Battle of the Soto Returns

 

Nats-Padres, which is going on now, is especially interesting this year. Because we have a battle between two teams who got a whole bunch of prospects in exchange for Juan Soto. These two had a massive deal for Soto a few years back, and now neither of them have him. And they're just sort of left here to go 'man, wasn't it nice?'.

It's very funny, because of the two teams, the Nats have more prospects in that deal that haven't developed yet. Hassell and Wood are very famously not up yet, and James Wood's gonna be legendary when he does make it up [and seeing as he's hitting .350 in Rochester and Jesse Winker may be a deadline piece, THAT MAY BE SOON]. Meanwhile, Higgy, Vazquez and King are still very much with the team, and Jhony Brito was up for a while. The only piece of the Padres deal to not be with the MLB club is Drew Thorpe, and thanks to Dylan Cease he's having a way better time in Chicago. But, again, the Padres asked for MLB-ready pieces, instead of more organizational depth guys like the Nats wanted.

But luckily the Nats also got two guys who were stuck behind people, being C.J. Abrams and MacKenzie Gore, and they're both inherited the team. Abrams is still a great asset, and a team hero, and he's already got 12 homers and 39 RBIs. Gore, while not the full ace the Padres drafted him as, is every bit the strikeout artist he was billed as. He's got 98 Ks at the moment, despite a 6-6 record and a 3.50 ERA. Gore is not the most accurate pitcher in this rotation, not by a long shot, but he's still a very tough opponent, and he's made things difficult for batters all season. Unlike Abrams, I don't know if Gore will mellow out enough to truly be a leader for this rotation, but this year proves he might be on the right track.

And it's weird, because you can play the game of like 'what if the Padres had kept Abrams and moved Ha-Seong Kim over' or 'what if the Padres had kept Gore and didn't need as many pitchers from New York', like these are two teams that are indebted to each other for their last cycle of development. And even still, you're seeing both teams come into their own despite the rebuild; the Nats with the homegrown pitchers like Irvin, Herz and Parker, and the Padres with Jackson Merrill making it look too damned easy at 21 and Matt Waldron making every other team regret not getting knuckleballers anytime in the last five years. 

Obviously the Padres get the edge, because they're more competitive and don't have Joey Gallo, but the Nats still have a lot of intriguing pieces that make them capable of taking some from SD. We'll just see how it finishes out today, I guess.

Coming Tonight: Right as he was going to get a chance to start in center-field for a defending NL champion, he got dealt. Which is nice because he's arguably getting more of a shot on his new team.