How well did the Yankees and the Padres do in the Soto deal?
By Tim Britton, Grant Brisbee and Stephen J. Nesbitt
Yankees get: Juan Soto, OF, Trent Grisham, OF
Padres get: Michael King, RHP; Drew Thorpe, RHP; Jhony Brito, RHP; Randy Vásquez, RHP; and Kyle Higashioka, C
Tim Britton: Every team would get better if it added Juan Soto. But maybe no team needed Soto more than the Yankees.
That’s not just for narrative reasons — though countering your worst season in three decades by adding one of the sport’s finest hitters does help in that regard. But in 2023, only two teams saw worse production from their left-handed hitters than the Yankees. It perhaps follows that only one team handed fewer plate appearances to lefties than New York. What’s bad for any team is especially egregious for one that plays in a ballpark crafted to cater to southpaw sluggers.
The Yankees ranked 26th in the majors in OPS from their outfield, and that’s despite the presence of Aaron Judge. Remove him from the calculation, and New York’s outfielders slashed .214/.276/.360 for a .636 OPS. So yes, even if it costs you a good pitching prospect and a promising big-league arm, you do what it takes to add Soto’s career .946 OPS to that group. You add his otherworldly eye, power that will play up in the Bronx and the versatility he brings to a lineup that had grown staid over the last several years. It’s Juan Soto.
For San Diego, part of trading for Soto when they did was knowing, if things went south, they could always try to recoup some of the prospect cost by moving him ahead of free agency. They got an NLCS appearance out of the trade and some legit talent back, but, well, things have gone south financially. It’s hard to spin trading Soto as a positive.
Yankees grade: A
Padres grade: C
Grant Brisbee: Juan Soto is on a Hall of Fame path. Check that, he’s on a path to being an inner-circle Hall of Famer, in there with the greatest of the great. If you want to push back on that, remember that the dude just turned 25. Twenty-five years ollllllld. There are four players who are 25 or older on MLB’s top-100 prospect list.
This isn’t just a curiosity, though. If you’re looking at someone who is hitting free agency in the prime of a very, very special career, wouldn’t you want 10 months where you are the only team in baseball that can talk to him about an extension? That’s not just planting the seeds, but it’s watering them and putting them under a halogen lamp.
