Juan Soto has perfectly awkward possible final home game at Nationals Park | Opinion
How competition stacks up to acquire 23-year-old starone night before Major League Baseball’s trade deadline, Scherzer is toeing the mound as a New York Met and Soto, unfathomably, might be playing his final game as a National. While some in the crowd try to meet the moment and greet his at-bat with fanfare, the home team’s 35-68 record is little match for a road team that comes in 64-37 and seemingly with half of Flushing in the house.
So when Soto, still just 23 but all but gifted a ticket out of town, spanked Scherzer’s pitch deep into the night, it allowed just a split second of solace for almost everyone involved.
pitcher Frankie Montas is a New York Yankee, inspiring Orioles hero Trey Mancini will try to topple him as a Houston Astro, a bunch of relievers switched hands — but the main event is still on for Tuesday evening’s 6 p.m. ET deadline.
Soto is on the trading block and while he still may not move until this winter, the chances of it occurring now — and granting the acquiring team three shots at a pennant with the generational hitter — marginally improved.
Luis Castillo (Mariners), or All-Star reliever Josh Hader (Padres), you probably retain most of your prospect capital. Heck, even if you did get one of those guys, you may not be out of it, as the Padres and entertaining GM A.J. Preller constantly prove.
It makes for great theater and Tuesday should be no different, with the generally established finalists for Soto — the Dodgers, Cardinals and Padres — ready to lay best-and-finals off the table.
Of course, all the hullaballoo makes it easy to forget about the inhabitants within the fishbowl.
This time, it is Soto, whose pending departure is a reminder that there’s no backside of a young star’s tenure that the Nationals can’t turn into a death march. First, it was Harper, a top overall pick at 17, a big leaguer at 19, an MVP by 22, almost all of it by design. In a simpler world, the Scott Boras client might have been presumed to leave, both sides recognize as such and depart with fond memories.
Instead, the final year and aftermath of the Harper era turned into a weird haze of heavily-deferred contract offers, a sullen march to free agency amid a collusion-adjacent market and a phony sense of “betrayal” from fans when Harper’s best offer came up the road, from the Phillies.
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For Soto, it was so different — and figured to end that way, too.
His rookie season was a circumstance-driven miracle, shot like a cannon from low Class A Hagerstown to D.C., a flurry of outfield injuries forcing him to the bigs. What followed has been five of the most dominant seasons by a left-handed batter anyone younger than 25 can probably remember. His lifetime .426 on-base percentage and plate approach evokes Ted Williams comparisons; his ice cold home runs in Games 1 and 6 of the 2019 World Series established himself, viscerally, as one of the baddest dudes in the sport.
But after that championship season, the foundation around him crumbled. Patrick Corbin, signed to a flags-fly-forever $140 million deal before 2019, has been a pinata since, appropriately failing to complete five innings in Monday’s 7-3 loss. Stephen Strasburg, re-upped for $245 million after his World Series MVP award, has started eight games since and is trying to recover from thoracic outlet syndrome, his future very much in doubt.
Meanwhile, a farm system’s failings that had been camouflaged by top draft picks of yore and appropriately aggressive free agent moves became badly exposed. Soto’s service time odometer ticked. Two-plus years left.
The foolhardy revelation of a contract offer that looked good ($440 million!) but in fact was of lowball variety ($29 million per, compared to the $35 million Strasburg will receive to not pitch) was the accelerant for the industry’s current level of hysteria. Soto won’t sign it. The Nationals probably won’t sweeten it, or perhaps, realize the rebuild is a bigger dig than imagined, and shovel-ready contention isn’t likely by the time Soto can walk.
So a trade it will be, either sometime Tuesday or over the winter, bringing us to Monday’s drama. Soto has done nothing to dent his image as perhaps the game’s most unflappable performer: He won last month’s Home Run Derby just hours after answering an hour’s worth of inquiries from national media when details of his contract offer were raw.
His July slash line, particularly given the circumstances, was absurd: .315/.495/.616 with six homers, Bondsian in his ability to take his walks but park balls that dared challenge him over the fence. Monday was no different: He drew a walk from Scherzer, lit him up for the home run and then drew two more walks.