Juan Soto

JULY 2: In another update from Dougherty, he reports that the Nationals’ latest offers to Soto haven’t included any deferred money.  Just about all of the Nats’ biggest expenditures in recent years have included heavy deferrals — for instance, Stephen Strasburg’s seven-year, $245MM contract contained $80MM is deferred money.

JULY 1: Soto spoke with Dougherty on Friday, backtracking somewhat on his previously expressed desire to play out his arbitration years to test free agency. “Everybody wants to go to free agency and see how the market is going to be for them,” Soto told the Post. “But for me, I really don’t know if I want to go there or if I want to stay here. I feel really good here. We’ll see what’s going to happen. For me, right now, the plan that we always have is go year by year. But you don’t know what the future has for you.”

Asked whether he’d consider signing an extension with the Nats, Soto replied “Yes. Why not?” He suggested he’s content with Boras and the front office discussing potential terms during the season, saying he prefers to “to be far from (negotiations) because I want to concentrate on the game.”

JUNE 30: The Nationals made an extension offer to Juan Soto at some point this spring, writes Jesse Dougherty of the Washington Post. Specific timing of the proposal isn’t clear, but Dougherty adds that it’s believed the offer was made before Soto’s agent Scott Boras visited Nationals Park in late May. Soto rejected the offer, but Dougherty characterizes discussions between the two sides as “active.”

It’s at least the second offer the Nationals have put forth to the face of the franchise within the past 12 months. In February, Soto told Enrique Rojas of ESPN he’d rejected a long-term overture made prior to the lockout. Rojas reported the pre-lockout offer would’ve been for 13 years and $350MM guaranteed. Dougherty reports the Nationals went beyond $350MM in their spring proposal, but specific terms are unknown. Both Dougherty (Twitter link) and Britt Ghiroli of the Athletic (on Twitter) hear that rumors of a 13-year, $425MM offer are inaccurate.

In any event, the relatively recent proposal is the latest indication the Nationals are hopeful they can keep Soto around for the long haul. It’s at least somewhat notable that discussions remain open even after Soto again declined. In his February interview with Rojas, the two-time Silver Slugger Award winner expressed a desire to proceed year-by-year through the arbitration process in anticipation of reaching free agency at the end of the 2024 season. That wasn’t due to any expressed animosity towards the Nationals organization, but rather a desire to market himself to all 30 teams with a good chance at a record-setting payday.

Without specific terms of the proposal, it’s impossible to pin down precisely where the latest offer stacked up among the biggest in major league history. At worst, it’d have marked the third-largest guarantee ever. Only two players have ever topped the $350MM mark. Mookie Betts received 12 years and $365MM from the Dodgers on his July 2020 extension, while Mike Trout took home ten years and $360MM in new money on his March 2019 extension.

As was the case when Soto turned down $350MM over the winter, many fans are sure to bristle at the notion of rejecting a proposal at an even greater amount. That’s particularly true in the context of what’s been a relative “down year,” at least in comparison to his pre-2022 performance. Soto enters play Thursday with a .224/.375/.437 slash line. Those are the lowest such marks of his career across the board, as he’d hit at least .282 with an on-base percentage above .400 and a slugging percentage north of .500 every season from 2018-21.

Nevertheless, the first three months of this season are unlikely to have a depressing effect on Soto’s long-term value. For one, his relatively underwhelming numbers would still be a strong showing for the majority of players. Soto’s on-base and slugging marks are decidedly above the respective .312 and .394 league figures. His .224 batting average is certainly not ideal, but that’s in large part attributable to a .225 average on balls in play that’s the fifth-lowest number for qualified hitters. Soto’s average exit velocity and hard contact rate are down somewhat, so the lesser batted ball results can’t be chalked up solely to misfortune. Yet his quality of contact metrics have still been solid, and considering he entered the season owner of a .330 career BABIP, Soto seems likely to enjoy better ball-in-play results moving forward.

Owner of a .290/.424/.534 career line with more walks than strikeouts, Soto is still on track for an eye-popping payday. He amazingly won’t turn 24 until October and would hit free agency in advance of his age-26 season. Once there, he still looks a good bet to top the record $36MM average annual value for position players over more than a decade, assuming he stays healthy. A deal in excess of $400MM seems likely, and it’s not out of the question Soto and his reps could set their sights on the half-billion dollar mark. (Getting to $500MM would likely require a 13-year term at an AAV just shy of $38.5MM).

There’s of course some risk for Soto in continuing to turn down offers that’d make him among the highest-paid players in league history. Every player has some risk of a drop-off in performance or severe injury. Soto, though, will have already banked more than $25MM in arbitration earnings by the end of this season. He’ll go through the arb process twice more and figures to make another $50+MM over the next couple years before reaching the open market.

