So, on a calm before the storm Saturday afternoon the baseball world was shook by the news that the Nationals, officially, have Juan Soto on the trading block.
He rejected a 15yr/$440M deal, the third and (maybe?) last deal this ownership group plans on offering, and is now entertaining offers.
The team’s First offer to Soto of 13yrs/$330M was a joke for several reasons:
- he’s one of the best 4-5 players in the game
- it would have only taken him through his age 36 season
- It was more than $100M off of the superstar contracts of the game.
- Its AAV of 26.9 would have not even been top 20 in the game.
We don’t know what the second offer was, but the third would have guaranteed more total money than Trout (meaning it’d have been the largest contract in the history of the game), would have covered him until his age 38 season … but was still “only” $29.3M AAV, which is outside the top 20 all time. In that regard, yes believe it or not it was still “light.”
So, $440M is an awful lot of money. Maybe he’s dead set on setting both the overall and AAV value on a long term contract. 15yrs, $35M AAV to me is what I think he has to shoot for; that’s a $525M contract. Maybe he’s looking to wait (Scott Boras style) til he hits FA at age 26, and THEN sign a 15 year deal. That’s the best deal for him personally; its pays him til the end of his playable years, plus he gets this year’s $17M, next year’s likely $23M, and the last arb year of probably $28M or so. That’s more like an 18year, nearly $600M deal.
So, all that being said, it has to be about more than the money. Why would he reject this contract now? For me, it has to be just one thing: the Nationals are not going to be competitive for years. Years. And he doesn’t want to wait until he’s 30 to be in the playoffs again, which is a serious possibility if he resigns in DC right now.
This team bottomed out with 100+ losses in 2008 and 2009, then 3 years later they were a 100 win team. So, why aren’t we projecting a similar bounce here? Well, because …
- in 2008 & 2009: we didn’t have tens of millions of dollars of deferred dollars on the books (not that they “count” towards the luxury tax, but the Lerner’s have really kicked the expenses can down the road for the next decade).
- Thus we had the payroll flexibility back then to “buy” a Jayson Werth and an Adam LaRoche and a 4th starter in Edwin Jackson to fill in the holes. We don’t have that right now.
- That 2012 team had four significant home-grown prospects in its top 6 WAR leaders: 2nd rounder Jordan Zimmerman, 1st rounder Bryce Harper, 1st rounder Ryan Zimmerman, and 1st rounder Stephen Strasburg
- Two of these guys were 1st overall, transformative picks who raced through the minors to get to the big club and were major contributors that year.
- The farm system was great in 2012: #1 in the sport in Jan 2012 per BA, which we leveraged to acquire a front-line starter in Gio Gonzalez to power the rotation.
Meanwhile, compare and contrast to where we are now.
- In 2022, we’ve got a $161M payroll this year to go dead last. Some of this was planned expenditures to go away with players we trade ($15M for Cruz, $10M for Bell) …
- But … as we all know, we’ve got $58M a year tied up with two starters who are currently on the 60-day DL (perhaps permanently) and posting a 5.87 ERA while leading the league in such categories as Losses, Earned Runs allowed, and Hits allowed.
- We’re not in a position to draft generational 1-1 players … yet. We’re not picking up a Harper or Strasburg this year, maybe not next either (where the projected 1-1 guys are solid but not historic college bats).
- Zimmermann was a 2nd round pick; when was the last time we had a competent 2nd round pick? Here’s our 2nd round picks going backwards to Zimmermann from 2021 to 2007: Lile, Infante/Henry, Lost-pick in 2019, Cate, Crowe, Neuse, Stevenson/Perkins in 2015, Suarez (didn’t sign), Johansen, Renda, Lost pick in 2011, Solis, Kobernus, Hood, and Zimmermann in 2007. LOOK AT THAT LIST. This is your 2nd highest pick, every year. This is basically 15 years of incompetence. Its patently amazing. From this entire list you have a decent current prospect in Henry, a current middle Reliver (Crowe, with Pittsburgh), a utility infielder hitting .230 (Neuse), a guy who was DFA’d and outrighted earlier this year in Stevenson, and a loogy in Solis. For 15 years of 2nd rounders.
- Most of our prospect depth is in Low-A or below right now, especially on the hitter side.
- We’re somewhere in the deep 20s in terms of a Farm System.
So … i think Soto is reading the writing on the wall and saying to himself … it might be 4-5 years before we compete again. And this team (as is custom in this league) will bottom out before it builds again, so a couple years from now could be really, really bleak. Why would he commit to that rebuild, when he can go to a team that can and will spend (Yankees), or go to a team where money is no object (Mets), or go to a team has more competent draft teams than ours (Dodgers).
So, here we are. I wonder what this does to a potential sale. Would a prospective buyer be “ok” with the team selling off its most marketable asset? Or, would they not want to be saddled with a $400M+ contract coming in the door? Probably the latter honestly.
This team let Harper walk after not really giving him a competitive offer. They let Rendon walk. And now they’re probably going to at least get something in return for Soto.