What’s going on here? Read this post. Want more trade values? Here they are for deals headlined by Luis Castillo, Andrew Benintendi, Carlos Santana, and Chris Martin, and here they are for deals headlined by Josh Hader, Frankie Montas, Trey Mancini, José Quintana, Christian Vázquez, Scott Effross, and Jake Odorizzi.
We’re only going through the Juan Soto trade today, but we’ll continue to pump these out ‘til we’ve calculated out all of ‘em.
The Juan Soto Trade
Padres Receive: Juan Soto, Josh Bell
Nationals Receive: Luke Voit, MacKenzie Gore, C.J. Abrams, Robert Hassell III, James Wood, Jarlin Susana
Juan Soto rest-of-season projected WAR: 2.5
Juan Soto rest-of-season salary: $5.7M
Juan Soto rest-of-contract projected WAR: 11.0
Juan Soto rest-of-contract projected salary: $38.0M
Josh Bell rest-of-season projected WAR: 1.1
Josh Bell rest-of-season salary: $3.3M
Luke Voit rest-of-season projected WAR: 0.4
Luke Voit rest-of-season salary: $1.8M
Luke Voit rest-of-contract projected WAR: 0.4
Luke Voit rest-of-contract projected salary: $5.2M
Padres luxury tax hit: $2.2M
MacKenzie Gore rest-of-season projected WAR: 0.1
MacKenzie Gore rest-of-season salary: $0.2M
MacKenzie Gore future value: $4M (est. 45 FV pitcher)
C.J. Abrams value: $55M (60 FV position player)
Robert Hassell III value: $28M (50 FV position player)
James Wood value: $28M (50 FV position player)
Jarlin Susana value: $3M (40+ FV pitcher)
Present value: Padres net $27.9M/3.1 WAR
Future value: Nationals net $61.1M/6.8 WAR, Padres net -$63.3M/-7.0 WAR
Commentary: This doesn’t include the higher probability of the Padres extending Juan Soto that they now enjoy, but still…this wasn’t actually all that much to give up for even just two and a half years of the guy. The present-to-future value ratios were higher on the Luis Castillo and Frankie Montas trades. Oddly, Soto seems to have been so expensive that his price-per-WAR may have actually dropped. An asset in an entirely different class.
Technicalities: We estimated Soto to maintain his WAR/season pace from his career to date through the remainder of his arbitration years, including the FanGraphs projection for the rest of this year in our calculation. We estimated the luxury tax hit to the Padres for this year and this year only. If they choose, they can stay below it next year, though that will be harder than it was. Still, the penalty for exceeding it next year and staying less than $20M over it is small enough that it’s not moving the needle much on this. We reduced Gore from a 50 FV to a 45 FV pitcher because of his elbow injury. It’s possible that’s rash, but it’s hard to see him as the 50 FV prospect, and the difference between 45+ and 45 is small.
