BLEARY-EYED AND SLEEP-DEPRIVED, their five-o'clock shadows looking more like 10, A.J. Preller and Mike Rizzo lurched into their offices on opposite coasts early Tuesday morning ready to do the unthinkable. Pulling off the biggest trade in the century-and-a-half-long history of Major League Baseball had taken the two general managers to the brink of exhaustion -- and done the same to Juan Soto, the superstar outfielder who in a few hours would be dealt by Rizzo's Washington Nationals to Preller's San Diego Padres. For a deal so complicated, so consequential, so tectonic, though, an unfamiliar feeling that morning overwhelmed the principals of such a massive endeavor: peace.
For months, soothsayers around the game acknowledged the possibility that Soto, a 23-year-old whose hitting prowess draws fair comparisons to the greatest ever, could be traded. This weighed on the minds of all involved: Rizzo, whose résumé potentially could include the ignominy of trading a future Hall of Famer; Preller, who for nearly a decade had coveted Soto but understood acquiring him would come at the cost of a farm system he had carefully cultivated; and Soto, who so envisioned himself a career National that he had bought his first home in the area earlier this year.
Trades are inherently uncomfortable things, bets on an unknowable future, and the one they'd agreed upon in the wee hours of the night was the mother of all deals, a six-for-two swap that would send Soto and first baseman Josh Bell to the Padres for the richest bounty of prospect talent ever assembled in one transaction. It was paradoxical, a move that simultaneously made all the sense in the world and felt positively senseless.
Some deals come together quickly and painlessly. This was not one of them. As happy and fulfilled as everyone involved wound up, getting there took work. Making the biggest trade in baseball history was a process: getting the right players to satisfy both parties and avoiding the fate that befell a trade between the teams a year earlier.
Not this time. After weeks of discussion, countless hours of working on different variations of a deal, they found comfort in their discomfort, tranquility in the chaos and a trade for the ages.
IN MID-APRIL, The Washington Post reported that the owners of the Nationals, the Lerner family, were exploring a sale of the team and had enlisted the go-to banker for such transactions, Allen & Co., to assist in the process. Normally, news of team sales lands without much fanfare until an agreement is in place and a new owner to shepherd the franchise arrives, but across the country, the antennae of Scott Boras immediately fluttered.
Boras represents Soto, and he soon flew to Washington to forecast for Soto what the sale could mean. His calculus was simple: The Nationals might take another crack or two at offering Soto a contract extension -- maybe even one that would set a record for guaranteed dollars in American team sports. But considering where the Nationals were -- three years separated from a World Series win, with a shallow farm system and a last-place major league roster -- the team might prefer to pursue a trade. Signing Soto long term would necessitate heavier spending around him, and such capital improvements could impact bidding negatively. If there was anything the Lerners would not abide, it was circumstance depressing the Nationals' sale price.
What the Nationals were willing to offer Soto already had grown multiplicatively. He turned down a $110 million contract extension offer in February 2020 and another for $180 million the next month, just before COVID-19 shut down the sport. In November 2021, the Nationals nearly doubled their previous offer, presenting Soto a 13-year, $350 million deal. He said no again. The overall guaranteed grew to $415 million in April and was met similarly. Then on June 30 came what would be the Nationals' final overture: a 15-year, $440 million extension -- the biggest guarantee ever, but one with an annual salary of $29.3 million, lower than 19 previous deals and far below the $43.3 million a year the New York Mets lavished on Soto's former Nationals teammate, starting pitcher Max Scherzer, in November. When Soto didn't accept the proposal, the consequence was clear: Washington would have to consider trading him.
Then and even now that it has happened, it was a scenario that strains credulity. Juan Soto is the very sort of player teams don't trade: young, dynamic and, most of all, controllable. He is not set to reach free agency until after the 2024 season, when he'll have just turned 26. His career statistics border on silly: a .291/.428/.538 line, with 119 home runs, 358 RBIs, 469 walks and 414 strikeouts in 570 career games. He is by OPS+, the metric that attempts to compare on-base-plus-slugging across generations, the fourth-most-prolific hitter in history with at least 500 games played through age 23. Ahead of him: Ted Williams, Ty Cobb and Mike Trout.
