The Big One dropped, in both directions on opposite coasts. The Nationals, who've gone from surrealistic World Series champion and National League East powerhouse to hell in a little over two and a half years, traded what should have stayed a franchise foundation to the Padres, the National League West contenders who often enough mistake splash for sustenance.
Juan Soto went West the day after it turned out he'd end his Nats tenure with a bang, throwing Tomas Nido out at the plate to keep the Mets to a mere 32-run top of the second, and crunching his former teammate Max Scherzer's 1-1 fastball for a leadoff home run in the bottom of the fourth en route a 7-3 loss to the Mets. It didn't make it easier for Nats fans to swallow this.
Soto became expendable when he turned down a $440 million extension that looked stupid-fat on paper while packaged to deny him the thing he wanted most. He wanted 10 years and got them. He wanted the total dollars and got them. He didn't get the highest annual average value the way the package was packed.
Maybe Soto was foolish taking the all-or-nothing stance. But maybe the Nats were just as foolish, with or without a pending potential ownership change, to decline making even that small enough adjustment. Standing just as all-or-nothing, with Soto not due to hit free agency for the first time until 2025, the Nats decided even the next Ted Williams was expendable.
Stop laughing at the Ted Williams comparisons. Only five hitters through age 23 have higher OPSes than Soto does: Williams, fellow Hall of Famers Ty Cobb and Stan Musial, and Hall of Famers to be Albert Pujols and Mike Trout. The order from the top is Williams, Cobb, Trout, Musial, and Pujols. His June slump leaves his season so far not quite as good as his priors, but rehorsing himself last month restored Soto on the way back where he belongs.
But if he had a fat enough hand in the Nats' 2019 in-season resurrection from the outhouse to the Promised Land, will it be fat enough to push the Padres to the Promised Land at last? Baseball's worst kept secret is that Padres general manager A.J. Preller has a genius for trades equal to Soto's big swings and nothing much to show for them.
Oh, he's managed to land some of the bigger fish on the trade market in exchange for high-rated prospects who haven't yet returned to take a big bite out of his hind quarters for the most part — if you don't count Trea Turner. (Nat turned Dodger.) But there's always a real first time. Isn't there?
He's run the Padres eight seasons, delivered such blockbuster trade acquisitions, at the in-season deadline or the offseason, as Mike Clevinger, Jake Cronenworth, Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, Blake Snell, and Fernando Tatis, Jr., the Padres haven't yet gone to any full-season postseason. (They reached the National League division series during pan-damn-ic short 2020.)
And he was lucky that his incumbent first baseman Eric Hosmer declining to waive his no-trade clause to move to Washington didn't kill the Soto deal. Hosmer has declined so precipitously since becoming a Padre as a free agent that, if Preller wanted to get the rest of his due salary off the San Diego books, he had to move yet another good prospect to do it if he found a team willing to take Hosmer on. So it was thought. He managed to find a taker for Hosmer in Boston, dealing Hosmer, a top-25 infield prospect, and an outfield prospect, to the Red Sox for 2016 first-round draft Jay Groome, a left-handed pitcher.
Then, again, as USA Today's Bob Nightengale noted, Soto locked in through 2025 has another upside: in the unlikely event the Padres still can't cross the threshold, Preller can still find a way to flip him on behalf of bringing other delicious-looking prospects back for a team and organisational renewal.
If there was good news for the Nats, it was getting five prospects in return for Soto and Josh Bell, with all five rated somewhat higher than the haul they took back from the Dodgers last year in exchange for Max the Knife and Trea Twinkletoes. But if there was worse news for the Nats, it's the number one problem with prospects: No matter how highly rated, they're just prospects who might or might not cut it fully as Show players.
If they do cut it, it'll take the sting out of losing a bona fide franchise player only if their cutting it turns into another world championship or two. If they don't, this one's liable to sting for Nats fans as long and as deep as such historically notorious purgings as Brock for Broglio, Ryan for Fregosi, Seaver for a quartet that sounds more like a law firm — Flynn, Henderson, Norman, and Zachry — than team reinforcements.
