August 2nd, 22, a date that will live in Infamy: Juan Soto traded to the Padres

[Count Walewski]

Hosmer to Nats fans: freak you, I don't want you either

[Expos]

MacKenzie Gore- Major leage ready lefty. 3rd overall pick in 2017. Good #2 starter

SS- CJ Abrams. Major league ready. 6th overall pick in 2019. Elite contact hitter and defender

CF- Robert Hassell. 8th overall pick in 2020. 21st best prospect in baseball. Best left handed hitter in the nation. Ready next year

OF- James Wood. 86th overall prospect in MLB. 6'7, 240 pound lefty power hitter

SP- Jardin Susana. 6'6, 235
The top-ranked pitcher in the 2021-22 international class. ETA- 2024/25

So a ML ready lefty and SS. Two top 100 prospects.
And Susana who has major upside for a guy who wanted 50 mil a year. Not bad I guess

[Mattionals]

I think I'll be even more pissed if Hosmer is removed and the package stays the same... that means the Nats braintrust actually wanted Hosmer and his anchor contract.

My hope is that Rizzo hardlined a group of players and Preller said, we will only do this if Hosmer is included. Rizzo comes back and says we won't budge on players, so if you add Hosmer we only pay this year's salary and if he won't waive his no trade then it's on you.

[Smithian]

I think I'll be even more pissed if Hosmer is removed and the package stays the same... that means the Nats braintrust actually wanted Hosmer and his anchor contract.

If them taking on Hosmer's money this year was the price for Wood or Susana, I get it. But that means no way this already limited package survives if Hosmer can't move.

[welch]

Jesse D's updated story:

The Washington Nationals have a deal in place to send Juan Soto to the San Diego Padres, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situation. Josh Bell is in the trade, too, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, who say the Nationals would receive a package that includes top young players in shortstop C.J. Abrams, left-handed pitcher MacKenzie Gore and outfielders Robert Hassell III and James Wood.

The trade would further decimate the Nationals’ major league roster, provide pieces for a potentially brighter future and give the Padres a World Series-caliber lineup built around Soto, Fernando Tatís Jr., Manny Machado and Bell.

As of 12:15 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, Soto had been notified that he was headed to San Diego, according to a person familiar with the team’s contact with the 23-year-old star. The Nationals had also called up first baseman Joey Meneses and Josh Palacios from the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings, which would be a way to fill Soto and Bell’s roster spots for a 7:05 p.m. matchup with the New York Mets. But around noon, with six hours until the deadline, the trade was not finalized because the two sides were still hammering out details.

What questions do you have about the MLB trade deadline? Ask The Post.

One is whether veteran first baseman Eric Hosmer will waive his no-trade clause and approve a deal to the Nationals. Washington is on Hosmer’s no-trade list, according to a person familiar with his contract terms, and the package could shift a bit if he does not consent to the move. Hosmer is owed $39 million over three years after this season. The Padres are trying to offload the rest of his contract to make room on their payroll for Soto, Bell and any other deadline additions. In recent days, they were in the mix for Soto along with the Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals. But by Tuesday morning, the Padres were a clear front-runner with Soto and Bell in play as a package deal.


First baseman Josh Bell also appears set to head to San Diego. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Bell will leave Washington after less than two seasons, a stretch highlighted by his career numbers in 2022. But Soto’s pending departure is the true gut punch for the franchise and its fans, coming a year and three days after the Nationals sent Trea Turner and Max Scherzer to the Dodgers. The Padres will soon visit Nationals Park for a three-game series that starts on Aug. 12.

Joey Meneses, long a major-leaguer-in-waiting, might finally get his shot

This ends Soto’s four-year run with the Nationals, the team that signed him as a teenager out of the Dominican Republic in 2015. Soto, still only 23, has packed that tenure with a World Series ring, a National League batting title, two Silver Slugger awards, two top-five finishes in MVP voting and a pair of all-star appearances. In July, he won the Home Run Derby at Dodger Stadium, adding to a résumé that should belong to a midcareer star, not someone who can’t rent a car without underage fees.

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Soto is just so decorated and so young, and he’s following the statistical tracks of all-time players such as Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Trout. Soto pairs power and contact ability with otherworldly plate discipline. That’s why he demanded such a large return from the Padres. Baseball writers once spent an offseason comparing him to Ted Williams, one of the best hitters ever.

