartisan support that would have created 66 judgeships over three presidential terms to address our judicial backlog.” This decision is just another example of why Americans are counting down the days until President Biden leaves the White House. https://t.co/6J3iRfaMb3 — Senator Todd Young (@SenToddYoung) December 24, 2024 “The President is more enthusiastic about using his office to provide relief to his family members who received due process than he is about giving relief to the millions of regular Americans who are waiting years for their due process,” Young added. “Biden’s legacy will be ‘pardons for me, no justice for thee.’” The JUDGES Act of 2024 garnered widespread bipartisan support with both Republican and Democratic lawmakers recognizing the need to authorize new federal district court judgeships to aid overworked judges struggling to keep up with population growth and an increasing number of case filings in certain regions across the country. The bill would have allowed Trump to nominate up to 22 new federal district court judges during the next four years and allow for a series of 10 to 11 new judges to be appointed by succeeding presidents every two years until 2035, according to a summary of the legislation from Young. The last time Congress updated the number of federal district court judgeships was 1990. The bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent in August and won the support of 29 Democratic lawmakers in the House following Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s decision to take up the legislation on Dec. 12. Notable Biden allies, including Democratic Delaware Sen. Chris Coons and Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer, voiced support for the legislation earlier this year. Coons, an original co-sponsor of the federal judicial branch expansion legislation with Young, lamented Biden’s decision to veto the bill on Monday night. (RELATED: Dem Sen Who Said Biden ‘On Top Of His Game’ In 2024 Deflects And Defends When Fox News Host Presses Him To ‘Reflect’) “ I understand that the president’s view is that to pass it this late in the session and hand the next president 22 judges to confirm is something he doesn’t support,” Coons told POLITICO. “If we could change the date by four years, I know — he told me — if we could change the date, he’d sign it tomorrow.” Coons previously touted the bill’s unanimous passage out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in June. “I’m delighted that the Senate Judiciary Committee has gotten serious about the crisis facing overworked judges across the country today by taking up and advancing my bipartisan JUDGES Act to the Senate floor,” said Coons. “For too long, Congress has failed to add new federal judgeships to keep pace with the rising caseloads around the country, and our nation’s federal courts – especially in Delaware, where there are only four active judgeships – have paid the price.” More than 300 federal judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican administrations called for the passage of the JUDGES Act, according to an op-ed Young wrote for the Washington Post on Dec. 12 advocating for Biden to sign the bill into law following the president’s veto warning . “Biden once again has the opportunity to join Congress in resolving a judicial crisis by signing into law the Judges Act: bipartisan legislation I introduced to increase the number of federal district court judges in the most overworked regions of the country,” Young wrote in the op-ed. “ Hundreds of thousands of Americans are forced to wait years for their federal cases to be heard. Many litigants feel their only option is to settle cases for suboptimal outcomes to provide some certainty. Our justice system is collapsing under the weight of caseloads: Overworked judges are retiring, and the staggering burden discourages high-quality candidates from pursuing the federal judiciary.” GOP lawmakers will likely try to pass similar legislation in the next Congress with Trump in the Oval Office and Republican majorities in the House and Senate. On Friday, Biden celebrated the Senate confirming 235 federal judges during his presidency. It marks the largest number of federal judge confirmations secured during a single presidential term since the 1980s, according to Biden’s statement. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org .
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