Word got out yesterday that the Nats offered Soto a long term contract (that's good!) and it was rejected (that's bad!) but exactly how good/bad it is is up to interpretation.
The contract itself was 13 years for 350 million or just under 27 million per year. It buys out his remaining 3 arbitration years and controls him through his age 35/36 season.
It's not a good contract for Juan.
Juan Soto might be the best player to have on any baseball team going forward for the next 5-8 years. At the plate it's hard to see anyone surpass what he's doing, only perhaps match his production from a different path. His combined stats for the past two seasons are clearly a step better than anyone else so they first would have to catch him. A guy like Bryce might slug enough or Trea might hit for a high enough average to catch his value that way, but it would take Soto slipping a bit or one of those two doing something special. The juniors, Guerrero and Tatis, might develop into the same bat - but right now they aren't quite there.
Juan is a good athlete and is still very young (will be his age 23 season) and that keeps his value up on the base paths and in the field, where in neither place he's a natural. Still it's possible, I suppose, you could see someone put up a single combined all-around season that has more value but to do so continually going forward? Of the names I mentioned so far - not Bryce who is an underrated athlete and might sneak one in but at 29 compared to Soto's 23 can't be counted on doing that for half a decade. Not Vladdy Jr, who is already playing a less demanding position (1B) and appears far more likely to age ungracefully in the other aspects of his game. Not Trea, who yes is a solid baserunner and good enough in the field to do it regularly, but would need to morph into a consistently different player at 28. He'd have to do 2020 for a whole year over and over.
Some other names :
Ramirez - criminally underrated but old.
Acuna - Has a Trea profile where he wouldn't hit as well but could use great baserunning and decent fielding to outpace Juan, though with more of a chance to pull it off for the time frame needed given his age.
Bichette - He's not so good in anything to even contend now. Needs another gear in something.
Devers - a defensive liability who doesn't hit as well as Soto to start.
Robert - oooh all sorts of interesting but at 23 he gets no benefit of the doubt trying to catch Juan. He's gotta put a full season together first
Trout - The all-around master, the new Willie Mays, he's been getting hurt and seeing his plus baserunning shut down for his protection and he's 30. No offense to an already HoFer but give me Juan for the next 5.
There are basically three guys I can think of a team might rather have in the 5-8 year range .
Ohtani - no, he isn't the hitter Soto is (and never will be) but he's not just a hitter and the combination in value is hard to beat
Tatis Jr - he could improve to hit like Soto, he's already a better baserunner. His defense is not good but that's not Tatis' fault that the Padres for bringing in Machado and blocking 3rd.
Franco - This is a gamble. He hit very well in half a season last year but nothing close to Soto. He can handle short, unlike Bichette who can hang in and Tatis who should move. There's a lot of ground to make up but he has something everyone else on this list does not. Time. He's two and a half years younger than Soto.
Anyway - this is a very long winded way of saying - the best player needs the best contract and 13/350 is not close to that. It's less that Trout, and Betts and Lindor. It's barely more than Stanton who signed his older and not as good 8 years ago. It is bigger than Tatis yes but Tatis had injury concerns AND was having an extra cheaper contract year being bought out.
The Nats usually make one and done offers, not negotiating after setting a fair price then moving on. I'm not 100% sure that's what's going on here. It's further out from FA than usual and before a CBA has been set. It might be better seen as a "while we're hear this is the best we'll do" but all I can tell you is this won't do.
9 comments:
Totally agree Harper. I was also surprised to see there was no deferred money
Yep. I saw those numbers and said, "That's a lowball; not surprised that he'd turn that down." Honestly, the only way that contract makes sense is if he's afraid he's going to suffer a career-ending injury in a year or two; the AAV is basically what he'd get in his last year of arbitration, anyway.
Honestly, looking at this just depresses me even more that the Braves somehow got both Acuna and Albies to sign such ridiculously under-value contracts.
