"Never trade a young superstar"
Yes? no?
What this doesn't mean is "Even if a guy is not going to sign with you, you should not trade a young superstar". That doesn't make any sense. Assuming you aren't currently in contention (... checks standings... nope) then you are better off dealing and having something than nothing in the post young superstar time frame.
What this does mean is "There shouldn't be a functional amount of money that keeps you from re-signing a young superstar". Money should be no object. You should be the highest bidder. And hell, if you are so sure of re-signing the player that you think you can do it with no advantage in straight up FA, it probably makes sense to deal him a few months before the end of the deal. (Two + Years though - I think you are pushing it in terms of giving the receiving team and advantage and losing whatever connection you may have with him)
For Soto the question is do you believe the Nats would be the highest bidder? Do you believe they would let money be no object? If your answer is no then you are faced with two truths :
1) The Nats should trade Soto
2) Whoever owns the Nats quite possibly should not
I think this is where a lot of people land. The Lerners had to trade Soto because the Lerners are who they are. Be both mad at the Lerners and resigned to what the reality of the situation is.
Some people don't follow though - if you think 1 but not 2... well God help you because the owners got you right where they want you, "money bucket" thinking believing whatever revenue vs spending numbers they throw at you disregarding the appreciation of the team (in monetary terms), the likely indirect benefits received (from say nearby real estate and parking also owned), and the fact these people are rich and bought a sports team for what should be fun.
if you think 2 but not 1, I get it. Two years of Soto is still two years of Soto and maybe something changes. New ownership may be more inclined to keep him. He might get hurt and make himself more affordable. But I do think you have to assume a 24/25 year old stays healthy and he's still great and that he'd at least have a very good chance of leaving.
If you think neither - well you loved that World Series didn't you? Sorry that the Lerners are going - they were NOT bad owners. Might not be the best owners, but there are a dozen easily worse out there. And the offer for Soto was ok. It was! It wasn't enough and we know it but it wasn't insulting. It wasn't "come play with us for a deep discount" or anything. But still - I don't get why people own a team and don't want to try to win constantly when they have other money sources.
Anyway I'm babbling a bit.
What I'm trying to get through in the last post is even if you land where a lot of people do and you know they have to trade him AND you believe this is a pretty good haul* it's still not going to be as certain to be as good as Soto would have been alone beyond 2025 (let alone trying to factor in Bell here)**. Most prospects become nothing special, or worse, become nothing. Baseball is hard. Here's the 2015 MLB draft - long ago to rule out a late comer. Even in the first round it's more misses than hits and in the Top 10 it's half miss. The 2014 international signings - going back a year because these guys are young... oh well apparently it's historically bad. Here's the 2013 international prospect list. Still you see. Among the VERY VERY VERY best, like the top 2,3 maybe 5 you feel ok - but it gets dicey fast
There are 1200 players on 40 man rosters. In the now short draft there were 616 picks. There are hundreds of international signings and non-roster invites. The game COULD turn over every two years. Every player playing in year 3 or 4 in the majors means a guy that didn't make it. Lets say every season about 250 guys debut. That means get a random group of five from any incoming set of draftees, signees, and invites and four of them never see the major leagues. That's just seeing the major leagues. That's Austen Williams, and Kyle McGowin, and Jimmy Cordero.
These guys aren't 20% chancers. Even Wood and Susana aren't that low. Well... maybe Susana I bet it's generally lower for pitchers and higher for batters but I'll give that up. But unless they are in the majors they aren't 100% and from there you take on chances of being ok for a couple years? Being good enough to get to FA? Being great to get paid? Yeah there are 150 or so FA signed each year but the bulk of those are guys getting signed again. How many actually break in? 50? 25?
The Nats had a bird in the hand. They weren't going to expend the effort to keep it so now they look toward a bunch of birds in a bush. But they are still birds in a bush and looking at them as seeing it as a good chance to have multiple birds in hand is setting yourself up for disappointment.
