After decade 'unmatched by few teams,' Juan Soto trade leaves Nationals starless and stunned

WASHINGTON – For a decade, they dominated more than they didn’t, almost always in championship contention, the greatest club on the planet for a fleeting moment.

Tuesday morning, the Washington Nationals finally imploded it all, leaving behind an unsettled future and a score of scarred, scrambling parties in their wake.

A scorned star. A defiant general manager. A stunned clubhouse. A tearful manager. A confused fan base.

That’s the power of Juan Soto, the 23-year-old superstar who is off to try and win a World Series with the San Diego Padres but will be remembered around here as the last man through the door, the last in a quintet of superstars who etched baseball on the map here yet were shown the door to other forever homes.

No departure, however, was more jarring: Soto, still more than two years from free agency and the greatest hitter of his generation, shipped cross country less than three weeks after he turned down a contract proposal and then was jarred by the revelation of its details.

You could call that afternoon – July 16, 2022 – the day it all really ended here, when the Nationals’ desire to seek a trade for their star after he turned down a $29 million per year offer went public.

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The details – incidental, really – emerged Tuesday morning when the Nationals struck a deal for four prospects and big league slugger Luke Voit in exchange for Soto and respected first baseman Josh Bell. A so-called reboot became an official teardown.

And the final acknowledgment that a championship window that crested with that 2019 World Series title arrived with a numbing finality.

“That flag’s gonna fly forever, for sure,” says reliever Sean Doolittle, one of the last pieces of the title club still milling about, “but this stinks.”

It probably stinks just a bit less for Soto. He will bat between Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. in San Diego, where the money, the superstars and the trove of prospects to replenish it all flow like a horchata to wash down your fish taco.

But Soto loved it here, bought a house here, counseled less experienced hitters roughly his age like a seasoned vet, shuffled into the heart of fans. Now he must pack, presumably sell a house, got through an emotional goodbye with manager Dave Martinez.

Yet weep not for Soto.

“The first time I got traded,” says designated hitter Nelson Cruz, whose poor first half ensured he’d be stuck on the 35-69 Nationals past Tuesday’s deadline, “I was 20 and I was crying for two days. He’s very mature in everything he does.”

No, a loss even bigger than the great Soto is the totality of it all, the closing window of a group of superstars that will never be assembled in this fashion again.

Once in a lifetime

The stars that made a franchise bubbled up in 2009. Rizzo’s first major act as GM after taking over for the disgraced Jim Bowden following consecutive 100-loss seasons was to draft pitcher Stephen Strasburg No. 1. That was followed a year later by another grim season that enabled the drafting of Bryce Harper with the top pick.

For Nats fans wondering if their franchise has a curse about them, this is probably not talked about enough, but: No club has ever drafted superstars of this caliber as 1-1 picks in consecutive years. And thanks to the new collective bargaining agreement, it’s not likely to happen again.

By 2012, the Nationals won the first of four division championships. By 2014, Anthony Rendon was an All-Star caliber player. By 2015, Max Scherzer was in the fold. Trea Turner was acquired in trade from those Padres.

Come 2019, all were World Series champs – save for Harper, replaced in the hearts of Nationals fans by Soto after he left as a free agent for a $330 million deal with the Phillies.

The schadenfreude was palpable: The occasionally insular Harper was rich and ringless, the joyous Soto and a merry band of vets were champions.

Instead, a grim revolving door and an odd pattern of contract negotiations began.

Harper had turned down $300 million from the Nats, we somehow learned. Through his end of things, we found out it was heavily deferred. Rendon, too, could not strike a long-term deal. He eventually left for the $245 million the club pegged to keep Strasburg, a fateful decision.

Turner? It’s almost like the Nationals liked him until he got too good, until his shortstop rent district got closer to $300 million than $200 million.

Now, they’re all gone, Turner packaged with Scherzer to the Dodgers after 2021 went sour. You don’t have to be the savviest fan to realize the Nationals faced choices on all these guys. Harper, Rendon and Scherzer received free agent deals worth a combined $705 million, with Scherzer receiving a record $43 million from the Mets.

Turner will receive at least $200 million after this year, Soto perhaps north of $400 million after 2024. That’s nearly $1.5 billion in superstars, gone.

Yet you also need not be a banker nor a seamhead to know that letting all of them go – with Soto and his two-plus remaining years the final nail – is inexcusable.

Rizzo seems to know this, too.

'I was the guy who signed him'

On what felt like a day of mourning in the clubhouse and manager’s office, along with the online community and in homes across the DMV suddenly stuffed with anachronistic shirseys, the GM struck a different tone. His hulking 2019 championship ring and commemorative polo said plenty, but he offered much more.

