While we transition from having one of the greatest young hitters in the long history of the game to NOT having that guy, the organization, and some fans that follow it, will naturally move back toward hope. It does spring eternal. But I want to give you a good idea of what type of players we actually got back.
Mackenzie Gore was a Top 5 prospect in all of baseball. That is very high, but pitchers are fragile beings and being highly ranked is very unlikely to actually correspond to having a good career. We can look at the set of similar prospects in recent years to see that. (Please note this is rough and doesn't account for age which it should
Top 7 pitching prospects 2011-2019
Jeremy Hellickson
Aroldis Chapman
Matt Moore
Julio Teheran
Shelby Miller
Dylan Bundy
Taijuan Walker
Jose Fernández
Archie Bradley
Lucas Giolito
Julio Urías
Alex Reyes
Forrest Whitley
That's not even a mixed bag. That's meh. Urias is great. Fernandez was great, RIP. Some guys were good and went down to injury (Miller), others transitioned to other roles. But this should make it clear the chances gore ends up a long term multi-year all-star starting pitcher are pretty slim
Abrams Top 5-10 MI prospects
Dustin Ackley
Manny Machado
Jurickson Profar
Javy Baez
Carlos Correa
Francisco Lindor
Addison Russell
Corey Seager
JP Crawford
Orlando Arcia
Yoan Moncada
Dansby Swanson
Amed Rosario
Fernando Tatis Jr
Royce Lewis
Brendan Rogers
First of all - prospect lists LOVE their SS types. Stick a guy at short and it's worth it just for the prospect ranking bounce. Second - hey there's a LOT of great players here! But I'll say for the most part those are guys that can play SS well. Abrams... he can't. He can hang maybe, unlike Garcia and probably House, but he's not going to get extra help from his fielding stats.
But still the chances Abrams is something useful is pretty good. While these can't misses do occasionally miss completely, more often a miss is just a guy that ends up a useful major leaguer
Robert Hassell OF Top 17-23 OF prospects
Bubba Starling
Wil Myers
Byron Buxton
Albert Amora Jr
George Springer
Jorge Soler
Nomar Mazara
Austin Meadows
Lewis Brinson
Mickey Moniak
Bradley Zimmer
Manuel Margot
Kyle Tucker
Austin Hays
A lot of solid OF, a few busts, fewer stars.
So that's the Top 3 guys the Nats got. Recent history would suggest they become (1) A SP of limited help probably because of injury (2) A pretty good MI and (3) a solid 2/3 best OF. This is good BUT it's not enough to either make up for the loss or make the Nats a great team. Great teams need great players. The Nats don't have one. Right now there's a chance that Abrams is great, and very slim chances Gore or Hassel are.
Of course stars have to come from somewhere. Why not these guys? I guess that's where the hope comes from. But this is not a given, or even likely. It barely borders on possible. You luck into stars and they generally show young. Maybe James Wood is it. He was putting up a .337 / .453 / .601 line before getting dealt and he's only 19. When Juan Soto was Wood's age he had just finished a .292 / .406 / .517 season. Of course Wood is in A ball and Juan was in a Nationals uniform at the time so I'll give Soto some slack here.
The best likely scenario is that these guys, with what the Nats have on hand (House, Cavalli, Green, Garcia, Ruiz, Gray, etc. ) have the core of a decent players that they don't have to pay for. But they aren't going to win unless they get a star or two. They can pay for it or they can luck into one. They didn't pay for it in 2022 but maybe in a few years when these guys are giving DC an 80 win year they'll change their tune. Hell, maybe it'll be Soto. One can hope. He'd fit in pretty well.
29 comments:
This feels like it underrated Gore pretty significantly, if only because he did look like a star for first couple months this year. Obviously didn't sustain, but if that was result of pitching through injury (which seems at least possible), he's already shown better than most of those comps.
Certainly puts the Nats' new pieces' potential into sobering perspective. Not entirely sold on Abrams's potential though. (Reports of his tendency to sulk when he's benched or demoted can't help either.)
More interesting is your emphasis on this and your previous few posts on "great" players.
I caught a post-trade podcast last week featuring three hardboiled analysts (not the how-does-it-feel-to-be-a-Padre type). And their most emphatic argument was that you NEVER trade away a great young player, not in any sport but especially not in baseball.
