Trade Review: Padres acquire Juan Soto & Josh Bell

The San Diego Padres are a much better team today, after completing the biggest trade deadline deal in baseball history.

Yesterday, the San Diego Padres pulled off the biggest trade deadline deal in baseball history. That’s not an exaggeration.

Padres get
Juan Soto, RF
Josh Bell, 1B

Nationals get
MacKenzie Gore, LHP
Robert Hassell III, OF
C.J. Abrams, SS
James Wood, OF
Luke Voit, DH

It’s difficult to even comprehend Juan Soto being traded, honestly. Soto is very likely a future hall of famer, the only guys you can compare him to at his age are Ted Williams or Barry Bonds or Babe Ruth.

Guys like that do not come available for trade, maybe ever. They certainly do not come available for trade when they’re 23-years old with 2.5 years of team control left. And, if you were to tell me such a player were acquired by the Padres, I would’ve told you that there’s no way San Diego pulled that deal off without including Fernando Tatis in it.

And, yet, here we are. A.J. Preller and the San Diego Padres pulled off the impossible. The team with struggling offense gets a huge boost at RF and 1B, the bullpen gets a huge boost in the closer role, and even the bench was improved along the way.

The stars seem to be aligning for the Padres to make a really serious run at a World Series this season and beyond. They definitely have the talent on the field to pull it off, and the right manager to lead them. As such, I don’t really care about the package the Padres sent back to the Nationals to make this happen.

Grade: A+