The Padres SCREWED Up With Juan Soto

Does this face look happy to you? It's not. It's the face of disappointment. The disappointment that the Padres front office should be feeling right now. At the deadline in 2022, the Padres made a blockbuster move to bring Juan Soto to San Diego. A generational superstar, one of if not the best hitters in all of baseball, someone who helped lead his team to a championship at just 20 years old, hitting bombs and putting veteran Hall of Fame pitchers in their place during that World Series run, I mean, this guy was something special with the Nationals. And to add Soto to an already good and really exciting Padres team was of course insanely great and fun for the team and fanbase. Well, now he's gone, traded away to the Yankees in what I feel is one of the more avoidable situations of all time. The Padres absolutely fumbled the bag here. Really quick, I'm trying to get to 140,000 subscribers before 2024, so if you enjoy the content or are new and haven't hit that button yet, consider doing so. Thank you. Juan Soto had two and a half years left before becoming a free agent, and things were looking real up for the Padres. Although he wasn't necessarily a great hitter after the trade and started off 2023 really poorly, by season's end of his first full year as a Padre, Juan Soto was back to being looked at as one of if not the best hitters in the league. He played every game this past season, all won 62, walked the most times in baseball, smacked 35 home runs, drove in over 100 runs, got on base at a great rate, had a great OPS, was named an all-star for the third time, finished top 3 in MVP voting, and won a silver slugger. Oh, and Soto is also just 25 years old now. 25. He is the youngest and best player on the Padres by far. Yet they felt they had to trade him, and the more I think about it, the more ridiculous this seems for the Padres. Again, Soto was the best player on the team while also being 25. Aaron Judge was 25 in his rookie season. Juan Soto has already played six seasons, got three all-star appearances, four silver sluggers, a batting title, and played an integral part of a championship all before he was 25. If you have a guy like that on your team, you keep him. I just don't truly understand why the Padres didn't put more priority into Soto, and from the outside looking in, it really seems as if this team didn't look ahead at all. Everything they've done lately seems like it's for the short term without any thought or concern for how it can or will affect the long term. Last offseason, the Padres were pretty reckless. They were just throwing money out left and right, and it felt very inauthentic, almost as if they were just trying to land a big name star just for the sake of landing a big name star. They offered both Aaron Judge and Trey Turner more money than the Yankees and Phillies did, respectively. Yet they of course both said no, and at that point, the Padres should have just stopped right there. AJ Preller in the front office should have been like, you know what, we already have a really good team that just made the playoffs, we have guys on the roster currently who we need to make a priority in keeping, like Manny Machado and Juan Soto, so let's focus on that and maybe next year get someone else big from another organization. But no, because since Judge and Turner said no to the massively long contracts offered by San Diego, the Padres then pivoted to sign shortstop Xander Bogarts away from the Red Sox, giving him a deal that you just can't refuse. I'm sure Xander wanted to go back to Boston, but when you are offered what the Padres ended up giving him, you're basically forced to take it. The Padres gave Xander Bogarts $280 million over 11 years. 11. At the time of the deal, he was 30, and now you have him locked up until he's in his 40s. That is absurd. I love Xander, and he's a really good player, but to commit to him for 11 years is insane. And the Padres very clearly went above and beyond to make it happen, just like they tried with Judge, reportedly offering him a 14-year deal, and Turner another insanely long contract. They were just doing anything and everything they could to land someone, even if it meant overpaying and committing to that someone for a ridiculous amount of years, and so Bogarts ended up being that guy. Well, now the Padres are facing the repercussions of this sort of decision making. Financial issues, taking loans out, and having a shitty season despite having such a talented roster, making it known that they wished to cut payroll. And they did, and actively are cutting payroll, trading away Soto, and seemingly completely moving on from him. I guess they could still sign him and bring him back next year if he gets to free agency, but that seems unlikely. I just cannot for the life of me understand why the Padres prioritized a 30-year-old really good player in Xander Bogarts over a 24-year-old player currently on track to be a Hall of Famer. Even Manny Machado, someone who's been a Padre for several years now, they ended up extending him to another massive deal. He was also 30 at the time of signing it. Those are good players, don't get me wrong. Really good players, like I said, but you had one Soto. Why is he not someone you're making sure you got locked up before you look at anyone else? The Padres really backed themselves into a corner here. They have nobody to blame but themselves. They were so impatient and desperate to just keep adding other players that they didn't realize this could very well hurt them in the long run, and well, it literally has. They don't have one Soto anymore, and instead have Xander Bogarts, someone who has a contract that's now looked at as one of if not the worst in baseball. And it's not even like he necessarily had a bad year. It was actually pretty good when all said and done, and he can continue to be good, but it's hard to see that contract aging well. He's also 6 years older than Soto, same with Machado. Like, what are we doing here? To lock up Fernando Tatis Jr. was smart. Even though he's brought some issues over the years, he's still such a great player with even more potential while also being so young. But Bogarts and Manny are older, so you keep them over Soto? I just don't get the logic here, but again, I honestly don't feel like there was much logic that went into any of this. I'm not in the Padres' front office, so I'm not gonna act like I know what's going on. But from the outside looking in, this situation with Soto genuinely looks like the Padres were drunk last offseason and spent reckless money on prostitutes because they felt it was a fun in the moment thing to do at the time, but are now having to go through a divorce with their wife because of it. Did they not believe it was going to come to this? Maybe there was some strategy involved that I clearly cannot see. Hell, maybe this is exactly all part of the plan for the But it most definitely doesn't look like that, and as of right now, the Padres look like they recklessly botched the handling of Juan Soto, something that so easily could have been avoided. There is one thing that this team can do to turn this narrative around, which is to sign Soto if and when he becomes a free agent next offseason. If they do that, after giving him away for a year to the Yankees in exchange for young prospects to help the organization, this will be a massive Padres W. But like I said earlier, it's just hard to see that happening. If Soto was going to be a Padre for life, he probably wouldn't have been traded. I just feel like the moment the deal was official between the Padres and Yankees, that was all she wrote for Soto's career in San Diego, and they're both officially moving on. You never know, and only time will tell, but as of right now, the Padres completely messed up. They had Juan Soto, someone who may go down as one of the best hitters of all time, who just turned only 25, yet because of reckless decisions that very easily could have not been made, while also not prioritizing Soto, the Padres don't have him anymore, and they have nobody else but themselves to blame for losing such a special young talent. Let me know what you think, thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.