Juan Soto’s possible trade market

Juan Soto is one of the best hitters in baseball, and at just 20 years old, we compared him to the greatest hitters of all time. It seems unlikely that he would be available in a trade this winter. However, you also wouldn’t expect that he would have been traded already, and yet at the 2022 Trade Deadline, the Nationals managed to send him to the Padres. Thus, it is indeed feasible. It’s possibly even likely.

The possibility that it could occur once more speaks more about the Padres’ current situation than it does about Soto. Given that Blake Snell, Seth Lugo, Josh Hader, Michael Wacha, and Nick Martinez are all free agents and that the team chairman Peter Seidler has passed away, San Diego will need to replace hundreds of innings.

Phillips on rumors, Soto, more

That does not imply that the Padres cannot or will not be successful in 2024. If you don’t plan to compete, you definitely don’t have a roster with players like Fernando Tatis Jr., Xander Bogaerts, Yu Darvish, Ha-Seong Kim, Joe Musgrove, and Manny Machado. Instead of moving Soto at the Trade Deadline, they can decide to simply keep him. However, as the days go by, more and more rumors seem to be circulating regarding a possible Soto deal occurring shortly.

What might that even look like, if it does? And where might the appropriate places be?

Should the Padres trade Soto?

1) He really is that great

Recall that all of the “he’s Ted Williams” comparisons that were made between 2019 and 20 have, for the most part, held up. With the vast changes in the sport between then and now, it’s kind of meaningless whether he’s exactly Ted. Williams served in the US military, which prevented him from playing in his age-24 and age-26 seasons. In addition, he played against teams with segregated rosters and against starting pitchers who would frequently pitch four times through their innings. He only met seven opponents in the four decades that he played. Basically, it’s a different sport.)

Nevertheless, Soto’s performance up until the age of 24 is still essentially unmatched. We could (and have) spend hundreds of words discussing that topic, but for the time being, let’s condense it into a single leaderboard. If we limit our analysis to the post-war era’s best hitting performance (as measured by OPS+) to the age of 24, with at least 1,500 plate appearances,

Juan Soto trade talks heating up

Best OPS+ since 1945, through age-24

• 177 // Frank Thomas

• 170 // Mike Trout

• 167 // Albert Pujols

• 166 // Mickey Mantle

• 161 // Dick Allen

• 157 // Soto

• 155 // Eddie Mathews

• 153 // Willie Mays

• 149 // Ken Griffey, Jr.

• 148 // Reggie Jackson

The names are simply astounding. The Hall of Famers are Griffey Jr., Jackson, Mantle, Mathews, Mays, and Thomas. There will be Trout and Pujols. Allen ought to be. It is nearly hard to have a career filled with greatness at such an early start, barring a major injury. (In the event that we go back to 1920, when Williams wins, Soto still ranks 10th in AL/NL history.)

The Padres anticipated three postseason pushes from him, which is part of the reason they traded for him. But now, his one-year window for free agency is closing. With just one year remaining, how often does a player this good get traded?

Soto’s offseason trade value

2) Finding similar trades isn’t exactly easy

You won’t be shocked to hear that a player like this doesn’t get dealt very often. It’s difficult to find hitters that are comparable to Soto, and it’s much more difficult to find players who have actually been traded. However, some do exist.

Sorry, Cliff Lee and Johan Santana, but we’re just going to be looking at hitters. The deals that were made in the final year for Andrew McCutchen, Paul Goldschmidt, and Griffey Jr. are almost exactly perfect in terms of direction, so we have to limit it to players who are very close in age.

38 hitters have had at least three seasons of five or more WAR through the age of 27 since 1995. Naturally, Soto is younger than 2023 rookies like Josh Jung and Yainer Diaz; he turned 25 in October, not 27. However, it will do as a great player is hardly elderly at 27, and we’re trying to broaden our search to locate enough names.

The majority of the other 37 players were never traded or were only traded at the end of their careers. (Pre-stardom trades are not included, such as the trade of Anthony Rizzo by the Padres following a single, unimpressive age-21 season.) Since Alex Rodriguez and Giancarlo Stanton, both to the Yankees, were dealt in the middle of large contracts with many years left on them, they don’t really apply here.

Three more don’t apply the other way around since Miguel Cabrera had three seasons remaining when he was traded from the Marlins to the Tigers before of his own age-25 season, and Scott Rolen, Carlos Beltrán, and Machado were all dealt in the middle of their walk seasons, not before.

