Juan Soto's apparent falling out with the Washington Nationals has reached the "parsing his cryptic social media activity" stage.
Early on Friday morning, the two-time All-Star retweeted and then deleted a pearl of wisdom from Hall of Famer Derek Jeter on the topic of "loyalty."
"Loyalty one way is stupidity," Jeter tweeted, adding the hashtag #TheCaptain to promote his ESPN docuseries of the same name.
Soto quote-tweeted Jeter with a simple period, apparently to underscore Jeter's point. Soto's tweet, however, was soon deleted.
Was Soto throwing shade at the Nats? Obviously there's only so much to be inferred from a stray piece of punctuation and a deleted tweet, but sometimes less is more.
Soto is believed to be on the trade block after he reportedly turned down a 15-year, $440 million contract extension offer.
The 23-year-old slugger was displeased that details of the negotiations had leaked in the media, and things seemed to turn petty when his agent, Scott Boras, griped that Soto had to travel to the All-Star Game in Los Angeles aboard a commercial flight after the Nationals apparently declined or were unable to book him on a private jet.
A report this week indicated that seven teams -- the Mariners, Padres, Giants, Dodgers, Cardinals, Yankees and Mets -- had submitted trade offers for Soto.
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