It's not that Rizzo, the Nationals' GM since 2009, a personnel man and talent evaluator in an industry with increasingly less use for them, wanted to trade Soto. He first saw Soto at 15 years old in the Dominican Republic, signed him a year later for a $1.5 million bonus, promoted him to the major leagues at 19 and celebrated a championship with him the next season. On June 1, Rizzo had told a D.C.-area radio station that the Nationals wouldn't trade Soto -- full stop. And here Rizzo was less than a month later, respectful of -- if frustrated by -- Soto's belief he was worth more and tolerance of the risk declaring so entailed.
Rizzo also was fully aware that if he didn't at least explore the possibility of trading Soto, he'd be derelict in his duties as GM. Much as it pained him, Rizzo recognized his position. Soto was the rock. New ownership was the hard place. And he needed to prepare to extract himself from between them.
ALMOST IMMEDIATELY, the Nationals identified teams with the combination of farm system, finances and motivation to put together a potentially compelling offer for Soto: the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, St. Louis Cardinals, San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, Tampa Bay Rays, Texas Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays. They needed to move quickly: Though the Nationals had had time to wrap their heads around the fact that Soto could be wearing a new uniform by the 6 p.m. ET trade deadline Aug. 2, the calendar was quickly turning to July -- and their potential trade partners didn't even yet know Soto was officially available.
For some of the more methodical organizations, a shortened timeline to make a deal would have the potential to alienate. The Padres are not one of those teams. Under Preller, who has stewarded them since 2014, the Padres operate with extreme amounts of decisiveness and conviction. The fear that immobilizes some front offices in trade talks has no place in San Diego. The Padres' boldness won them the 2014 offseason and lost them 88 games in the 2015 regular season, prompting a teardown that laid the foundation for the current squad that entering July carried the game's fifth-best record -- even without Fernando Tatis Jr., their superstar shortstop who had missed the first three months with a broken wrist.
San Diego long had operated as a team befitting its small media market. Not anymore -- not with Preller at the helm, not with owner Peter Seidler quickly climbing the ranks among the sport's best, not with a player-development system adept at churning out quality major leaguers, whether in Padres uniforms or others thanks to Preller's wheeling and dealing. Padres prospects littered top-100 lists, with shortstop C.J. Abrams and outfielder Robert Hassell III unanimously in the front quarter and a pair of 2021 draft picks, shortstop Jackson Merrill and outfielder James Wood, heralded by the most in-the-know gurus. Speedy outfielder Esteury Ruiz was tearing up Triple-A. Eighteen-year-old Jarlin Susana, a 6-foot-6, 235-pound monster, was just starting to light up radar guns in the Arizona Complex League. Big-league-ready or rookie ball, pitcher or hitter, high ceiling or high floor, the Padres' prospect emporium had players in all shapes and sizes.
Still, in early July, teams were operating as if acquiring Soto was more dream than reality. The Nationals weren't inclined to tip their hand and deplete their leverage. Boras continued to meet with his client regularly, preparing him for the potential of a frenzied end to the month. It wasn't affecting Soto, though, not yet. True, he's carrying a career-low batting average that hovered around .240 -- he's not hitting the ball as hard as he has in recent years, his line-drive rate has dipped while his fly-ball rate has risen, and his average on balls in play is an extremely unlucky .247, down more than 60 points from his career average entering the season -- but he's also had plenty of the moments that have made him a superstar.
On July 13, facing a 2-0 deficit in the ninth inning against Seattle, Soto stepped to the plate against Mariners closer Paul Sewald. Before the at-bat, Mariners catcher Luis Torrens asked Soto about how he planned to approach Sewald -- an effort, Soto thought, to get in his head. On a 1-1 pitch, Sewald threw a 93 mph fastball at the top of the zone. Soto swung with fury, unleashing a 112 mph shot that soared into the night. Soto turned toward Torrens and said, "That's my approach." The ball landed 444 feet from home plate, his fourth home run in five games. (The Nats still lost 2-1, dropping their record to an MLB-worst 30-60.)
