Juan Soto

Do the Red Sox have enough to get one of the best players in the game?

News broke last week that Nationals star outfielder Juan Soto had turned down a 15 year contract extension valued at $440 million. The wisdom of poo-pooing almost half a billion dollars aside, the report can be whittled down to its essence thusly: the Nationals are going to trade Juan Soto.

The Red Sox will want to check in on that.

Before we get into that, thanks for reading and subscribing to Sox Outsider, my little Red Sox newsletter. If you don’t subscribe, it’s free. Just hit the button.

You will be inundated, if you haven’t already, with Juan Soto trade articles. I apologize for my role in this, but truthfully it can’t be helped. It’s like sending a child into a candy store by themselves. They’re going to eat the candy. It’s just going to happen. A baseball writer and Juan Soto trade rumors? Yeah, I’m writing about it. I’m sorry.

This is and remains a Red Sox newsletter though, so we’re going to look at this from a Red Sox perspective. Let’s do so by asking and attempting to answer some questions.

Should the Red Sox trade for Juan Soto?

Yes.

That was fast. Are you sure?

Yes! Soto is one of the best players in baseball. He’s 23 years old, has two and a half years of team control left. Every team should want to trade for him. Also, he solves a bit of an issue for the Red Sox.

How so?

You may have noticed the Red Sox are lacking in corner outfield production. Boston ranks 21st out of 30 teams in WAR from left fielders in 2022 and 24th in right field WAR. What’s more, that wasn’t much better in 2020 or 2021, and there’s nothing coming from the minor league system that can fix either of those problems anytime soon. Soto fits the Red Sox roster perfectly, both now and in the future.

Then there’s Soto’s star power. Had I not had a long and nasty bout of covid and then forgotten how to write, I’d have written about how this 2022 Red Sox team potentially represents the last of an era. The sheer number of core players set to depart our fair city this off-season via free agency is borderline staggering: Christian Vazquez, Jackie Bradley, Jr., Enrique Hernandez, JD Martinez, Nathan Eovaldi, Michael Wacha, and Rich Hill. That’s to say nothing of Xander Bogaerts, who is all but certain to opt out of his long term contract, and Rafael Devers, who will have one year left of team control and, barring a contract extension, seems likely to be traded himself.

Soto can step into that coming exodus and be the rock that holds the franchise together. He can be the next great Red Sox left fielder. He can be the next The Guy.

OK, great. What’ll it cost?

Everything.

Ha ha. Seriously. What will it cost to get Soto?

Ha ha. Seriously. Everything.

Can you be specific?

Sure. The Nationals are going to look at any team’s list of top 10 prospects and ask for, well... more or less that. For the Red Sox, that’s top prospect Marcelo Mayer, first baseman Triston Casas, starting pitcher Brayan Bello, and probably three or four other top prospects beyond that.

I went to Baseball Trade Values trade simulator as a quick ‘n dirty. According to them, it wouldn’t be insulting for the Red Sox to offer the three mentioned above (Mayer, Casas, Bello) along with Jarren Duran and Blaze Jordan. Perhaps you’d have to throw in Bryan Mata or Jay Groome (or both) as well. And maybe someone else besides. Miguel Bleis? Whatever it costs, it should be more than the Red Sox spent to acquire Chris Sale and more than the Marlins spent to acquire Miguel Cabrera. This would be perhaps the biggest trade in terms of prospect cost for a single player in baseball history.

It all sounds crazy and it is, but remember this is a 23 year old on a Ted Williams-ish career path. So ask yourself, what would you trade for 23 year old Ted Williams? That’s about what it’ll cost to get Juan Soto.

Also, there will be 20-25 other teams in baseball competing for Soto. Put those two things together and we’re talking about a virtually unprecedented prospect cost (and it’ll be prospects because the Nats have nothing after Soto and also any team that trades Juan Soto is going to immediately tank, so they’re not going to want anyone who isn’t a minor leaguer or, at bare minimum, a rookie).

That would completely destroy the Red Sox farm system! If you were GM, would you make that trade?

It’s really tough, even in the abstract, which is how I know the offer is probably at least in the ballpark relatively. It’s a tremendous amount to give up, and then you’d have to give Soto something like the biggest contract in baseball on top of that. You can’t - absolutely could not possibly - give up that many valuable prospects and then let Soto walk away in free agency two years later. That’s something that Soto, and his agent, Scott Boras, know as well. So you’d be over the biggest barrel ever.

So, to be clear, you’d give up virtually the entire Red Sox farm system and give Soto a 10 year, $500 million contract (or thereabouts)?

My gosh, I can’t believe I’m typing this, but I think I would, yes.

OK, better question: do you think Chaim Bloom will do it?

That’s an easier one: No.

Not because he wouldn’t necessarily want to. It’s just so extremely complicated and so so SO expensive in both player acquisition costs and the contract you’d have to give out that it’s hard to see our Chief Baseball Officer doing it. It would be detonating all the hard work he’s done to rebuild the farm system. It would be a guy who sincerely believes in the value of flexibility handing out the biggest contract (i.e. anchor) in baseball history.

And perhaps most of all, it would be an announcement that the Mookie Betts trade was a massive blunder. Because, let’s face it, it would be much better to have Mookie on whatever contract he’d have eventually agreed upon to stay in Boston plus whatever prospects it would cost to get Soto than to have Soto.

You’re going to hear a lot of talk about Soto leading up to the trade deadline. The Red Sox might be mentioned in those talks. They have enough to get Soto. Probably. It’s entirely possible the Nats don’t/won’t like Boston’s best prospects as much as another team’s and if that’s the case, not much you can do, but generally speaking it’s possible.

Given where the Red Sox are this season, the roster churn that’s likely to ensue both at the trade deadline and in the coming off-season, acquiring a 23 year old superstar to build your franchise around isn’t the worst idea in the world, even at this extreme a cost. But given the realities of the situation, it seems far more likely they’ll let this opportunity go.

What do you think? Would you do that trade? Am I overestimating the cost? Is Soto worth all the cost? Please let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading Sox Outsider. I appreciate it.