But his steady dominance is what complicated his future in Washington. For a long while now, Soto has been set on reaching free agency after the 2024 season, the only way to see how the open market values him. Still, though, the Nationals made efforts to sign him to a long-term extension — a goal that became even more pressing after the club began its rebuild last summer, shipping out eight veterans for 12 unproven players.

First there was a $13-year, $350 million contract offer to Soto in November. After that, Washington upped the figures in May, then even more with 15 years and $440 million a month ago. Soto didn’t accept, feeling he is worth more than an average annual value of $29.3 million. On July 16, that offer — the largest in MLB history by total contract value — became public, was publicized along with the Nationals’ intentions to listen to trade offers for Soto before the deadline.


(Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Without an extension, and with Soto more valuable that he would be in trade talks over the winter, the front office was resigned to do what once seemed unthinkable. Deal Juan Soto? Deal the player with some of biggest hits in club history — the go-ahead single off Josh Hader in the NL wild-card game; the score-knotting homer off Clayton Kershaw in Game 5 of the NL Division Series; towering shots against Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander in the World Series — while his best years could be in front of him, not behind?


On July 1, in an interview on 106.7 the Fan, General Manager Mike Rizzo was asked about the possibility of trading Soto. He was defiant, saying the Nationals would not shop their best player, who was one of the few reasons to come to the ballpark. Then everything changed when 15 years and $440 million fell flat. Money often has that effect.

Soto’s journey didn’t start when he debuted at Nationals Park at 19. It didn’t start at the club’s academy in the Dominican Republic, where he would spend extra hours on Rosetta Stone to perfect his English. It didn’t start when the team first scouted him as a left-handed pitcher who could hit a bit.

For Soto, all of this began in a living room in Santo Domingo, his dad tossing him bottle caps that the small boy smacked against the walls. He wanted to be Manny Ramirez or Robinson Canó. In long days at the playground, he mimicked Canó’s uppercut swing, the other kids calling him “Little Robbie.” Baseball is tradition in their shared country. So, too, is dreaming of major league stardom.


Those dreams have taken Soto to Washington; to around America in a Nationals uniform; to the highs of the World Series and the depths of a rebuild. With this deal, they will take him to San Diego, where a new fan base will hang on every one of his at-bats. Soto has always been a blink-and-you-might-miss-it sort of player. Trading him, then, means D.C. will miss a lot.

This is a breaking news story and has been updated.

[Smithian]

MacKenzie Gore- Major leage ready lefty. 3rd overall pick in 2017. Good #2 starter

SS- CJ Abrams. Major league ready. 6th overall pick in 2019. Elite contact hitter and defender

CF- Robert Hassell. 8th overall pick in 2020. 21st best prospect in baseball. Best left handed hitter in the nation. Ready next year

OF- James Wood. 86th overall prospect in MLB. 6'7, 240 pound lefty power hitter

SP- Jardin Susana. 6'6, 235
The top-ranked pitcher in the 2021-22 international class. ETA- 2024/25

So a ML ready lefty and SS. Two top 100 prospects.
And Susana who has major upside for a guy who wanted 50 mil a year. Not bad I guess

But it was for Soto plus Josh Bell.

If that was the package for Soto alone, I wouldn't be mad. But throwing in the switching hitting 1B with a .900 OPS changes things.

[Slateman]

MacKenzie Gore- Major leage ready lefty. 3rd overall pick in 2017. Good #2 starter

SS- CJ Abrams. Major league ready. 6th overall pick in 2019. Elite contact hitter and defender

CF- Robert Hassell. 8th overall pick in 2020. 21st best prospect in baseball. Best left handed hitter in the nation. Ready next year

OF- James Wood. 86th overall prospect in MLB. 6'7, 240 pound lefty power hitter

SP- Jardin Susana. 6'6, 235
The top-ranked pitcher in the 2021-22 international class. ETA- 2024/25

So a ML ready lefty and SS. Two top 100 prospects.
And Susana who has major upside for a guy who wanted 50 mil a year. Not bad I guess

Gore is not a number 2 starter. He's a bust

[stoneghost28]

You're absolutely right there are some good piece. I'm high on CJ Abrams. Wood and Hassell are legit prospects. Jarlin Susana may be our second best pitching prospect. Gore, if the medicals are clean, may be our opening day starter next year. That is all good.

