The San Diego Padres and New York Yankees completed a blockbuster seven player trade late Wednesday evening the clubs announced.
Headed to New York is OF Juan Soto, and OF Trent Grisham. Meanwhile San Diego will receive RHP Michael King, Jhony Brito, and Randy Vasquez, alongside SP Drew Thorpe and C Kyle Higashioka. The trade represents the 2nd time in less than a year and half that Soto has been dealt for a mega package of players and prospects.
The Yankees have now completely overhauled their outfield positions by adding Soto and Grisham from the Padres, and acquiring OF Alex Verdugo from the Boston Red Sox in an earlier deal as well. The trio of new fielders are set to join former AL MVP Aaron Judge in the Bronx after entering the offseason in need of left handed hitters. Their acquisitions likely mean that Giancarlo Stanton can officially become the team’s DH after battling numerous injuries over the past few seasons.
Both Verdugo and Soto are entering the final years of their current contracts, meaning the Yankees will get a good look at what they bring to the table before offering up some longer term deals. The question now is which of the Verdugo, Soto, Judge combo will assume full time CF duties this season. For his part, Grisham is likely to come off the bench, and be counted on to provide above average defence late in games.
According to San Diego GM A.J. Preller, more than 10 clubs expressed interest in Soto over the past week. “It’s very difficult to make a deal where you’re trading a player the caliber of Juan Soto,” Preller said. “But if we did that, we wanted to make sure we shored up a bunch of needs. We were able to get some depth with quality.”
“…myself with Peter Seidler at the time, we understood that you can also pivot. That’s just part of having elite players, is that there’s always interest for elite players and premium-type talent. We understood that.”
Since 2018, the 25 year old All-Star has posted a .284/.421/.524 slash line, to go along with 160HRs, and 483 RBIs across 779 MLB contests. After winning a batting title in 2020, Soto has led the majors in walks in each of the next 3 seasons, accumulating 412 base on balls during that time.
While a painful pill to swallow, the deal also restocks the Padres pitching ranks in a year where they could be losing Blake Snell, Nick Martinez, Michael Wacha, Seth Lugo and Josh Hader. A situation made all the more dour by the lack of quality pitching available this offseason.
Once as high as $250M, the Padres 2024 payroll is expected to fall somewhere closer to $200M for the start of next year’s campaign.
“I think we’re going to run very competitive payrolls over the next five years, and I think we’re going to have a very competitive payroll this year,” Preller said. “But it’s just what’s the best way to use that dollars, that player, and ultimately we decided to go add five players that I think are going to potentially play on our roster this year versus one. One very elite player. And also Trent Grisham; he’s a really good center fielder as well. We’ll see how it goes, but I think adding those players right now, and then being in a spot to do some more things, round out a club, that’s ultimately the route we went with.”
New York is expected to host an introductory press conference for their prized acquisition in the near future.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @JKyleSkinner
Photo: All-Pro Reels. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.