To understand how truly difficult of a decision it would be for the Nationals to trade Juan Soto, a bonafide superstar on a Hall of Fame track, ahead of the Aug. 2 deadline, take this sampling from ESPN's Jeff Passan of rival front office executives from around Major League Baseball.
"Nothing illustrates the difficulty in pulling off a potential Soto deal more than split opinions of front-office executives about whether the Washington Nationals star will actually be moved before the deadline," Passan writes. "For every official who believes Soto goes, there's another who is convinced he stays."
Note that the question isn't should he be moved, but if he will, which conjures images of GMs across baseball alone in a dark room racking their brains over the sheer consequence of trading away a generational talent for too little return.
Challenging as that thought may be, baseball is shrewd business, and GMs await their opportunity to pounce, still.
"The chatter is certain to ratchet up in the coming days," Passan goes on to write, "as perhaps the foremost question comes into focus as the deadline nears: Will GM Mike Rizzo hold firm on the exceptionally high asks that sources told ESPN have been put out to teams, or will he relent slightly, if moving Soto is not something the Nationals are just considering, but actively planning?"
And how does a potential sale of the Nationals play into all of this? That is yet another wretched curveball thrown into the mix of an already cruel thought process.
"Multiple executives involved in Soto trade discussions said they are unsure," Passan writes. "One believes Soto is moving regardless because of the team's ownership status. The Nationals currently are up for sale, and the notion that new ownership's first move would be to trade a future Hall of Famer in his early prime, the executive said, is problematic. Dealing Soto now, he said, would offer the new owner a clean slate."
Passan goes on to cite one executive who views the next week more as a 'feeling-out period' for the Nationals, allowing them to gauge interest with another two months to scout minor-leaguers being considered in the return. This is more the precursor to an offseason move, as it were.
"They can present Soto as a monetarily cheap alternative to Aaron Judge, Trea Turner and Xander Bogaerts, all of whom will seek $200 million-plus free agent contracts this winter," he writes. "Soto will make somewhere in the range of $25 million next year and perhaps $35 million in 2024 through arbitration -- hefty numbers, yes, but still depressed compared to his free-market value and production."
The beauty of the trade deadline is that passive watchers don't have to do a thing. They can simply sit, and wait, and watch, and then react once something happens, or doesn't, after Aug. 2.
But the deadline doesn't make the decisions any easier for those running front offices. In this case, it only intensifies the magnitude of a yet-to-be-made decision that fans are already waiting to second-guess for generations to come.
Passan's full synopsis of the Soto situation, including deep dives into the farm systems of potential trade partners, is highly worth the read on ESPN+.