*most experts seem to think so. I mostly agree, but its not what I want to see back. I wanted a surer star bat or two pretty sure rotation guys. This didn't get either of those. But that's me - the potential production here is probably about the same
** yeah some places will do projected WAR for prospects but the variance on that has to be insane. Like we expect 10 WAR from these guys total in 2026. My suspicion is it's an average which would be dragged up by rare star turns. So it's like a 30% the combined group gets you 3 WAR and a 1% chance it gets you 25 WAR. Something like that. Your more likely to get a lower WAR but the 'expectation" doesn't tell you that. I'd have to dig into how it's calculated but as I know expectations and statistics it is not a median related value which would make more sense here in the "are we likely to be better off" figuring out.
Harper, you are babbling a bit...which is quite unusual for you. You feel a trade was necessary (or at least highly justifiable), then you keep damning the trade by measuring it against your expectations rather than the reality of the situation. .
ReplyDeleteThis was a salvage trade--get as much as you can for a depreciating asset. Rizzo got what he could after mustering as much leverage as he could. Seen another way, this was never a trade based on the opporunity to get more value--speculative futures in baseball will always be worth less than the current value of a superstar.
@Harper. I'm pretty sure Zips are median projections. Sometimes FG will also show a histogram so you can see all the probabilities. As I recall, not very many prospects have significant (>1 WAR career) median projections AND unimodal distributions. Busts happen literally all the time.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with SG that you're being unusually emotional here, but I think that's appropriate for the moment. Losing Soto makes me sad and, even if I agree with the decision given certain constraints, those constraints are just human decisions and not immutable laws of the universe.
This was an excellent post.
Ok, I feel this has bene a bit of a roller coaster ride Harper. I was feeling pretty good after your last post and now this one has me rethinking the trade again. I still feel the Nats did the right thing though.
ReplyDeleteBabbling? Emotional? What's next, blubbering?
ReplyDeleteThe deal is done. We get that. Water under the bridge and over the dam, and spilt milk: there's no crying in baseball.
(I'm not sure, @SG, what you mean by "salvage operation." What I mean is, what exactly is being salvaged?)
The return, though, is now the largest issue. Many of us, I'm sure, are excited by the prospects, some even believing that with this haul the Nats will contend by 2025. But here's the caveat.
Only Abrams is at AA or higher (AA being where real big league prospects separate themselves). Cavalli and the injured Henry are the only two others. And given the dice roll on prospects lower down on the chain, expectations for a quick resurgence by the Nats is unrealistic. (I'm guessing that's what Harper, somewhat obliquely, was driving at. But I can't speak for him.)
Look at it this way, since 2000 the Astros were the quickest to win a World Series--4 years--after losing 100 games. But that 100-loss season was their third 100-loss season in a row. And they had a better farm system then than the Nats have now.
In short, expect a long slog to return to glory.
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ReplyDelete@SM I am a bit more optimistic--perhaps becaue I am anticipating rich new owners. It's a big unknown and today's WP suggests it might not be settled until Spring Training.
ReplyDeleteRe: salvage. Soto is/was a depreciating asset, like a car. If he was worth 100 to the Nats prior to the trade deadline in July, he might be worth only 75 this winter and 65 at next summer's trade deadline. On the day after the World Series in 2024, his value to the Nats would have gone to 0. His playing for the Nats between now and then also has value, albeit less so if we are not competitive and re-signing him looked grim.
Soto may have been worth 100 on paper. Rizzo was trying to salvage as much of that value as he could. He was not getting 100 back. You are trading the current value of a superstar for the speculative value of prospects, plus it is hard negotiating when you are asking or a chunk of a team's future. Not sure that the technical term is salvage.
Relative to my comment to Harper, my point was that he was measuring the actual trade against the paper value of 100, which was not realistic. I can also wish Rizzo got more, but I am satisfied he got as much as he could.
Okay, @SG, I see. Wasn't sure about "salvage."
ReplyDeleteBy the way, does anyone else besides me feel kind of sorry for Luke Voit?
I guess contrary to most others, this is pretty spot-on to me. Your odds of finding and developing another Soto-quality player are next to zero, so building around a young future HoF hitter always made more sense to me than giving him up for lottery tickets—some with better odds than others, but none likely with the same amount of payout as what you’re holding in your hand.