(They were most . . . um. . . unkind to Rizzo and the Nats, too, saying their pre-season farm ranking of 24 was too high, and their current ranking is 15th at best.)
Here's hoping you eventually drill deeper into the Nats' other prospects, Harper.
Maybe?
Hellickson - ROY at 24
Moore - age 24 All-Star
Teheran - one of the most productive pitchers at ages 22-23
Miller - 3rd in ROY voting age 22
Giolito hit his stride at 24 and you know about Urias, Fernandez...
No one was as bright as Gore was but also that was brief, you can't really grab under 2 months of starts and say this is who a guy definitely is.
I think though looking at these comps the idea is - these guys ARE good, but pitching is such a tough thing that the slightest injury can derail a career. With Gore injured now it's a big uh-oh.
SM - I'll do another recap when the minor league season wraps up. that will give these Padres guys a good month in the system so we're not overrating Wood's start or underrating Hassell because he's had a bad week.
Well yes this is sobering but it still continues to make feel hopeful and glad the Nats traded Soto. Keeping Soto with the lack of a farm system would have likely resulted in another 2005 - 2010/11 era and I'm too old for that!
@SM I hear what you wrote in a lot of places: "....their most emphatic argument was that you NEVER trade away a great young player, not in any sport but especially not in baseball."
But the comparison to other sports doesn't work IMO. The dynamics are wholly different.
Baseball has free agency, fully guaranteed contracts, no salary cap, and, I believe, a greater range of ownership wealth than other sports (including TV rights). The time from draft to major leagues is also different, making the value of a #1 pick far far less valuable than in NFL or NBA. The odds today of losing a young star at the end of arbitration is extremely high, even for the well-heeled teams.
Even if you compare baseball to baseball, I hear inane comments like "I would never trade Mickey Mantle." Mickey would not have stayed a Yankee if free agency had existed. The baseball examples thin quickly the further you go into the free agency era and ultra-large TV contracts.
I offer this as an honest question: what am I missing?
So, the nats don't have a star. That's true. What they also don't have is more than a couple legitimate major leaguers. As of today, Ruiz, Garcia, Voit, Finnegan, Gray. Thomas, Robles, a couple relievers and Espino are great fringe guys.
That's what's so discouraging - there's a lot of BARREN out there. They traded Soto and got the foundations of a solid MLB team, which TBH they didn't have, so that's (sadly) an improvement. Any legit stars will have to come from the open market. The good news is they'll have plenty of cash.
I am curious how much of the 60-day IL (that's a pretty good team there) will ever come back. They've had 3 TJs and an almost-TJ just this year, and that's not including Strasburg. Will Keiboom ever hit? It amazes me he can hit over .330 in AAA and looks helpless in the bigs.
Sounds like Doolittle wants
""I would never trade Mickey Mantle." Mickey would not have stayed a Yankee if free agency had existed. "
While I get and agree with your overall point, the Yankees had the cash and the revenue stream to keep him around. Ted Williams, by comparison, would have left Boston the minute he hit free agency.
@kevin r And I see your point, the era of the "haves and have nots" in baseball pre-dated both free agency and ultra-large TV contracts.
@Steven Grossman
Hi, there.
Um . . . I didn't say it, they did.
They elaborated on that point, noting first, Soto was under control for 2 1/2 more years, enough time (if the Nats were so inclined and capable) to build around him.
(The Reserve Clause era you refer to is irrelevant. The issue is trading a young superstar in any era, like Boston selling--trading for cash--Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Even in the Reserve Clause era, when you owned a player's contract in perpetuity, teams almost never did it, give or take a Connie Mack skinflint or two.)
Secondly, wherever and whenever a team has traded away a young superstar under team control in any sport--even accounting for the differences between baseball and the NFL, NBA and NHL-- the team trading him away has taken years, sometimes decades, to recover. There is simply no record of such a team ever winning that kind of trade.
To sum up: They made the argument. I just happen to think it has merit.
@Steven Grossman
Pardon me for running at the mouth (fingers?), but a quick post script.
As you correctly note, a top draft pick in baseball is worth a lot less than in other professional sports.
That's precisely what makes a young superstar under team control even more valuable.