Three days later, The Athletic reported that Soto had turned down the $440 million extension and the Nationals would entertain trade offers. For Soto, the timing could not have been worse. The next night, he was leaving for the All-Star Game. The following afternoon was media day, and he would need to answer questions about the money, his future and the confluence of the two. Soto is not as much private as he is deeply unassuming, and the notion of having to lay bare his career -- and explain the rationale behind not accepting a lottery-level windfall -- placed him in an awkward position.
He withstood the barrage of questions and proceeded to win the Home Run Derby that night. He celebrated with his family and the large contingent of fellow Dominican All-Stars at Dodger Stadium -- one of the options to become his future home. In a quiet moment following his news conference that night, Soto contemplated his present and how different it might look from his near future.
"Wherever I go," he said, "I'm gonna keep doing my thing."
WITH THE TRUTH PUBLIC, the real maneuvering started in mid-July. Armed with input from analysts and scouts he had sent on the road to canvass the systems of teams they'd earmarked earlier, Rizzo reached out with offers. They were exorbitant, according to executives with teams involved in the discussions, even more than they expected Rizzo to seek -- and their expectations already were stratospheric. In some cases, the executives said, he sought six top prospects or a combination of six prospects and established major leaguers.
By the final week of July, the Nationals had trimmed their list to three teams: the Cardinals, Dodgers and Padres. They presented the best chances at pulling off a deal. St. Louis was reticent to part with center fielder Dylan Carlson, though with rookie second baseman Nolan Gorman and a bevy of prospects -- third baseman Jordan Walker, shortstop Masyn Winn, outfielder Alec Burleson and pitchers Gordon Graceffo, Tink Hence and Matt Liberatore -- there was at least a path to a trade. Los Angeles' player-development apparatus has churned out more quality major leaguers than any team over the past decade, and whether it was infielder Gavin Lux or starter Tony Gonsolin at the major league level or catcher Diego Cartaya, third baseman Miguel Vargas or starter Bobby Miller in the minor leagues, the Dodgers had the wherewithal to land Soto.
Whether either team had the stomach was unclear, though Rizzo did not intend to budge -- he was talking about Juan Soto, after all. More than a week before the deadline, though, none of the three teams in the running were ready to commit, either -- the alternatives were just beginning to come into focus, and while none matched Soto by himself, a volume approach was a palatable Plan B.
Preller was busy exploring every avenue. He is known among his fellow GMs as a veritable Dr. Strange, exploring an infinite number of outcomes and endeavoring to choose the one that will save the universe, or at least increase the Padres' World Series odds. They last won a playoff game in 2006. Their only World Series appearances came in the last century, and they lost eight of the nine games they played in two tries. Their championship drought dates to their inception in 1969. There are woebegone franchises, and then there are the Padres, whose urgency could be seen through less forgiving eyes as desperation.
The desire to find impact talent led Preller to multitask. While he pursued a Soto deal, he maintained conversations about Los Angeles Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani that went nowhere and others on the Chicago Cubs' triumvirate of Willson Contreras, Ian Happ and David Robertson that looked like they might have legs. San Diego inquired about Miami Marlins starter Pablo Lopez and dabbled in other controllable starters, all as backups in case their current discussions with the Nationals went the same way as those a year earlier.
In July 2021, Preller had canvassed the deadline landscape and gone big: He wanted Max Scherzer, the Nationals' ace and a future Hall of Famer, even though Scherzer would hit free agency that winter. Rizzo wanted Abrams. Preller said no. Then Rizzo asked for Hassell. Preller's response was the same. Maybe if Rizzo was willing to package Scherzer with shortstop Trea Turner -- whom Preller traded from San Diego less than six months after taking over -- then Abrams or Hassell would be on the table, Preller told him.