ReplyDeleteThat said, the prospect haul here excites me more than Gray and Ruiz. Not that either one’s bad, they just aren’t the level expected for a Scherzer pennant race rental and two years of an in-his prime All-Star shortstop. Gore scares me a bit though—he flashed a lot of talent in his first couple months up but losing a bunch of time to an elbow injury already…
@grossman While Soto was a depreciating asset, he was not going to depreciate so much as to get less in a trade because there was a practical cap below his value. He was worth 100, but Nats only got 75 because 6 prospects is a lot. But he would have been at 75 in the off-season too.
ReplyDelete@billhacker My numbers were--of course--made up to illustrate my point. That said, I think we did better than 75 if you count Gore and Abrams as top three prospects instead of tweeners. Also, Harper's analysis of past drafts is interesting but really doesn't matter--in the end,the 6 new Nats are individuals; not probabilies
ReplyDeleteCould we have gotten as much this winter? Happy to debate that, but we will never know.
This post and supporting comments seem to simply ignore an absolutely crucial point: The Nationals can not, never have and never did have a way to FORCE Soto to sign an extension. ANY extension. The reserve clause is long gone, and the entire POINT of free agency is that the Nationals can.not.force.Soto.to.sign.
ReplyDeleteYet here we are over and over and over: the Nats cannot let Soto leave and indeed have failed by doing so. That’s basically irrational. That’s telling the Nats “You blew it%!” when Team Soto never counter-offered. Not once did Soto (through Boras) offer up “Here’s a contract—if you agree to this, Juan will sign.” If that had happened, then the Nats WOULD have had the power to “sign Soto at any price” because they would HAVE a price. But that never happened. Boras didn’t even promise Soto would sign a deal at the Max comp (notional $43.33M AAV, or 15/$650M!) or ARod comp (+40% higher than any previous deal, or ~$600M). Those were framed as starting points, not as a firm counter-offer.
After all, once Boras makes a counter offer he has implicitly put a ceiling on Juan’s top dollar figure. His MO (and players HIRE Boras knowing it’s his MO) is to let others re-set the floor higher but to avoid as much as possible setting a lower ceiling. Which can only be done in free agency.
Without a counter offer the Nats have every reason to expect Soto (like Judge in NY, Seager/Trea Turner in LA, etc fully intends to exercise his RIGHT to go to free agency. Especially when Soto (through Boras) publicly signals he won’t sign ANY offer until some (vague, not defined) time after new ownership takes over.
Put another way, once one assumes (and there’s a REALLY strong case supporting the argument) that Soto plans on going to free agency period dot end of story), the only way to secure Soto long term is to be an attractive enough (I.e., just entering a potentially long competitive window) AND have the resources to win a bidding war that includes Cohen, the NYY, the LAD etc.
You do that by having the best core of young (and thus less expensive) talent you can get while carefully managing payroll so one can “play with the big boys” in the inevitable bidding war for Soto’s 2025-2037? contract. Which makes it at least arguable that the Nats are now (post-Soto deal) in a better position to sign Soto in 2025 than they would be otherwise.
In the meantime, can we please stop pretending the Nats have or ever had the power to prevent Soto from leaving?
I think you’re probably right about Soto and Boras wanting to test the market in free agency—Soto’s said as much—but the Lerners never put a ‘buy out’ of free agency offer on the table. 12 years at $500M would’ve exceeded Trout’s AAV by over $5M and given Soto the richest contract in North American sports. That’s a serious offer to keep him around, and one that doesn’t hamstring the team because they’ve already shed so much payroll.
ReplyDeleteThe ‘Nats will be more competitive in 2025 because of prospects’ argument is valid and I partly but into it, but some advocates of it seem to assume that most or all of them will pan out. That would be fantastic, but when the centerpiece pitcher in the trade is already out all year with an elbow injury, it only hammers home how unrealistic that is. Soto already made it through the development wringer that so many prospects don’t end up on the other side of (see: Kieboom, Carter). You’re basically trading a $100 that you know you might lose in a couple years for six lottery tickets, some with higher odds than others.
Easy, there, @Mike Condray.
ReplyDeleteYour premise--that the Nats were never going to sign Soto--is based on the negotiating record of Boras. Fair enough. Past behaviour almost always predicts future behaviour.