Discussions with Soto come against a backdrop of possible change for the Nationals. The Lerner family has been looking into sale possibilities for the past few months. A potential ownership shakeup has led to some uncertainty for president of baseball operations Mike Rizzo and manager Dave Martinez, each of whom are in the final guaranteed year of their contracts and have 2023 options that need to be decided upon next month.

The roster has undergone a major overhaul dating back to last summer’s trade deadline. Washington has kicked off a rebuild and seen the departures of key contributors to their 2019 World Series team like Max Scherzer, Anthony Rendon and Trea Turner. The Nats enter play tonight 20 games below .500, and they’re certain to move impending free agents Josh Bell and Nelson Cruz over the next four and a half weeks. They’ve not given much, if any, consideration to dealing Soto in a franchise-altering blockbuster. Rizzo flatly shot down speculation about a Soto trade four weeks ago, saying the Nationals “have every intention of building this team around” him.

Héctor Gómez of Z101 was first to report fairly recent discussions between Soto and the Nationals this afternoon.

At 18-33, the Nationals possess the second-worst record in the National League. With a litany of injuries, the game’s worst starting rotation (by measure of ERA, FIP and fWAR), and a middle-of-the-pack offense, there’s little hope of a turnaround. Given their place in the standings and last summer’s trade-deadline fire sale, there’s been plenty of recent speculation over at ESPN about the possibility of a Juan Soto trade this summer. Soto rejected a 13-year extension offer in the offseason and is “only” controlled for two years beyond the current campaign.

Despite the lack of an extension and dwindling club control, a trade of Soto hasn’t stood out as particularly likely, and this morning, general manager Mike Rizzo made clear that he has no intention of moving Soto this season.

“We are not trading Juan Soto,” Rizzo plainly stated when asked in a radio appearance on the Sports Junkies show on 106.7 FM The Fan (Twitter link, with audio). “We’ve made it clear to his agent and to the player. … We have every intention of building this team around Juan Soto. We’ve spoken to his agent many, many times — recently sat with him when he was in Washington D.C., made it clear to him that we are not interested in trading him, and I guess the rest of the world just doesn’t believe it. But that’s our position.”

Skeptics will point to the fact that Rizzo (or any GM) would never broadcast an intention to trade Soto (or any star player) for fear of losing leverage in talks. That’s true, but it’s also true that Rizzo didn’t have to make a declarative statement at all. It’s common now, more than ever, for baseball executives to use generic front-office speak when fielding questions of this nature. Rizzo, however, did not give a boilerplate answer about how he loves the player but it’s his job to listen to all opportunities, unlikely as a deal may be. Making definitive, on-the-record statements that a player will not be traded is fairly rare.

Notably, Rizzo took this same tack with Bryce Harper at the 2018 deadline. Harper indeed stayed put, although The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal has since reported that the Astros nearly pulled off a blockbuster acquisition of Harper before Nationals ownership stepped in to nix the swap. In fairness to Rizzo, that report suggests the Harper agreement was axed on July 30; Rizzo’s comments on Harper staying in place were issued on the morning of July 31. We’ve also seen former Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen declare that neither Noah Syndergaard nor Edwin Diaz would be traded and current Royals president of baseball ops Dayton Moore state on record that Whit Merrifield would not be moved. Not even three months ago, Cincinnati GM Nick Krall announced to reporters that even on the heels of a slew of cost-cutting moves, he had no expectation of trading either Luis Castillo or Tyler Mahle prior to the season. None of the players mentioned in those statements were traded.

Circumstances can always change, and that’s particularly true of a Nationals club that is reportedly up for a potential sale. It’s also possible that a team could simply bowl Rizzo and his staff over with a Godfather offer that he simply cannot in good conscience turn down. Still, it bears emphasizing that there’s no recent MLB example of a team’s top baseball operations official publicly proclaiming that a player will not be traded, only to then go back on that hardline stance and explain the about-face to the fanbase. The closest example is former Rockies GM Jeff Bridich saying in Jan. 2020 that Nolan Arenado would not be traded, but an Arenado deal didn’t come together until 13 months later, when circumstances had changed.

Fans of other clubs will surely hold out hope for a Soto blockbuster, and there will be no shortage of both speculation and hail-Mary attempts from other teams to pry the 23-year-old superstar from the Nationals’ grasp. Rizzo’s Wednesday comments, however, only make that long shot all the more unlikely.

Soto has yet to celebrate his 24th birthday but already has 107 big league home runs under his belt. He’s a lifetime .294/.426/.539 hitter and is already earning $17.1MM as a second-time arbitration-eligible player. (He’ll be arb-eligible four times rather than three, thanks to his Super Two status.) The Nationals’ reported 13-year offer this winter would’ve promised Soto $350MM in guaranteed money, but he opted to turn that down in favor of a year-to-year approach. Many fans were understandably aghast at the notion of rejecting $350MM in guaranteed money, but from Soto’s vantage point, he’s already earning $17MM this season and could reasonably project to earn upwards of $70-75MM over his final three arbitration seasons (2022-24). The extension, then, offered to buy out 10 free-agent seasons at somewhere in the vicinity of $27-28MM annually — an annual mark well shy of the current going rate for elite players and one he could likely trounce as a 26-year-old free agent.