But it isn't enough for Soto. Plus Bell. Plus saving them from Hosmer. The Padres gave us their Corbin.

I agree which is why I added that to my post. If this was just for Soto, it wasn't a deal that blows me away, I'd need another top 5 prospect to be close to blown away, but it would have been reasonable. We basically got twice what we got for the Scherzer rental in terms of top prospects (4 versus 2), but my problem is, like you, they added Bell, who was supposed to give us somebodies top 5-8 prospect plus something in the top 30 or so AND we took on a huge salary, and what exactly did we get for any of that. Nada, which is insane to me. It feels to me like it's at least 3 top 30 prospects in the 10-30 short considering Bell and the bad contract, or at least 2 anyway.

This deal just looks like a Soto deal alone, but the Padres got extra. I can't help but wonder how much of are negotiating power was harmed by a sense that we had to sell amongst other teams?

Whatever, it's the current reality.

Now it feels like our farm system has a good and bad side, it's beginning to get a little top heavy w/some interesting prospects from the Padres and recent draftees, but it's also lacking in depth and quantity of prospects. I imagine this deal pushes us up from the 23rd to 26th zone to the 16th-20th zone.

I do like the ages in a way because I'd prefer to lose as little service time as possible. One of the problems with the Dodgers trade is the two best pieces were already MLB ready prospects and so we'd be wasting half of their pre-FA years to lost seasons in '21, '22, '23 and '24. Now I tend to think '25 is a likely lost cause season to but Im probably getting too far ahead of myself.

Regardless, I like the prospects we got back, 3 top 5 positional players from their system, including 2 that could be super elite, maybe all 3, in terms of prospect upside, plus the wild card Gore, whose probably useless unless we can get much better coaching in the system than the garbage we've got.

So we basically flushed everything of value out of the system the past two years, and acquired 5-6 (depending upon Gore's health and coming around) top 100 prospects, with all of them being top 50 caliber minus Gore due to the injuries if memory serves.

This team will be the worst in baseball in '22, probably in '23, and probably in '24.

So far we've gotten two very high upside guys for imploding in Brady House, and Elijah Green, though House's season has gone sideways in '22. The '21 class otherwise sounded like garbage, the '22 class seems a good chunk better, so hopefully '22 provides a good boost along w/the Padres assets.

We definitely need to clean house after this season, this wasn't a good enough haul, at least to me anyway, but I'm curious what the big boys think who aren't so invested, I trust them more than my own impressions and wouldn't be surprised if they looked at us peeling off a former top 5 overall prospect, plus 3 of their top 5 system guys, and viewing that as a reasonable haul, again, the major concern I have, like you, is that we did not get compensation for the throw ins (Bell and the Hosmer contract). That was and is b.s.

For the bitter fans in here, I hope you can become a fan of the USMNT and follow the kiddies as they begin their seasons.
Adams and Aaronson with Leeds
Pulisic with Chelsea
McKennie with Juventus
Musah with Valencia
Weah with Lille
Dest with Barcelona
Reyna with Dortmund
and so many more, they are exciting, it's the best collection of young talent by far in American history and if you're open to it, catching what they do in the EPL, Bundesliga, La Liga, Serie A, and Ligue 1 and beyond. World Cup coming in November etc.

But regardless of that touch of marketing, for the bitter fans, this is basically, to me anyway, 2007 redux. A system bereft of talent, a big league club w/o pitching or hitting, it's rock bottom and because the farm is ---- too other than the '22 class, a couple of guys from the '15-'21 botched classes, and the Dodgers and Padres hauls, it's nearly impossible to believe that anything positive is likely to happen between 2022 and 2024 completed seasons other than watching prospect development and hopefully a ton of firings, and PRAYING that we don't go from mediocre to WORSE in terms of ownership (it's possible, none of us had a clue Snyder would be the monster he became when he was trying to buy, but the warning signs started that first summer, same with Leonsis, except with incompetence). Bad ownership is an anchor no team can overcome, so even w/these hauls, who actually buys is more important than the hauls themselves, if we get a bottom 5 caliber idiot owner, it will submarine even the miniscule hope we have as of now.

[Smithian]

Gore is not a number 2 starter. He's a bust

He's a 23 year old rookie. Let's calm down on the bust talk.