By the same principle, the Nats' record for developing young players is . . . well, not good. Let's just say "untrustworthy," rather than "stinks." That the Nats will be any better at developing this group of prospects (that many are already ga-ga over) is unreasonable based on their organizational record. So there's that.
But if dynamic new ownership were to demand an accelerated development program--better/more scouting, position coaches, kinesiologists, front office people, biomechanical technicians, etc., etc.--then building around Soto over the next 2 1/2 years would seem viable. But the Nats being the Nats, who knows?
There is a corollary to the dismay of the loss of Soto, I think, and (besides not getting enough in return) it's this: There was no need to trade Soto now rather than later, because new ownership might--just might--turn this organization around in a hurry.
It's Sunday morning and I'm yes, babbling, because I don't feel like foraging for dandelion greens to feed my kid's pet rabbit. Bad dad.
I agree with @Mike that too many of the arguments depend on: at some price point, Soto would have signed. That is an unknown, although givem history and statements it seems unlikely . What is known is that Soto is worth nothing to the Nats a week after the end of the 2024 World Series unless he (not us) chooses to have a long-term relationship.
ReplyDeleteHowever, for purposes of discussion, let's assume Soto would have signed at 12 years/$480 million and incoming ownership agree to a $200 million per year payroll by 2025 (taking Corbin out of the conversation, but the first year that Soto wuld have been free to be elsewhere making more money on an already winning team). Of that $200 million, Soto and Strasburg will be taking up about $75 million.
How do you spend the remaining money to fill the gaps? Optimistically, we need 2 starting pitchers, one of whom needs to be a #1 or a #2. You also need a first baseman, a shortstip (because Garcia is going to be a second baseman), a third baseman, a left fielder, and a centerfielder. We also will need a reliable bullpen. IOW, you are building around Soto, Ruiz, Garcia, Gray, and 2 pitchers now in AAA....with about $125 million per year to spend..
To make it harder--because it is hard--assume that anyone currently in MLB making under $10 million per year is either pre-free agency or a mediocre to decent placeholder. Those cheaper FA MLB players are themselve lottery tickets of a sort.
Try the exercise--it will prove one of your points (better player development is essential), but I think it will show that you can't buy stars and win...unless you have a lot of really good pre-FA players. It takes time to draft and develop those players or you can do 12 for 8 (7 expiring contracts) as we did in 2021 and 6 for 1 as we did this year to build up your potential success quicker.
To anonymous: the question is not whether we compare Soto at a notional 100 and expect the Soto Five to match that collectively in some format. The question is which puts the Nationals in better position/more hope in 2025: a notional zero in the ledger for Soto (absent winning a 29 v 1 bidding war) vs the value (WAR or whatever) the Soto Five will offer. Because what Soto offers the Nats in 2023/24 matters basically zilch to the Nats in 2025+ absent an extension or winning that bidding war. Neither is likely (though I think it's at least arguable the Nats do have a better chance of signing Soto after that bidding war now than they would have if they'd kept him through 2024. Your opinion may vary).
ReplyDeleteThat argument does *not* assume all of the prospects will pan out. Shoot, if 2-3 of them are cost-controlled MLB regulars (none stars, which all of the Soto Five have the upside to be) they would still provide a firmer foundation for the 2025 Nats than a comp pick for Soto's departure (which might arrive in MLB...by 2028/29!) or whatever package 1.3 or 0.3 years of Soto would be likely to get on the trade market.
To SM: yes, absolutely the Nats have to do *much* better developing their young talent. The jury is still out on whether the changes made before this year have changed the Nationals previous track record.
OTOH, if the Nats remained mired in "all your prospects are Keiboom, Robles or at best MAT" land it won't matter whether or not they sign Soto.
@Mike Again, the thing that bugs me about this argument, even though I hope it ends up right, is that trading a star makes him more likely to re-sign and that the Lerners made a market competitive extension offer to begin with. We have no indication of either, and history in both MLB and with the Lerners (in terms of extending star players, obviously they won’t be here in 2025) suggests otherwise.
ReplyDeleteThe point, @Mike, is they could have waited until new ownership.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't think the Nats could have gotten more in return, then you don't pay enough attention to the owners' Winter Meetings.
