Yankees-Padres and Padres-Nationals comparison Juan Soto makes deals
It’s not often that a general manager makes two of the signature moves of his tenure with a team by making trades involving the same headlining player, but that’s exactly how it has played out for San Diego Padres general manager A.J. Preller — who has now both acquired and dealt away generational hitter Juan Soto.
It’s easy to compare the hauls from Preller’s two Soto trades to assess how well he did. The difficult thing of doing that is you have to correct for the fact that Soto’s trade value was nearly halved due to the passage of time, as well as the worth of the contributions he provided to the Padres (6.6 WAR over 214 games) and what he was paid in that period (just over $29 million).
Here is a detailed breakdown of the returns in both Soto deals and how the two trade packages stack up. And that’s all before you even get to the hardest part, which is comparing the value of ten young players who were traded in these deals and who are very different types of players at different points in their careers.
San Diego Padres trade Soto to the New York Yankees
Date of deal: Dec. 6, 2023
Yankees acquire:
OF Juan Soto
OF Trent Grisham
Padres acquire:
RHP Michael King
RHP Drew Thorpe
RHP Jhony Brito
RHP Randy Vasquez
C Kyle Higashioka.
Even though King is 28 years old and has made 19 big league starts in his career, he is the important player in this deal. Although the Padres’ primary short-term need is starting pitching assistance for 2024, San Diego’s return package is centered around obtaining multiple years of control over starting pitchers. King is the pitcher in this agreement who will contribute the most in 2024, and he comes with two years of control that will likely cost less than $10 million overall.
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