That version of the deal eventually came together -- except it was with the Dodgers, who had the catcher (Keibert Ruiz) and starter (Josiah Gray) who most appealed to the Nationals. San Diego floundered down the stretch, finishing 79-83, firing manager Jayce Tingler and starting anew with an eye on 2022.
Preller is not, contrary to popular opinion, just throwing a million darts and hoping one sticks. Instead, he considers each of the million darts available and tries to pick the right one. Sometimes he succeeds. Other times he fails. Either way, the Padres try to take a process-oriented approach, even if their process happens to differ from their competitors'. That's natural because of the circumstances. They're one of just six MLB teams without a championship. They're the only team in an American city with baseball as its lone major men's professional sport, and San Diego is the largest city in the United States without an MLB, NFL, NBA or NHL title.
That's part of Seidler's calculus as owner. What his grandfather Walter O'Malley saw in the West when he moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles -- limitless potential -- Seidler shares in his stewardship of the Padres. Since he took over as majority owner in 2020, Seidler has heralded the Padres for what they can be rather than what they've been. They've got a monopoly on San Diego and should operate with the mentality of being the only show in town.
The meeting of those philosophies is why, on the eve of Opening Day in early April, San Diego nearly swung a deal to acquire All-Star third baseman Jose Ramirez from Cleveland, even though current third baseman Manny Machado was about to start the fourth season of a 10-year, $300 million contract. The Padres' approach to talent is quite simple: If you're great, they'll find a spot.
Soto certainly qualified. Figuring out whether to plunder their system in a potential deal for him amounted to a philosophical referendum. Would the Padres be jeopardizing their future by trading four (or five or six?) young players for Soto, or was the better perspective that they were leveraging what they'd built, borrowing against potential for someone who has breached the heights of his own?
"That was the whole question," Preller said. "That's really what the last month was about. We had in our minds as good a system as anybody with a lot of premium players. We've had some really good players come through the system, and we felt right now it was as good as it's been."
As July reached its final days, as the hours left until the deadline turned from three digits to two, the Padres had begun to answer the existential question they'd asked themselves for the previous two weeks. Yes, they concluded: Juan Soto was worth mortgaging the farm.
ON JULY 31, in the second-floor baseball-operations conference room at Nationals Park, Rizzo gathered with his lieutenants -- assistant GMs Mark Scialabba and Mike DeBartolo, farm director De Jon Watson and assistant director of baseball operations James Badas -- and prepared for a long night ahead. It was less than 48 hours from the Aug. 2 deadline. The Cardinals were more or less out -- "We wanted to understand what the market was," St. Louis president John Mozeliak said, "and once we understood that, we were able to make a decision on how to proceed" -- leaving the Nationals precisely where they were a year to the day earlier: with a Hall of Fame-caliber player ready to move and the Dodgers and Padres the last teams standing.
The Nationals had just wrapped a series in Los Angeles, whose lineup already included Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith and Turner. Adding Soto verged on unfair. It also seemed increasingly unlikely. Even though the Dodgers had traded for Scherzer, Turner, Yu Darvish and Machado at past deadlines, never had they relinquished the sorts of prospects Rizzo sought. The Dodgers are the Dodgers, in part, because they've held on to the right players, Yordan Alvarez excepted.
The Padres still looked very much possible -- not that it would preclude Preller from making other big deals. Early on the afternoon of Aug. 1, San Diego traded for Josh Hader, the three-time National League Reliever of the Year. While other teams had inquired about his availability, San Diego moved aggressively, offering Ruiz, left-hander Robert Gasser and Taylor Rogers, who had spent the season's first four months as the Padres' closer and was second in the NL in saves behind Hader. The Padres avoided giving up any of the prospects they believed could serve as the heart of a potential Soto deal -- Abrams, Hassell and Wood.