@Steven Grossman:
You said: "Secondly, wherever and whenever a team has traded away a young superstar under team control in any sport--even accounting for the differences between baseball and the NFL, NBA and NHL-- the team trading him away has taken years, sometimes decades, to recover. There is simply no record of such a team ever winning that kind of trade."
Not true. The results of the Herschel Walker trade were the exact opposite. Dallas made themselves into a Super Bowl team with the draft picks and players they received for Walker. The Vikings did nothing. I've copied and pasted from Wikipedia (okay, not the most reliable source, but nice and succinct on this topic).
The Herschel Walker trade was the largest player trade in the history of the National Football League.[1] This deal on October 12, 1989, centered on sending running back Herschel Walker from the Dallas Cowboys to the Minnesota Vikings. Including Walker and a transaction involving the San Diego Chargers, the trade eventually involved 18 players and draft picks.[2] At the time of the deal, the Cowboys were one of the worst teams in the league (the team finished the 1989 season with its worst post-merger record, 1–15), trading away their best player, while the Vikings believed that Walker was the missing piece they needed to make a Super Bowl run. Thus, Minnesota originally felt that they got the better end of the deal. Instead, the Cowboys used the draft picks acquired in this trade to get the players they needed to help them win three Super Bowls in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the Vikings did not make a Super Bowl appearance with Walker.
@sm I did understand you were quoting commentators--it is open season on Rizzo and the Nats so most of us are hearing the same. My point is: while maybe they shouldn't have made the trade (reasonable position), it was a sensible decison for them to make and not comparable to situations being used as examples of why you don't trade a young star.
In particular, youur discussion of the reserve clause actually supports my point. In the reserve clause era it would be crazy to trade a young star. IF Juan Soto was unable to negotiate with any other team in perpetuity, then no trade would have occurred now either.
This was not a trade driven by opportunity (let's go for 6 because it is better than one); it was driven by salvage. If you will, Soto was a depreciating asset and they made the judgment that it was better to sell at the current value rather than hope to restore the entire full value in or before the 2024-2025 off-season. They looked at the field vs the Nats for re-signing Soto and decided their odds werent' good enough.
I was going to ask you for examples of trades that support your point, but PotomacFan has beat me to it.
Boy, oh, boy.
This is Harper's blog. I'll be brief and leave it at that. You can still pound away if you wish.
1. Yes, in the Reserve Clause era teams owned players' careers until death did them part. But holdouts and jumping to outlaw leagues still occurred, always for money (see 1919 White Sox). Owners sold players back then, but they didn't trade them. Big difference.
2. I expected the Herschel Walker trade comparison.
First, it confirms your point that NFL draft picks are more valuable than MLB draft picks.
More importantly, Walket wasn't young. He was 27 going on 28. The college, USFL and NFL mileage on his knees and body was showing. It's why even today, under rules that protect player safety more, running backs rarely, if ever, are offered second contracts by the teams that draft them.
And of course yes, the Vikings were fleeced monumentally.
Finally, I'm not going to change your mind(s?), nor you mine. I follow the Nats as avidly as you. Where we differ, I think, is that I believe the Nats are in a far deeper hole and will take far longer to dig out of than you do.
As for Rizzo (and the Lerners, to be sure), they brought Washington a World Series. Good. But where the organization is now--and where it will remain for quite a while--is on them, too.
We politely agree to disagree like good lads. And I'm all for that, too.
I sit somewhere between SM and SG here
I think you had to trade Soto. As SM said, this hole is deep. The Nats didn't have much before trading Soto, now they have some after trading him. But the return was relatively underwhelming (as Harper alludes to). Part of that is operating from a position with less leverage, and part of that is the overvaluing of prospects these days. The team I really wanted to see a trade with was the Cards given their glut of OF talent.
BUT with the right ownership coming in, what this team does have is a TON of money to burn. You don't spend any this offseason unless it's for a player like Turner, and you wait and see what you have in House/Cavalli/Abrams/Rutledge/Gore/etc. Then you spend and plug the holes.
Who are the FAs to target in the 2024 class? You've got Urias, Devers, Anderson, DeJong, Profar, Bellinger, etc etc. Not a bad class to target to shore up your team.