[Natsinpwc]

But it was for Soto plus Josh Bell.

If that was the package for Soto alone, I wouldn't be mad. But throwing in the switching hitting 1B with a .900 OPS changes things.

Sure but obviously they were not getting that package without Bell.  In the end the Nats boxed themselves in.

[machpost]

Hosmer to Nats fans: freak you, I don't want you either

It would be somewhat gratifying to see him have to suffer through losing maybe 120 games/year for a few seasons in front of an empty stadium.

[imref]

this is crazy - the three main players involved in our come-from-behind wildcard win are all with the Padres now - https://twitter.com/YankeeWRLD/status/1554501079458631680?s=20&t=q5optxCLrRsgHeUIfzZGIQ

[Smithian]

Sure but obviously they were not getting that package without Bell.  In the end the Nats boxed themselves in.

If this was best offer, I think they should have got what they could have for Bell and sat around to the offseason.

[HalfSmokes]

Why on earth would a major leaguer waive a no trade close to leave off a team in contention and go to a tanking team?

[nfotiu]

If this was best offer, I think they should have got what they could have for Bell and sat around to the offseason.

Why would it be better in the offseason?   If a team wants in then, they'd want in now as well, I'd think?

[Kevrock]

Talknats projects our top prospects:
1. Robert Hassell
2. Cade Cavalli
3. James Wood
4. Brady House
5. Cristhian Vaquero
6. Elijah Green
7. Jeremy De La Rosa
8. Cole Henry
9. Armando Cruz
10. Jarlin Susana
11. Andry Lara
12. Mitchell Parker
13. Matt Cronin
14. Jackson Rutledge
15. T.J. White

They way underrate Green.

[Slateman]

Understand, Im not upset about trading Soto. I was resigned to him being gone. But this deal is utter crap. It screams busts.

Your telling me that you couldnt convince the Mariners to add Kelnic to what they gave up to get Castillo?

[Kevrock]

Gore is not a number 2 starter. He's a bust

This is an awful take.

[Slateman]

They way underrate Green.

Your underrating. He's Robery Hassell two years ago

[Smithian]

Why would it be better in the offseason?   If a team wants in then, they'd want in now as well, I'd think?

Judge leaves Yankees maybe opens them up. Possibly a team like the Mariners decides to go all in. Red Sox could get interested. Dodgers may make another run.

This wasn't a can't miss package. I would have taken the risk to hold.

If no Hosmer means the return is at all reduced, this package is just inexcusably bad. It's so bad I'd riot if I was a Cardinals fan that they didn't beat it.

[Kevrock]

Understand, Im not upset about trading Soto. I was resigned to him being gone. But this deal is utter crap. It screams busts.

Your telling me that you couldnt convince the Mariners to add Kelnic to what they gave up to get Castillo?

Kelnic? Kelnic being included was probably the hang up with the deal because no one knows what to make of him at this point.

[Kevrock]

Judge leaves Yankees maybe opens them up.

Nats didn’t like Volpe. At that point, Yankees aren’t a realistic partner.

[hotshot]

MacKenzie Gore- Major leage ready lefty. 3rd overall pick in 2017. Good #2 starter

SS- CJ Abrams. Major league ready. 6th overall pick in 2019. Elite contact hitter and defender

CF- Robert Hassell. 8th overall pick in 2020. 21st best prospect in baseball. Best left handed hitter in the nation. Ready next year

OF- James Wood. 86th overall prospect in MLB. 6'7, 240 pound lefty power hitter

SP- Jardin Susana. 6'6, 235
The top-ranked pitcher in the 2021-22 international class. ETA- 2024/25

So a ML ready lefty and SS. Two top 100 prospects.
And Susana who has major upside for a guy who wanted 50 mil a year. Not bad I guess

If Gore turns into a healthy #1 starter and Abrams is the second coming of Trea Turner I'll revise my current thoughts.

[MorseTheHorse]

Wow, what a fall off since 2019.  Sad.  (This still may be the right move, impossible to say)

[Slateman]

This is an awful take.

Dude, he is a freaking bust. He's literally on the IL for an elbow injury. Which is after he complete revamped his delivery. Which he revamped because he was always getting injured.  Strasburg was a healthier prospect.

And even when he was healthy this year, he was getting lucky.