I get it: a prospect is a prospect. Even the most highly rated ones often don't make it to the bigs; many are just average when they do. Nonetheless, prospects are evaluated and compared--it is all we have to work with. Currently, in MLB's top 100 prospects, Hassell is #21, Wood is #85. That doubled our top 100 prospects. If you look at last year: Abrams was #6 and Gore was #55 and both are (or close to) MLB ready.. Susana is a bit young and new to be ranked high, but he is considered to have a high ceiling. Even Voit has some potential even if he is older. We have him unti 2025.
ReplyDeleteI just don't see the case for getting a better package this winter. That's a lot of future that SD sold us for 3 pennant races. Why woud anyone give more for 2 pennant races? Lots of horse-trading in the winter doesn't mean better return.
Off-topic, with apologies. Joey Meneses should win NL player of the week. He has 5 home runs in 10 games. Victor Robles has 4 home runs in 98 games.
ReplyDeleteSure, Meneses may not even make the team next year. But good for him for making the most of his first chance in the big leagues.
Second that. Meneses helped secure me a spot in the playoffs for my fantasy league, most important credential for his candidacy
ReplyDeleteLet's treat your comment as on-topic. Right now committed fans (i.e. those on this site) are experiencing a vacuum with Soto and Bell gone. We are endlessly debating THE trade, which is really yesterday's story.
ReplyDeleteIt need not stay a vacuum long. We have the Meneses story; starting tonight--for good or bad--we will have the beginning of the Abrams story. People can start extrapolating his next 6 years of control based on one game. That's what fans do. LOL
Is Cavelli ready to be promoted? When will Gore debut? Can Luke Voit regain the success he had with the Yankees and be the next Schwarber--a .260 hitter with game-changing power?
If we are open to it, there are lots of things about the Nats that will be worth following. The goal, which Soto and Bell couldn't accomplish, is to move us out of last place and into becoming "relevant" in the larger baseball world.
SM—trading a star makes it more likely that he extends? Like how Max and Trea extended with the Dodgers?
ReplyDeleteSure, it does happen. Betts, Olson, Goldsschmidt. But a quick check reveals a common thread—none of those players hired or have Scott Boras as their agent. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Do you?
SM. Sure, they could have waited until new ownership. But unless me ownership wanted to start off their relationship with their new fan base with “we traded Juan Soto before he ever played for us” then they don’t trade him until well into the 2023 season. After all, Juan said he wouldn’t sign until he got to know the new owners—how long exactly does THAT take? Trading Juan after 2023 season is underway makes It extremely unlikely the Nats get a comparable package.
As for not paying attention during he winter meetings (*eyeroll*), I’ll just concur with Steven Grossman’s answer.
Jeez, guys, if you want to make a Straw Man argument, you don't need me. I didn't say trading a star makes it more likely he extends.
ReplyDeleteNor was I enjoining you to do a scholarly examination of the Winter Meetings, but to look at them from different angles. The who-and-for-how-much is contingent on the "why."
Franchises go through life cycles and try to adjust accordingly (some obviously better than others). And between the trade deadline and the Winter Meetings, lots of . . . um. . .stuff can happen.
Tatis was caught juicing and will miss a chunk of 2023. Walker Buehler goes down. Cleveland's youngsters have performed better than expected, and now the team has too many prospects to keep. (The Nats can only dream about that.)
My peevish fingers. SM here and previously.
DeleteTo continue . . . Some teams suddenly realize they're closer to contention, some further. Some feel a bat away or pitcher away from true contention, some resign themselves to razing the team to the ground.
There is just no way a valid argument can be made--one way or the other--that the Nats would never get a better return for Soto if they had waited.
@SM
ReplyDeleteWhile you can make the argument there's no way of knowing, I'm suspicious 2 years of Soto would be more valuable than 3 post season runs. His value was only depreciating, unless he turned around and hit 40 more HRs before the end of the season.
The only advantage I see in trading during the offseason is time to negotiate. But that cuts both ways. Nats aren't stressed to get something by some deadline, but neither are the teams looking for that last piece before the postseason.
This actually feels like a pretty close call. Soto's value would never be higher, but price does not equal value. Especially so in such a restricted marketplace.