And the Nats can spend then, they'll be sitting on less than $50M in payroll, the vast majority of that going to Stras. Yes that number will creep up with some players hitting Arb, but I suspect next offseason the Nats will be making a big splash...at least that's my hope
I want to thank Harper for hosting this blog, and for his terrific research and posts. And I want to compliment the folks posting for their thoughtful and respectful comments. This blog is a pleasure to read. Keep up the good work. It's going to be a long slog before the Nats are a contender again.
There is a context here which Harper completely ignores. Kind of frustrating, because it's the whole point of the trade.
This trade was about making the 2025-2030 Nats better. Not about replacing Soto on the 2022-2024 Nats, who were already #30/30 MLB teams *with* Soto and Bell. From a team planning perspective, Soto provides zero (0.0) WAR for the Nats in 2025+ because he clearly is signalling he's going to free agency.* His right, absolutely, but the team has to make its plans based on Soto being gone.
* I could go into a LOT more detail here, but the main point is Soto never counter-offered. Not once. Never said "give me X and I'll sign." That says "I'm going to free agency, but feel free to set the floor as high as you want."
This trade makes the 2025+ Nats quite a bit better even using the analysis above. A decent SP, a good/maybe great SS and a solid 2/3 OF plus the upside potential of Susana and Wood is not enough for the Nats to be a great team in 2025-2030 by themselves, obviously. But it's a LOT better than 0.0 WAR from Soto in 2025-2030.
Plus the point Harper does allude to at the end of the article: the Nationals will actually be in a *much* stronger place to sign Soto in 2025 with a rising new core and more help likely in the high minors (as well as cleared decks w/r/to other contract commitments) than the Nats would have been if they held on to Soto until the end of 2024. Or for that matter trading Soto in 2023 (offseason or 2023 trade deadeline) when Soto's value was less.
Sure, it's a longshot when competing with 29 other teams to sign a free agent. But the Nats would at least be in a strong position to be in the mix for it.
Bottom line: evaluating this trade based on a straight replacement for Soto is simply looking at it wrong. Soto *will* be going to free agency. The Nats therefore planned accordingly and are maximizing the WAR they will have for their hopeful "new window" from 2025 onwards.
No guarantees, of course--which applies to if Soto had stayed (what if he has a career-ending/limiting injury?). But this trade looks like a rational strategic move that arguable puts the Nationals on a better long term footing than trying to keep Soto and then sign him after 2024.
How do we know Soto/Boras didn't make a counter-offer?
"General manager Mike Rizzo and Washington's front office made three separate contract offers to Soto over the last year, including the 15-year, $440 million contract that was rejected right around the 2022 All-Star break. According to Rizzo, none of the Nats' three offers were countered by Soto's side."
Rizzo could be lying, but why would he?
@Jon Quimby
Maybe Soto made a counter-offer, but the Nats rejected it. That would be a reason to lie.
It's not as if the Nats haven't lied before.
Even if there was discussion about what it would take...neither Rizzo nor Boras benefit from portraying such informal and exploratory discussion as a counteroffer. Rizzo wants fans to believe a deal was impossible because there was no counter-offer. When Boras takes Soto to FA, he will not want the owners to think an acceptable price had been set in 2022.
In reply to Mike Condray, you could say the exact same to Josh Bell. The Nats will need a DH next year, and Bell has stated in multiple ways how much he enjoys DC. He's now got a better team to play on, and would be a great pickup for a 3-5 year deal.
How do we know Juan never made a counter-offer? Well, there's no way to be sure unless/until someone hauls Rizzo and Boras into court and makes them provide sworn testimony with supporting documents. I'm no more inclined to believe Boras never lies "Anonymous" or "DK" are to believe the Nats never lie.
But there is considerably supporting evidence here. Boras has been quoted (see NY Post, 27 July 2022) that Soto (1) should have Max Scherzer's $43.33M/year as a "comp" and (2) that Soto deserved a deal like A-Rod's (40% greater than any previous offer). https://nypost.com/2022/07/17/what-scott-boras-is-demanding-in-any-new-juan-soto-deal/
Note that Boras never actually SAID Juan would sign if the Nats offered (say) 12/$520M or 15/$650M (both using Max's $43.33M/year AAV). That was a COMP, not a counter-offer. Similarly, the A-Rod "+40%" line puts a notional deal around $597M (Mike Trout's contract +40%). Those are the COMPS...not a counter-offer.