The Padres had a few iterations of a four-for-one deal for Soto, with those three players the backbone of all of them. What they didn't know is that Rizzo was intent on a fifth: Susana, the hard-throwing teenager with 29⅓ innings on his professional résumé. He had punched out eight over four hitless innings three days earlier, and to cajole San Diego to include him in the deal, Rizzo broached the possibility of sending back Bell, the 29-year-old free-agent-to-be first baseman who had been one of the 10 best hitters in the NL this season. The market for hitters -- Bell, Contreras, Boston's J.D. Martinez -- wasn't nearly as robust as anticipated, and Rizzo pivoted accordingly.
On Aug. 1, Preller and his deputies worked into the evening targeting Soto, sensing the deal zone was nigh. The clock passed midnight on the East Coast, into Aug. 2, deadline day, and talks didn't stop. The Dodgers sensed they were out. The Padres started to feel confident. And the Nationals came to terms with something that even now, after the fact, is odd to read: They were going to trade Juan Soto.
Preller and Rizzo continued to work through the deal's details, and sometime after 2 a.m. ET, they came together. Soto and Bell would go to the Padres. Abrams, Hassell, Wood, Susana, left-hander MacKenzie Gore -- a rookie who once upon a time had been a top-five prospect himself -- and first baseman Eric Hosmer would head to Washington. It was a haul for the Nationals, an overnight rebuilding of their system. It cost them Soto, yes, but they'd prepared themselves for this moment over the previous five weeks. San Diego, too, had readied itself to swallow hard and go for broke. Maybe the Padres weren't the best team in the NL West and maybe they would still have a difficult wild-card series on the road against Atlanta or New York and maybe even if they won that they'd have to face the Dodgers, now with the best record in baseball, in the division series. But they would have Juan Soto, and 29 other teams wouldn't.
As midnight approached on the West Coast, Preller said the magic words to the baseball-operations team gathered at Petco Park: "We have an agreement in principle." The room exulted. San Diego's pro scouting director, Pete DeYoung, had come to work ready to celebrate. Earlier in the week, he saw a bottle of alcohol he thought could cap the occasion. He'd been in the game long enough to know not to tempt the baseball gods, but this was too perfect: SOTO Junmai Sake. They poured shots and toasted and threw them back with glee.
"Any kind of sake would've tasted good," Preller said. "But SOTO sake was great."
ALL THE WHILE, Juan Soto slept.
Impervious though he seems in the batter's box, which he treats as his own little fiefdom, over the previous days, Soto couldn't ignore the fact that his career, his essence, had become one giant rumor. He was tired -- physically, mentally, emotionally. On the night of July 31, he went 0-for-3 in a 5-0 loss to St. Louis, grabbed an early dinner, went to bed at 9:30 p.m. and slept for 16 hours. The next night, in what he figured was his last game for the Nationals, he treated the home crowd to a vintage Soto game: three walks and a homer to dead center off his buddy Scherzer.
Following the game, Soto was insightful, thoughtful, reflective. He loved the Nationals. He loved the chance they took on him as an untested 16-year-old and the opportunity they granted him after fewer than 500 minor league at-bats. For months, he had prepared for Aug. 2; now it was here, and he would accept his fate. It was God's plan, his mother, Belkis, liked to say. He returned to his house in Arlington, Virginia, said good night to Belkis -- who had joined him in D.C. as the deadline approached -- and turned in.
While Soto slept, Rizzo's eyes wouldn't shut, so wired was he by the adrenaline of what would become official the next morning after a medical review. Preller returned home around 2 a.m. PT and continued working, sitting on his couch and talking with a scout. In the middle of the conversation, he fell asleep. He awoke about an hour later, unsure how or when the discussion had ended. (This was not the first time he'd conked out midchat, even on this scout.)
Soto woke up midmorning to the call that he was being traded. Even though the deal wasn't official, it would be soon. He was going to hit in between Tatis, who will rejoin San Diego in the near future after finishing a rehabilitation assignment, and Machado. The emotional wallop came all at once. It wasn't real until it was real, and now it was real -- or at least on the verge of it.