ReplyDeleteIn the winter, more teams can dream of being competitive, plus the best teams can't be quite as sure they are on parts of the win curve that don't need the help. And a couple teams feel like they just missed winning a world series.
I think it's decently likely a deal just as good would have been available in the winter, and possible that a better one would have been. But any strategy that rests on guessing at the irrationality of a market should admit some pretty high error bars, and the possibility of being counter exploited.
Which brings me back to -- once you accept the boundary conditions that make the extension impossible -- this was a good trade. Possibly not the very best trade, but certainly close enough that I need to allow for expertise and proprietary information and give the team the benefit of the doubt.
Anonymous--my apologies, I misread your comment about "signing" as "signing (thus extending) with the team who acquired him." The cheerful ambiguities of the English language!
ReplyDeleteTo clarify, I still think it is a massive longshot that the Nats re-sign Soto in 2025. I think it is at least arguably a *slightly less* massive longshot post-trade assuming the Nats get at least a couple of good players out of the Soto deal and don't make massive financial commitments elsewhere.
Even with that, though, the Nats would have to win a 29v1 bidding war for Soto. There's a *reason* the "Chapman flip" (trade a guy for prospects, then sign him back as a free agent while keeping the prospect) is remembered--it's about the only time I can think of where a team actually pulled that off. It's still highly unlikely. But the same financial flexibility that would allow a serious run at Soto in 2025 would also allow for other options (extending successful prospects early, add in different free agents etc). So still a rational approach even acknowledging the low chance of re-signing Soto in 2025.
The main point I wanted to make, though, was that the central premise of Harper's "you never trade a superstar" argument was based on fundamentally flawed (basically, harking back to Reserve Clause days) logic. Soto can be looked at as a 5-8 WAR/year player for the next 10 years, absolutely. But that matters zero to the Nats in 2025 and beyond. That "$100" Soto theoretically brings the Nats in 2022/23/24 still leaves the Nats #30/30 teams in MLB with a #27-29 ranked farm system. A very long, hard road ahead even with Soto.
If the Nats *were* likely to be viable contenders in 2023/24, the "$100 now is better than five lottery tickets" logic ABSOLUTELY applies. That is essentially the logic the Nats used with Harper and Rendon--keep the superstar while vying seriously for a title and take your chances with the bidding war after the player goes to free agency. Sadly, that does not apply to the Nats now--and that matters in how best to use Soto for the future window.
It's possible 2 years of Soto is worth more to the Yankees, Astros or Cardinals than 3 years of Soto to the Padres, isn't it?
ReplyDelete@Harper---congrats on 4 of your last 5 posting have more than 20 comments. You have an engaged crowd!
ReplyDelete@everyone else. No one can say definitely whether a better deal would have been available this winter. However, it seems unlikely.
First, if you accept this was going to be a star for prospects trade, then we did very well. If you combine this year and last rankings, we got two top 50's, two top 100's, a high-upside but very young pitcher, and Voit. Of the four ranked players, two are MLB ready and another was in the futures game. Even counting the possibility of including young players already on their roster, not many teams have that much well-defined future capital and even fewer would part with it even for two years of Soto.
Second, in the winter you are competing with free agents and timing is tricky. You cannot assume that teams will wait for the Nats to hold an "auction" that they might lose, when there are other trades and FA signings they can make instead. Arguably, the trade deadline, not just the third year of pennant contention, contributed to our getting a good price.
Third, can we be sure there was a robust market for Soto at an unprecedented price? The media, the Nats, and Soto/Boras had an interest in promoting the narrative of intense competition and incredible Soto value. It looks like the Dodger were playing everybody to drive up the price for San Diego. Trading the future, even for a star, is not particularly the Cardinal Way. Everybody else was eliminated by Rizzo because they weren't serious or weren't offering enough. Maybe the Yankees jump back in, but they actually need controllable pieces with their star-driven team.
Guys, I hate losing Soto. However, we got a good price and the start of a serious future. I imagine that Rizzo saw a frenzied "must win" Preller as the best mark he was going to find.
Making this more confusing—there’s at least two Anonymous’s here.