And Boras had already publicly stated Juan wasn't signing anything until after new ownership was in place. His right, and there is an argument for it. Not arguing that at all.
Your mileage may vary, but I think the Nationals were and are perfectly justified in taking "no deal this year period" and "comps put this deal in the $520M-$650M range" as "We're not really bargaining here, we're going to free agency--but feel free to set as high a floor as you want for us when we do that."
The Nats may well find themselves in that bidding war for Juan in 2025--exactly as they would have if they'd kept him through 2024. At least flipping Soto for five prospects plus Voit puts the team in a significantly stronger position talent-wise to offer Juan the chance to play for a winner in 2025 than they could conceivably have been if they'd kept him or traded him in 2023.
To kevin R--
I hear you on Bell, and having Bell at 1B and moving Voit to DH is not the worse option out there at all.
But Josh turns 30 in three days (14 Aug 2022). He will be 33 in 2015 and 35 in 2017. If that's the Nats next window, any long term deal (and Josh is likely to want one, since this is his only real shot at signing such a deal) leaves the Nats potentially committing high dollar figures during their next big contention window (2025-2030?) for the equivalent of Werth in 2016-2017. That was painful to watch on many levels (I was there for his epic G4 2012 NLDS walkoff...and when he whiffed that G5 2017 NLDS liner...).
The DH does make for a better option in parking a popular aging slugger (as Juan himself may find in...egads...2034-2038). Just noting the Nats and Josh will have to carefully work out dollar figures. With the need for 1-3 starting pitchers plus other help the farm is not poised to provide and wanting to make a run at Soto in 2025, how much can the Nats afford to spend on Josh? Is he willing to give them a discount (I doubt it)?
I agree with Cautiously Pessimistic. If the stars don’t come from within, it’s important to note how much money the Nats will have to spend on FAs. Now whether someone will want to come play here is another story. We’re looking at pre-Jayson Werth era baseball in DC.
And I think that’s part of the hope and the sadness. The hope is that a mix of these players and great FA signings turn the 2025-2030 Nats into a contender. The sadness is the reality of what Harper described in this post: it’s unlikely to happen.
Guys….you won’t need Bell in 2025….Brandon Boissiere has an ETA of 2024…
@Ole PBN I know this looks like pre-Werth DC baseball in terms of an attractive place to play, but I think the situation is quite different and a lot better.
Then, we were seen as refugees from Montreal, owned collectively by MLB itself, which had no compunction about selling off all the valuable parts before the move and saddling us with a TV contract that 15-years later still limits the team's revenue.
Now, we are an established franchise that has a record of success and which has spent as much as $200 million per year on payroll. Yes, we have fallen on hard times, but arguably because some FA signings have proved disasterous. But we can make a legitimate case that this is cyclical. We are not doomed to be cellar-dwellers.
We are getting new owners--and the MLB board will not approve anyone that doesn't have sufficient resources to get us back to a top tier payroll level again. We may not spend the most nor always outbid the Dodgers, but we are not going to be the payroll-limited A's, Ray's and Reds.
I don't know what the Nats look like in 2025 with our current farm system and a payroll approaching $200 million. But I see no reason why free agents would reject us rather than consider our offers seriously.
Thanks for this Harper. I echo the praise for an intelligent discussion site that isn't just rah rah.
The post-facto Soto arguments are circular --- and the case against trading a Hall of Famer are strong. But GM Rizzo had to take action to move the team forward. For him, Soto could be one of three types of assets:
1) A cornerstone player around which you build a team.
2) A star player on a bad team (Ted Williams, Trout, etc).
3) A valuable trade asset.
He talked option one up but came to the conclusion that it wasn't possible. Not enough in the minors. No way to build a team around one guy. And he a walking FA anyway.
Option two isn't something Rizzo wants to do. He wants to win sooner rather than later, not sell jerseys.
Option three was the only one left. And Soto's value was at a peak. For a GM, you have to maximize the value of assets and deals. If Scherzer was an all-time best FA signing (!), the Corbin and Strasberg deals are turning out to be all-time worst --- anchors which are dragging the whole franchise down.
The deal for Gray and Ruiz will be a win. He needed one more like that to complement the draft choices coming in.
This should be the last 100 loss year for a while.
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