The Braves clearly had dirt on Acuna's and Albies' agents. Their extensions even at the time made absolutely no sense.
But agreed with everyone here, Soto needs to be seeing at least 30AAV, so looking at $400M for that same length. I will say I think the length makes sense, locks him in until later in his career, but leaves the door open for signing another career ending deal at a higher rate as salaries surely go up.
I think one thing people are forgetting, though, is that Soto is a fierce competitor. He's going to want to win, and he knows he's going to get paid plenty. So the Nats need to build a team around him before any talks of an extension are going to go anywhere, even if they offered something ludicrous like 13/450
One of the things about the early contracts - you can get players to do a lot more if you buy out a PRE-arbitration year. The fear of getting injured or being terrible and ending up with relatively nothing is real. So if you can say instead of that hanging over your head we have to give you life-changing money... that works! The Nats though want more security so they hold off until they need to, but once you are in arbitration a good player is going to have at least a couple million in hand and that fear is greatly diminished. It might not yet be lifetime family changing money but it's a level of security that they'll have something for a long while. So that's what pushed Albies and Acuna - though the Albies one was inexplicably low. Also because they break off around 30/31 there's usually a chance for another contract - though in these times it won't be as big - it will be a decent capper to a career. As opposed to 35/36 where... who knows.
Lerners playing poker with Boras. This is the first round, not the last. Boras plays it all the way to free agency and a price war. Hard to see Soto not following his advice.
Shamefully lowball offer by the Nats; not sure what they were thinking. All the jealous press about Acuna and Albies contracts likely means we won't see another lock-em-up for life deal. But what the heck, Juan is potentially one of the greatest hitters in the game, period so here's the offer-- 15 years and a half a billion. This gives Boras everything he could ask for and keeps Soto a Nat. With the DH, there's no longer an issue of where you put him in the field later in the career. Absolutely a roll of the dice but the prize is worth it.
The obvious purpose of the 350 is to set the negotiating midpoint. If Boras comes back with $425 everyone can celebrate at $390.
Dezopenguin has an interesting point that 350 only makes sense if Soto thinks he has a risk, like an injury. So Lerners offer at a level that would flush that out for less. The downside is that they will have to bid against themselves when there is no injury. To a casual fan, it also resembles a good faith offer. Maybe that matters.
Critiques of the Nats lack of offering contracts in pre-arb years ignore the rest of the story/context of the Nats salary picture. Simply put, the Nats have for the past several seasons been in the top 10/5/2 of MLB salary structures because the Nats were "going for it". That's good! But it also means the Nats were not in a good position to extend "cheap" pre-arb players.
That's because even *with* several pre-arb/early arb year stars to "balance the budget"/stay below the CBT threshold the Nats were pushing hard up against it (and for two seasons over it--one of two teams in MLB exceeding the CBT that year). Buying out a Trea/Soto (or to be fair, Robles--and wouldn't THAT have looked good if they'd extended him for $100M or so?) would immediately shoot the team over the CBT threshold by itself. And the Nats were already accumulationg penalties for having exceeded the CBT two years running.
Ironically, the Nats crash in 2020/21 has actually freed the team up to offer extensions now while still staying below the CBT threshold. So they are in a *better* position to extend Soto now than they were before when they were "going for it." Spending on Soto now would mean a bit longer rebuild ($10-15M less in the next couple of year's budgets to spend on other players) but a surer one.
And as for the idea that "Soto will only go to a winner"--well, if one interprets that as "Soto will only go to a team favored to make the playoffs every year" you've just accepted Soto will *only* go to the NYY and maybe LAD. Those are the only teams to have gone on decade plus long streaks of winning seasons. Up until 2021 the Nats actually had one of the longest streaks of winning seasons in MLB as well.
So I don't think Soto wanting to "play for a winner" in any way rules out the Nats. The Nats have shown they can put together a 8-season streak of winning seasons. That's better than the vast majority of MLB teams.
Who is “Robert”?
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