Soto at this writing has yet to hit one out for the Padres, but in four games wearing San Diego silks he's posted a .471 on-base percentage and a .571 slugging percentage (1.042 OPS) with three walks and two of his five hits going for extra bases while scoring thrice. The Padres get to play seven games with the Nats this month. Nats fans may say "thanks for the memories" only long enough until they howl in agony over the damage he's liable to do against his old mates.
Strangely, the Soto deal was just shy of the big deal of the day when it came to breaking fan hearts. It's not that Nat fans weren't wringing hands and drying tears once they first knew Soto became expendable, but Oriole fans in the throes of seeing an unlikely revival enough to put the team right into the wild card hunt from almost out of nowhere hurt even more losing Trey Mancini.
Hours before Soto moved west, Mancini's ticket to the Astros was punched in a three-way deal sending promising but inconsistent outfielder Jose Siri from the Astros to the Rays, pitcher Chayce McDermott from the Astros to the Orioles, and pitchers Jayden Murray and Seth Johnson from the Rays to the Orioles.
For Mancini it was a terribly mixed blessing. One moment he went from a home ballpark whose left field fence was moved back far enough to cut his power production at home to a ballpark with a short enough porch that he'd have hit over twice the ten bombs he has on the season so far. But he also said goodbye to a mutual love affair between himself and a city starving for the days when the Orioles were consistently great, year-after-year.
His agreeable personality and his courageous fight to beat colon cancer two years ago endeared him even further to Oriole fans than his live bat. As Baseball Prospectus observed, "Mancini ... was the heart and soul of a franchise long depleted of either."
The depletion may include Orioles general manager Mike Elias, who offered one of the most cacophonous explanations ever heard after a team struggling to return to greatness unloaded a highly popular and franchise-valuable player as they saw a postseason berth clearly enough in a surprisingly short distance:
The winning last couple of months that we have, the momentum we have, has made this a much more difficult decision and a much more complicated trade deadline than it would have been or that any of the past ones have been. But ultimately, I have to tether my decisions to the outlook and the probabilities of this year. We have a shot at a wild card right now but it is not a probability that we're going to win a wild card.
Translation: in one deal and one bowl of word salad whose flavor no dressing on earth could improve, Elias as much as told Oriole fans he's pushing the proverbial plunger on both this season whole and his team's gallant, almost-from-nowhere re-entry into the postseason picture, however much distance the Orioles might still have to travel to get there. With their now-former heart and soul sent onward to join the first-place ogres of the American League West.
Maybe Elias is still building for the nearest future after all. But maybe something could have been done without making the Orioles' heart and soul the proverbial sacrificial lamb. Could, and should. "He's the nicest human I've ever met," said Orioles first baseman Ryan Mountcastle, a sentiment that was common in the Oriole clubhouse and Baltimore itself.
Until trade deadline day, people were even willing to bet on the Orioles having a phenomenal enough shot of reaching in. Now they uttered a couple of four letter words, one of which is the vulgar synonym for fornicate and the other a word meaning either a large receptacle for holding gas, an armored attack vehicle, or taking a dive. Three guesses which meaning Orioles (and Nats) fans think applied.
"Teams liked to claim that captains were no longer necessary because one player shouldn't be elevated above his teammates," BP said, "but also, that same force made one player essentially untradable. If someone is designated the heart of a team, you can't cut him out. Their value might go to waste."
As of this writing, Mancini as an Astro hasn't hit much or reached base too often, but when he has hit he's connected: three of his 4 hits since becoming an Astro have flown over fences. He may yet earn even half the affection in Houston that he did in Baltimore.
The region of the nation's capital has taken enough blows that have knocked the wind out of its belly in the last few years. The Nationals and the Orioles, both of whom enjoy substantial capital followings, have told them, basically, "What's two more sucker punches among friends?"
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