NEWSLETTER
While Shohei Ohtani is the biggest name on the free agent market, he is not necessarily the only top-5 bat available this offseason.
For as much as the Padres will proclaim publicly that they can keep Juan Soto, and even defy all logic by suggesting they can EXTEND Juan Soto, the baseball world is dubious. It just feels like a desperate attempt to preserve the tiniest modicum of leverage.
Every time you crunch the numbers and talk about realistic paths to getting Padres payroll to the $200 million level they suggest they need to be at, you keep coming to the same conclusion: they’re gonna have to trade Soto.
Three teams are name-checked as likely having interest in a Soto trade: the Yankees, the Mariners, and the Cubs. There would be more, of course, but it makes sense that the Cubs are included there. The interest has previously been reported, and the fit is obvious (heck, it’s obvious for any team – he’s Juan Soto!).
Gonzalez does not write that the Padres ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO trade Soto, by the way. He simply concludes, after running the numbers and considering how the Padres might do in a Soto trade, that it’s pretty hard to come up with a reality where they don’t trade him:
“Perhaps there’s a way for the Padres to keep Soto, plug the several holes that exist throughout their roster and bring their payroll down to a more manageable level. If anyone is creative enough to figure that out, it might be Preller.
At this point in the offseason, though, it’s hard to fathom.”
The timeline here will be interesting, as I’m sure there is a relationship between a team’s aggressiveness on landing Soto, and its aggressiveness on pursuing Ohtani. It’s not that you COULDN’T accommodate both, but a team like the Cubs would have a little bit of a challenge with it, since you couldn’t have both as your everyday DH. Juan Soto would have to play in a corner outfield spot every day, and – for example – I don’t know that Ian Happ is a realistic center field option anymore.
So if there’s a relationship between the two pursuits for one of the teams that is likely to be seriously involved on both players, it’s possible the Padres will not be able to extract maximum value for Soto until after Ohtani has either chosen his team, or at least cut down his finalists to a group of two or three.
UPDATE: Just to make it even more firm, Buster Olney says it is 100% that Juan Soto is traded before the offseason is over.