Even if Soto is firmly off the market, the Nationals are shaping up to be sellers for a second straight deadline season. Veterans like Nelson Cruz, Josh Bell and Steve Cishek are among the names who could be reasonably expected to change hands, as all are free agents at season’s end.

The Nationals offered superstar outfielder Juan Soto a 13-year, $350MM contract extension before the start of the lockout, reports Enrique Rojas of ESPN (Spanish-language link). Soto confirmed the team made him a long-term offer but tells Rojas he and his agents at the Boras Corporation prefer to proceed year-by-year via arbitration. He remains under club control through 2024, giving him three more seasons before hitting the open market.

According to Rojas, the offer did not contain any deferrals and would have gone into effect for the upcoming season had Soto accepted. The Nats have deferred payments in many of their recent big-ticket signings. Each of Max Scherzer, Patrick Corbin and Stephen Strasburg, for instance, agreed to push a substantial portion of their earnings beyond the term of the contract. That reduced the present-day value of those deals, but the offer to Soto would not have had the same effect. The specific payout structure of the offer is unclear, but overall, it included an average annual value just south of $27MM through the 2034 campaign.

Some fans will surely bristle at the notion of Soto leaving $350MM on the table. It’s obviously a life-changing sum of money, and it’d have gone down as the third-largest guarantee (before accounting for inflation) in MLB history. However, a deeper look at Soto’s situation makes it unsurprising that wasn’t enough to forego the possibility of an even more lucrative payday down the line.

Soto already has a strong amount of financial security, lessening his incentive to forego future earning power for up-front payments. He reached arbitration early as a Super Two qualifier last offseason, eventually agreeing to an $8.5MM salary for 2021. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects him to earn around $16.2MM during his second trip through the process this year. That’s nearly $25MM that Soto has all but already earned.

Assuming he continues to perform as one of the league’s best players, Soto will see significant jumps in each of his final two arbitration seasons. He could approach or top the $27MM per-year salary the Nationals offered on the extension by his final year of arbitration. Mookie Betts’ $27MM agreement over the 2020-21 offseason is the largest ever for an arbitration-eligible player, and Soto’s Super Two qualification gives him a higher jumping-off point for future earnings than Betts had at the time.

As another frame of reference, take the 14-year, $340MM extension Fernando Tatís Jr. signed with the Padres last February. Soto’s deal narrowly tops that marker, but he’s negotiating from a greater position of financial strength. Tatís was four years from free agency at the time he signed his extension; Soto is currently three years away. And Tatís had not qualified for Super Two, so he was still a season from his first significant arbitration payment. Soto, as mentioned, has already banked $8.5MM and is in line for nearly double that amount this year. If one viewed Soto and Tatís as similarly valuable players, it’s hardly surprising the former’s comparatively stronger negotiating position set him up to decline a guarantee $10MM north of Tatís’ deal.

One can argue about precisely where Soto fits in discussion for the greatest players in the sport, but there’s no doubt he’s among the top few. He’s been one of the game’s best hitters from the moment he debuted as a 19-year-old in May 2018. Soto’s offensive production has checked in at least 43 percentage points above the league average, by measure of wRC+, in all four of his MLB seasons. He’s particularly taken off over the past couple years, posting numbers that look like they’re from a video game.

Since the start of the 2020 season, Soto has hit .322/.471/.572 across 850 plate appearances. He’s walked in an absurd 21.9% of his trips while striking out just 14.2% of the time, showcasing the sport’s best strike zone awareness. Among qualified hitters, only defending NL MVP Bryce Harper (.426) has an OBP within 50 points of Soto’s mark. Soto trails just Trea Turner (.330) in batting average, while Tatís (.598) and Harper (.594) are the only two batters with better slugging figures.

Soto has done all this as an astoundingly young player. He turned 23 last October, setting himself up to reach free agency in advance of his age-26 campaign. Thus it’s no surprise he’s viewed by most as being on a path towards at least baseball’s first $400MM contract, and it’s plausible he could top $500MM on the open market. Scherzer topped the $40MM average annual value mark this winter (by a wide margin, at $43.33MM). A $40MM AAV over a 13-year term — which would “only” run through Soto’s age-38 season — would mean a $520MM guarantee, for instance.

There’s plenty of time before free agency comes into focus for Soto, but he and agent Scott Boras are no doubt keenly aware of the chance he has at setting contractual milestones. Soto told Rojas he still envisions himself spending his entire career in Washington, but it seems his current plan is to allow the next few seasons to play out in hopes of getting to the open market. After kicking off an organizational retool at last summer’s trade deadline, it remains to be seen how quickly the Nats plan to install another competitive roster around Soto in hopes of capturing their second World Series title of his tenure.