The Juan Soto Situation
It makes sense that Juan Soto is dominating the headlines this week, as one of the both youngest and best hitters on the planet is on the verge of changing uniforms. We haven't seen many players as talented as him switch teams in recent years, Betts, Arenado, Turner and Lindor seem like the other top tier guys to be dealt recently off the top of my head. Some great players have of course walked into free agency as well in recent years, like Soto's former teammate Bryce Harper following the 2018 season. Tough to believe as I'm writing this that his last game as a National was nearly 5 years ago..
You may recall that during that 2018 season there were rumors that Harper might stay in Washington, if an extension could be agreed upon, or potentially dealt at the deadline if the team was out of it.
Once they knew they were unable to extend him, the decision tree in July of 2018 for Washington was essentially a fork in the road. They could either hold steady, attempting to compete that year, or deal Harper as a rental in hopes of recouping as much value as possible to help recharge the organization, increasing the likelihood that their window of competition might stay a open a little longer than if might if they simply threw a qualifying offer his way and let him walk at seasons end.
The primary rumored offer that became public was from Houston, and would've sent J.B. Bukauskus, Garrett Stubbs, and another minor leaguer to Washington as return for Harper. Those two have not turned into prominent major leaguers, but the roll of the dice with how prospects will develop is always a part of the game.
At the time, Bukauskus and Stubbs were rated as a the 4th and 15th best prospects in the Houston organization per Fangraphs rankings (2018 rankings here). Put another way, at the beginning of 2018 Bukauskas was given a 50 Future Value grade, with Stubbs receiving a 40.
(If you're unfamiliar with FV grades I highly recommend a deep dive on Fangraphs explanation of the system or even reading the book that Longenhagen and McDaniel wrote about projections and prospect grading a few years ago.)
Later in the year FG would amend those projections to a 45+ and a 45. Meaning neither were projected as future stars, and maybe not even starters, but they had good odds of contributing to a lineup for some period of time one way or another.
I think it's important when looking at deals, or potential deals, retrospectively to consider what we thought of prospects at the time, and at the time Bukauskas was rated similarly to guys like Shane Baz, Tyler Mahle, Cal Quantrill, Brandon Woodruff, as well as very likely 2022 Cy Young winner Sandy Alcantara. Stubbs was not as highly regarded, but as mentioned he finished the season with that 45 rating, projected to be somewhere in the 18-22 range as far as overall catching prospects go. Every team wants to add that guy to their org depth, even if he's not massacring AA pitching at 21 in Gabriel Moreno fashion.
Despite the eventual outcome of these players to this point in 2022, this was not a shabby offer in July of '18, and the Nat's opting to stay the course and try for a playoff berth was a decision made by Mike Rizzo & Co. to "go for it" instead of adding players like these to their organization.
They would go on to finish 82-80, 9 games behind Colorado as the 2nd Wild Card team, missing the playoffs, losing Harper in Free Agency to Philadelphia, and then reducing the value of the pick they received for the QO they offered Harper by signing Patrick Corbin, who himself had received a QO from Arizona.
I think it's safe to say that the way the decision was handled in Washington in 2018 is not how teams want these situations to play out. Optimally, you're able to extend terrific players, especially ones as good and young as Harper was in '18, or as Soto is today in '22. If you can't extend them, you've hope to move them, adding as many future wins as possible to your team in the near future (tha tyou would otherwise miss out on by holding onto the player).
This time around Rizzo appears to be looking through a different lens, although the circumstances around the player in question, aside from being monumentally talented and approaching free agency at a young age, could not be more different.
This iteration of the Nat's are 34-67, quite comfortably the worst in baseball. There is obviously no chance of them making the postseason this year. Realistically, even with a historic degree of free agent spending, trades won in landslide fashion, and otherworldly development across the farm system, there is not a great chance of them making the postseason in the next '23 or '24 either. The team simply isn't good at all, and doesn't have the kind of talent base in the minors, like the Orioles last year (and today too), that could allow us to confidently opine that they might compete in the short term. Baltimore looks like a great bet to graduate a lot of major league talent from it's system to it's active roster in the next two years.
D.L Hall, Gunnar Henderson, Jordan Westburg, and Colton Cowser look to join Adley Rutschman, Grayson Rodriguez (currently hurt), Kyle's Bradish and Stowers on the main club by the end of next season. At some point in 2024 or 2025 we'll likely see Heston Kjerstad and Coby Mayo join that group.
That is a serious amount of talent and even if some, or maybe the majority of those guys aren't immediately productive (they won't all be), it still positions Baltimore to be competitive in the very near future. If things break well, they could challenge for the division as soon as next season.
The nearby team in D.C. is not in a similar situation. Even retaining Soto, the National's will not be winning anything anytime soon. You have to think this impacts the calculus of Rizzo going to ownership and asking them to commit to adding a ~450-500 Million dollar liability on their balance sheet as they apparently aim to position the team for a sale. For whoever the new owners are, the prospect of purchasing a team that cash flows (I'm making these numbers up) 50M with Soto, vs. one generating 85M without him is significantly different. Actually let's assume Soto recoups 15M of his hypothetical 35M cost in marginal generated revenue for the club instead, so 50M with vs. 70M without.
This is a deep topic in itself which I'll eventually touch on, but baseball franchises only go up in value. A product of their being a chunk of a massive government sanctioned monopoly that is allowed to monetize cultural capital in a way not really seen outside of sports. What I mean here is that if the Nationals are sold for $X Billion, and the new owners are aiming to hold them for 10,20,30 years before selling for some multiple of that, if those first 10 years of ownership look like they might generate 700M in profits vs. 500M, that's a difference that the current ownership can use to argue for a larger sale price. If you're selling the team this year, do you see extending Soto as being worth lowering your price tag by 100-200 million dollars?
The other side of this is that players are the product, and their is no profit for ownership as a whole without them. This is somewhat true for individual teams as well, as the players drive demand for tickets, merchandise, concessions, etc. That said, we don't know how much ownership values extremely popular players, but it appears obvious from the willingness of so many ownership groups over the years moving players that are seen as synonymous with the city and franchise, that the value they provide in purely monetary terms is not often seen as worth a top level salary. I don't know exactly what I think about this valuation yet, so I don't have a strong opinion here, but I think it's almost certainly part of the calculation, and that it's almost certainly seen roughly how I describe it in this paragraph.
So Soto is going to get dealt, or is almost certain to get dealt. Some reports the past couple of days have suggested that the team will make him a final "take it or leave it" offer prior to agreeing to the trade, but with Soto's stating that he sees the uncertain ownership situation as partial reasoning for his not agreeing to the prior offer, you have to think there's a serious likelihood that he allows himself to be dealt elsewhere instead. I think from the players camp's perspective, an acquiring team will going to be seriously incentivized to agree to an extension with him, so they may view a trade as increasing their leverage for a marginally better offer, and for all we know that may be the entirety of Soto's calculation about where he wants to play out his career.
As for what he's going to get dealt for? This piece is already getting a bit lengthy, so I'm aiming to write that up separately in the next day or so.