Juan Soto is reportedly on the trade market and mostly everyone in the baseball world thinks the Washington Nationals are crazy for not locking up their star.
Trading someone like Soto, who just won the Home Run Derby, is unheard of. He’s a generational talent and is still only 23 years old.
No matter how the Soto situation plays out, it seems like it’s inevitable for the Nationals to come out on the losing end. However, there may be a best-case scenario for baseball fans in Washington.
Britt Ghiroli, a senior MLB writer at The Athletic, joined grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier on Audacy’s Bustin’ Loose Baseball to discuss the Soto saga, and floated out a best-case scenario for the Nationals.
“I think, it sounds crazy, but honestly the best-case scenario is that this group decides to trade him and then a group comes in that is like ‘Let’s go win back Juan Soto in free agency.' And you’ve replenished your farm system, and all it takes is money -- a lot of money mind you, but money --, a Steve Cohen type of owner, to bring back a Juan Soto, and he doesn’t have these feelings of resentment because it’s a new ownership group,” Ghiroli said.
The idea of a team trading its star player only for that player to return in free agency doesn’t usually work out, but it may be possible in this particular scenario.
“I think a lot of what’s happened now is this relationship is very fractured,” Ghiroli said. “He was very upset it leaked out. It’s kind of the pie-in-the-sky pipe dream, but the best-case scenario is trading him before the Lerners leave and having a new owner who says ‘Wait a minute, bring my star back. I’ll pay whatever,’ and then you’re looking at a Nationals team that’s maybe on the fast track to success.”
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A team trading a generational superstar in the midst of looking for a new ownership group also complicates things. The Soto decision could be a blessing or a curse depending on the new owners.
“I think it’s two-fold, really. I think the Lerners want to kind of solidify their ‘legacy’ by saying hey, we’re the ones who signed Juan Soto. We kept him here. We won a World Series and we kept Juan Soto here. That’s a hell of a legacy for an ownership group to pass on. It’s also something that’s going to make the price better. It’s going to make buyers say ‘Oh, we’ve already got a generational talent locked up,’ so it certainly helps in that regard.
“You want a new ownership group to come in and say ‘Hey, we have Juan Soto locked up.’ You don’t want a new ownership group to come in and say ‘Oh my God, we’re paying this guy $50 million a year for the next 12, 15 years, how are we going to field a team?’ So I think it really is going to depend on who this new ownership group is.”
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