Of course, there had to be a slight hiccup. The inclusion of Hosmer was a gambit by the Padres to lower their luxury-tax payroll number. Washington had agreed to take on $8 million of the $44 million remaining on the final 3½ years of his contract. Hosmer, however, didn't want to go to Washington amid its reboot and made that clear when he said he would invoke his no-trade privileges and block a deal, even if the Padres were willing to include a trade kicker and financially incentivize him to accept the move. Early in the morning, he made it clear: He was rejecting the trade.
Though this caused a panic among a public that feared Hosmer was going to blow up the deal, neither the Padres nor Nationals worried. They'd gamed out contingencies. First baseman Luke Voit and outfielder Wil Myers had both been deemed suitable replacements for Hosmer, whom Preller later in the day traded to Boston. Voit was the choice, and the medicals of the eight players involved came back clean. The biggest trade in baseball history was official around 2 p.m. ET, four hours before the deadline. Juan Soto was a Padre.
Soto headed to Nationals Park to say his goodbyes and clear his locker. The hugs and thank-yous were plentiful. He had witnessed so many stars leave Washington during his young career -- Bryce Harper, Anthony Rendon, Scherzer, Turner -- and now it was his turn. He and Bell ambled into the office of Nationals manager Davey Martinez, who was accompanied by Rizzo. They talked about the good times. The positive memories. The lack of hard feelings and resentment. Rizzo will take solace in Abrams' imminent big league arrival and the likelihood Hassell won't be far behind and Gore's anticipated September return from an elbow injury and Wood going 4-for-6 with a home run in his first game in the Nationals' system and Susana's much-anticipated debut. But for now, he simply wanted to say goodbye to a player he'd watched become one of the game's best. This was closure, or at least as close as he would get to it before the Padres head to Washington for a series this weekend.
"I loved him. I still love him," Rizzo said. "I love Harper. I love Scherzer. I love them all. We've been through everything together. It was emotional on a lot of fronts just because of the circus that was around it.
"We did as well as we could do. You lost a Hall of Famer at 23, but I think we expedited our reboot. When you're looking at the alternative, the same narrative would've been out there this winter. If you don't trade him now, what are you doing in the offseason?
"I give the Padres' ownership credit. And I give A.J. credit because he's not afraid to make a trade like this. And I give our ownership credit."
Soto, meanwhile, had a plane to catch. He went to Dulles International Airport, hopped aboard a Signature private jet with Bell and headed to San Diego. He spent much of the flight talking about how he could cajole Nick Martinez, owner of the No. 22 on the Padres, into giving him the number. Martinez wanted a boat. Soto thought a nice watch was plenty.
Off Soto and Bell went to San Diego, where they shared dinner before getting haircuts. They wanted to look fresh for their introductory news conference the next day -- first impressions and all. Granted, Soto could have shown up unkempt in ratty clothes and he'd still have received a hero's welcome. Short of a championship, nothing sates the thirst of a parched fan base quite like a new star, and this one came with a bon mot aimed at opponents: "I wish good luck to the other pitchers."
Before Soto strolled to the plate for his first at-bat as a Padre, the sold-out crowd at Petco unleashed a primal roar. The Padres have the fifth-highest attendance in MLB this season. The demand is so strong, Padres CEO Erik Greupner told The San Diego Union-Tribune, the team plans to cap season-ticket sales for the 2023 season.
The lucky ones will get to see the prime years of Soto's career, the ones that could help vault the Padres past the Dodgers (who swept San Diego in their first post-trade series) and Soto toward being the first $500 million player in baseball -- maybe in San Diego, where they've committed $640 million to Tatis and Machado and would love to take that tally over $1 billion with Soto. The coming seasons will help define, too, the careers of Preller and Rizzo. The true winner in the Soto trade won't be clear for years, but in an exercise that could have been an unmitigated mess, all three emerged at peace, ready for life after the trade that started as a dream and ended as history.