“I wore this ring purposely, OK. It shows what we did in the past and what we’re going to do in the future,” he said, before evoking one of Martinez’s chestnuts from the 2019 run. “We’re in a bumpy road now. We believe coming out of this thing will be a beautiful place.”

Gotta be tough to be known as the GM that has to trade Juan Soto though, right?

“I was the guy who signed him, too,” he replied, before noting that Soto, career OPS of .894, was fortunate to accompany him on the 2019 title run. “I’ll remember Juan as the guy who was with me when I won my first World Series as a general manager. And now I’m looking to do my next one.”

But what about fans with nary a star player to cheer on?

“By the way,” he said, in case you wondered where those players come from, “kudos to the scouting and player development staff for running all those guys through here. We’ve had as good of impact players as anybody in the game. We’ve had stars here throughout our tenure. We had a 10-year run that was unmatched by few teams. We won four division titles, a wild card title, a National League pennant and a world championship.

“You can count on one hand the number of teams that can match that success story the last 10 years and we’re equipped and capable and able to reboot it like we did before and have a 10-year run of success.”

Now that we’re aware just how this club got built, it’s fair to wonder if past performance can predict future prospects. The haul from the Padres – outfielders Robert Hassell III and James Wood, major league-ready shortstop C.J. Abrams and pitcher MacKenzie Gore (he’s close) and Jarlin Susana (he’s 18 but promising) is strong. A talent evaluator for an American League club, seeking anonymity for competitive reasons, called it “VERY solid,” after watching many of them over multiple seasons.

The Nats’ trade hauls the past two years do, as Rizzo noted, position them with a potentially elite up-the-middle alignment, with catcher Keibert Ruiz, Abrams at short, Hassell in center and Luis Garcia at second. The contracts of pitching holdovers Strasburg and Patrick Corbin will saddle them for a couple more years, but shouldn’t prevent grander spending when necessary.

It’s just kind of wild that the club is starting over again, back on the downslope after a decade of winning revitalized a blah franchise and added billions of dollars to the Lerner family’s assets.

“We transitioned from a nothing organization and team to a contender year in and year out,” says reliever Tyler Clippard, who joined the club from 2008-14 and returned this year. “I was proud to be part of that. It’s come full circle ... but it turned into a winning organization.”

Clippard was there for the brash Harper, debuting at 19, the reticent Rendon, was traded before Scherzer stomped on the scene and enjoyed a few weeks of Soto. Now, he and Doolittle, two injured relievers, along with the struggling Corbin and shelved Strasburg are the only recognizable players from a suddenly bygone era.

“You’re talking about the talent coming through this locker room over the last 10 years with Harper and Stras and Soto – man,” says Clippard. “Those are all generational players that have come and gone. it’s not easy. It’s going to be tough for the fans.

“But it’s up to us as players and an organization to give them something to root for.”

'I'll never have to make that decision'

That won’t include Soto, who, Doolittle remembers, was a visibly different man on the day details of his contract offer leaked. Soto was not smiling. He was not hanging out with his teammates. He was, as Doolittle said, “carrying it around a bit.”

Soto’s on-field swagger transitions to a more quiet fellow in the clubhouse. Now, he’d be caught up in a public-relations war, his team suddenly the injured party because he opted to pursue free agency in two years and not the $440 million offered.

The $29 million annual salary, though, would be $6 million less than the injured Rendon and Strasburg received three years ago. Players understand when others – particularly elite talents -are reluctant to sign contracts outdated by the time the ink’s dry.

“Juan had such support of the guys in here that when we started talking about it we were like, ‘Yeah, I could see why he wouldn’t take it.’ He’s that good and that young,” says Doolittle, 35, who joined the club via trade in 2017, one year before Soto’s debut.

“None of us could fathom being in that situation. And there were similar conversations in my time here where things came up with Harper and with Rendon. Where it was like, ‘I’ll never have to make that decision.’

“But then you start thinking about it and you’re like, ‘I can see why. Hopefully, they work something out.’ I know it seemed for a day there that he felt uncomfortable with it being out there. But there was never a time guys in here felt differently about him.”

Rizzo says he wasn’t acting on an edict form ownership either current or future; the Lerners are expected to sell the team when a buyer emerges. Whether Rizzo’s regime is the one to see this rebuild through will be up to whichever group pays the estimated $2 billion necessary to buy the club.

Rizzo laid his resume on the table Tuesday. Soto has done that the past five seasons and chances are, the Nationals may not see another like him, or those who left before him.

“It is a business. A big business. And when you’re trading a player like that, it’s never easy,” says Clippard. “You can argue that there really never will be a good trade for a player like that.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Juan Soto trade leaves Nationals starless and stunned at MLB deadline