ReplyDeleteI’m the one who made the $100 analogy. I really don’t see holding onto young stars as ‘reserve clause logic’. The Nats have enough financial flexibility to extend Soto and build back the team in 2023-5. Giving Soto a contract with the highest AAV in baseball would mean about $20M more in roster spend than they would’ve with another year of arbitration. They’d still be below league average in roster salary. Sure, he’s a Boras client and says he wants to test free agency, which I believe. But does he walk away from a contract that makes him the highest AAV with the richest total in North American sports (12 years/$500M)? We’ll never know.
My main point is it’s worth holding onto a future HoF 23 year old more than trading for prospects. The likelihood any of them develop to his level is super low, and you can spend around league average AND draft and develop young talent well. Granted the farm system has WAY better prospects now, but you’re trading a sure thing, prospect-aged star for five chances at developing another one. It’s a penny-wise, pound-foolish way to conduct business, and looks much more cost-driven, IMO. The Lerners have talked openly about how much money they lost during the covid crisis, and they’ve done other weird decisions in this vein this year, like manipulating Garcia’s service time.
Basically you’re hoping you get enough value out of five guys to make up for 7-8 WAR/season lost (not a terrible bet, but not a risk-free one because injuries, setbacks, etc.), which is more likely if 1-2 become stars. I like most of these guys (Gore’s elbow scares me) but the odds are more that 2-3 of them become above average more than stars, so realistically you’re getting like 4-5 WAR per season in return, just for longer/cheaper. Maybe that’s nice if you’re the As or another cash-strapped team, but the Nats generate more money than that (most years, at least) and the Lerners are about to turn a $1B+ return on their investment. Making a borderline offer you can’t refuse to Soto was possible and wouldn’t have greatly limited team resources for other investment.
Anonymous (2)?): You keep returning to the idea that “it’s worth holding onto a HoF 23 year old more than trading for prospects”. That is precisely my point above—you keep assuming the Nats could in fact somehow force Soto to sign and by doing so “hold onto a HoF 23 year old.” Presumably that means at the end of the day, the Nats could and should offer whatever Soto wanted to keep him a Nat.
ReplyDeleteMy apologies for repeating this, but that makes a HUGE assumption—that Soto (through Boras) would EVER say yes to any extension offer. The comps Boras offered (while NOT saying were enough) all imply Soto MIGHT sign for some variation of >$43M AAV (Max comp) AND north of $600M total (the A-Rod comp). If that wasn’t enough to send the “we’re going to free agency, but feel free to set as high a bidding floor as you want”, Boras also specifically said NO extension would be signed until Soto “got comfortable with” the new ownership group.
The simple truth is the Nationals never had the power to force Soto to sign an extension. That left them with the choice of trying to win a pennant with him before Soto left, assuming they would win that 29v1 bidding war for Soto in 2025…or trade Soto for a very strong package of prospects.
No guarantees ANY prospects hit, absolutely. But if even one hits, that guy by definition will provide more WAR every season from 2025 onwards than the Nats could plan on for Soto…BECAUSE THE NATS HAVE NO CONTROL OVER WHERE SOTO ADDS WAR in 2025 and beyond. As much of a gamble as all prospects are, the gamble that the Nats win the 29v1 bidding for Soto is a far, far bigger gamble.
And even if we DO assume the Nats go full “Rangers and A-Rod” and get Juan to sign by going 40% higher than any previous offer (a specific comp Boras cited which as noted pushes a Soto extension above $600M total), the net impact of that deal on the Rangers was…getting to watch ARod earn that salary with multiple MVP level seasons but never sniffing the playoffs. Because as Trout re-proves, in baseball you have to have a balanced quality team to win. The 2019 Nats were a great “stars and scrubs” mix, but it took arguably 5-7 “stars” plus some Howie-level “scrubs” to win.
I don’t think the Nats will re-sign Soto in 2025…never plan on winning 29v1 bidding wars. But I do think a strong case can be made that the 2025-2030+ Nats will be better after trading Soto than if they hadn’t traded him and he walked in 2025 (or if they traded him in 2023 or 2024, for that matter). And if the Nats DO re-sign Soto, they get Soto AND any of the prospects that make it.