That means that in the roughly thirty years since the start of the Wild Card era, there have only been three comparables in terms of age, star-level seasons, and the remaining year before free agency.

• Jason Heyward // traded from Braves to Cardinals ahead of his age-25 season in 2015 with Jordan Walden for Shelby Miller and Tyrell Jenkins

• Mookie Betts // traded from Red Sox to Dodgers ahead of his age-27 season in 2020 with David Price and cash for Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs and Connor Wong

• Francisco Lindor // traded from Guardians to Mets ahead of his age-27 season in 2021 with Carlos Carrasco for Andrés Giménez, Amed Rosario and two prospects

Heyward subsequently signed with the Cubs, while Betts and Lindor each ended up signing extensions to stay with their new clubs.

It happens, is the point. But it’s rare. This is what it looks like.

Juan Soto’s two-run single

3) Who are the best fits?

From a baseball point of view, all 30 teams would benefit with Soto in their lineup, but of course many won’t be in the conversation due to reasons of payroll, timeline to contention or ability to send enough back to San Diego. It’s possible that a team trading for Soto could sign him to an extension before he reaches free agency at the end of next season, yet they also have to prepare for the very real possibility that they’re trading for just one season.

With apologies to the Dodgers, Braves, Mariners, Red Sox and others, the five top fits in our view are …

5) Mets

The Mets will be on any free agent’s list because of their willingness to spend and their desire to forget about the bad taste of the 2023 campaign. They lack a left fielder, have a small lineup, and could easily afford to extend him straight away, so the baseball fit seems evident. On the other hand, pitching is even more of a concern than hitting. In addition, they have to handle their own star problem because Pete Alonso, who becomes a free agent at the same time as Soto, is the subject of trade rumors.

4) Cubs

The Cubs have holes to fill and some newly discovered payroll space to fill them after Cody Bellinger and Marcus Stroman each choose to enter free agency this winter; it’s no coincidence that they keep coming up in Shohei Ohtani rumors. San Diego could meet its needs with a farm system that is stronger than it has been in a long time, but if they don’t keep Bellinger, they absolutely, positively have to find a top-tier bat to take his place, which would be a major ask in an extremely competitive free-agent position-player market. It’s possible that they are forced to turn to trading.

3) Giants

The celebrity has changed, but the plot remains the same. By now, everyone is aware that the Giants attempted to sign Aaron Judge and Carlos Correa last season but were unsuccessful in doing so. It is obvious that the roster lacks slugging and is a little boring.No team would gain more from acquiring Ohtani because to his combination of on-field ability and off-field appeal. The Giants’ current roster isn’t competitive enough in 2024 to make it worthwhile to make the effort to acquire Soto for a single season, which is the only reason this fit isn’t perfect, but it might not be enough to quell their curiosity.

Padres’ longest homers of 2023

2) Blue Jays

 Perhaps. Toronto lacks a left fielder and a designated hitter, thus they need to cover at least three positions in the lineup. They are mentioned frequently in Ohtani speculations, much like the Cubs and Giants.They already have a club that appears to be a major contender in 2024, unlike the Cubs and Giants, thanks to their strong rotation and youthful core of position players. This would make it more acceptable if they ended up keeping Soto for just one season. Consider a lineup that included “George Springer, Bo Bichette, Soto, and Vladimir Guerrero, Jr.” as the top four players.

1) Yankees

Five seasons ago, the Yankees were thought to be among the favorites to acquire a very skilled, young, left-handed hitter who had grown up idolizing a Yankee and had made his major league debut with the Nationals at the age of 19. To the dismay of Yankees supporters, they declined to sign Bryce Harper, who desired to emulate Mickey Mantle, and he went on to become a star with the Phillies. This time, they have the opportunity to correct that mistake by including Soto, who grew up seeing Robinson Canó’s glory days in pinstripes.

Although Soto is a skilled all-field hitter, Yankee Stadium is designed for lefties, but it is overdone. The Yankees’ 2023 team had the third-worst lefty hitting in the league, so the fit here is more about squad needs than park preference. It’s not merely that the team needs improvement (which it does) or that the organization needs revitalization (which it does). The reason is that they can afford to sign him for a long term, and if they do—especially considering his age—we’ll be talking about the next big thing in a dozen years or so, who grew up watching Soto become a Yankees legend.