Thoughts after the Yankees trade for Juan freaking Soto (and Trent Grisham)

Give up a homer to him, then get traded for him. It’s a tough business, Randy.

The Yankees entered the offseason needing to do something to liven up the offense and to some extent the franchise itself. That something arrived late Wednesday night. The Yankees have landed Juan Soto in a seven-player trade. It is a done deal. Medical reviews are complete and the Yankees announced the trade. Here is the full deal:

• Yankees get: OF Trent Grisham, OF Juan Soto
• Padres get: RHP Jhony Brito, C Kyle Higashioka, RHP Mike King, RHP Drew Thorpe, RHP Randy Vásquez

Tuesday I noted I heard the Yankees were making progress on a catcher trade. I knew it was Higashioka (sorry, I couldn’t say anything) but I did not know he was part of the Soto trade lol. The Padres get a new backup catcher and much-needed pitching depth, the Yankees get one of the best hitters in baseball and also Grisham for some reason.

Earlier this week it was reported the Padres offered Soto and Grisham for Brito, King, Thorpe, Vásquez, Clarke Schmidt, and two others. The Yankees talked them down to no Schmidt and no second unnamed player. For the most part, they relented, and gave the Padres the King/Thorpe package. Considering how few teams could take on Soto’s salary and give up arms, thus limiting his market, the Yankees gave up a hefty package. It’s a lot.

I built my Soto trade package around King and Thorpe in my Offseason Plan, so congrats to me for nailing that part. The trade packages diverged from there. The Yankees surrendered an awful lot of upper level pitching depth to get this deal done, but that’s what it took, so that’s what they gave up. The Yankees will presumably spend the next few weeks stocking up on arms.

This is the biggest trade the Yankees have made since at least Giancarlo Stanton, when he was coming off his NL MVP win, and I’d go back even further to the Alex Rodriguez trade. The Stanton trade was kinda weird because it was a blatant salary dump. The Yankees gave up legit talent for A-Rod, an in-his-prime superstar. They did the same thing to get Soto.

I’m sure I’ll have plenty more to say about the trade in the coming days and weeks. Here now are the first wave of thoughts. Thanks for staying patient while we waited for this trade to get across the finish line. Apparently there was a medical red flag with someone going to San Diego that slowed things down.

1. Soto in the Bronx. Soto, who is nearly a full year younger than Estevan Florial, authored a .275/.410/.519 (155 wRC+) line with a career high 35 home runs in 2023, and a pretty big chunk of the season was spend wondering when he would snap out of his slump. Soto’s worst season is a .282/.401/.548 (144 wRC+) line with 34 rocket ball-aided homers as a 20-year-old in 2019.

Soto slashed .277/.373/.554 (132 wRC+) in the postseason that year and helped the Nationals to a World Series title. Do yourself a favor and watch this at-bat. That’s a just turned 21-year-old kid working over that year’s Cy Young winner. Justin Verlander had a clear plan of attack (fastballs up), Soto didn’t bite, and put himself in a count to do damage. There’s a special confidence and precociousness to Soto.

Soto’s chase rates are in the teens every year and his swinging strike rate is usually around 6%. Over the last three seasons he has a 20.3% walk rate and a 15.7% strikeout rate. You could flip those numbers – 20.3% strikeouts and 15.7% walks – and they would be excellent. Soto’s plate discipline and hitting acumen goes beyond once in a generation. It’s closer to once in a lifetime.

A few days ago I mentioned Grisham rated poorly in Robert Orr’s SEAGER, which quantifies swing decisions. Soto predictably rates as one of the best. He’s so good Orr wrote a separate article (subs. req’d) specifically to point out how good Soto is and how bad the rest of the Padres were in 2023. The article included this graph. Soto’s all by himself in the top right (that's good).

With the plate discipline comes hard contact: 93.2 mph average exit velocity, 55.3% hard-hit rate, and 13.0% barrel rate in 2023. That’s not quite Judgian, but it’s not far off either. With the exception of his 50%-ish ground ball rate, Soto is pretty much the perfect hitter. Doesn’t chase balls, swings at strikes, doesn’t swing and miss, crushes the ball when he does swing. I know there’s more to life than Statcast sliders, but good gravy:

(Sweet-Spot% is the percentage of batted balls between 8-32 degrees launch angle, which is the ideal range. Soto’s ground ball tendencies drag him down near the bottom of the league.)

Here’s the weird part: Soto isn’t really built for Yankee Stadium. He only pulls about 26% of his fly balls and line drives, below the 32.8% league average for left-handed hitters. Soto uses left and center fields more than right field, and those are the big parts of Yankee Stadium. Here are his 2023 fly balls and line drives, just to have a visual:

The thing is, I don’t want Soto to change. I trust that he’s smart enough and a gifted enough hitter that, if he does change to take advantage of the short porch, it’ll all work out, but I see no reason to force things. Soto has more than enough power to hit the ball out the other way. Just be you, Juan. Don’t adjust until the game tells you you have to adjust, you know?

“Anytime you have a 1.200 or 1.300 OPS anywhere, you enjoy it, And the good thing for Juan is does that in a number of ballparks,” Scott Boras told Gary Phillips about Soto in Yankee Stadium (he has a career 1.219 OPS in the Bronx). “... I don’t know if it’s his favorite (ballpark), but when you’re Juan Soto, you kind of show up and every ballpark’s a favorite.”

In Soto and Judge, the Yankees now have two of the top five hitters in the sport – Judge is No. 1 and Soto is No. 5 in wRC+ from 2021-23 – and this is their best 1-2 punch maybe of my lifetime? Was A-Rod and Mark Teixeira this good? A-Rod and Gary Sheffield? The late 1990s teams didn’t have two hitters like this, even as good as those teams were. We’re gonna get to see what life is like on the other side of Manny and Ortiz for a year.

(Does Soto hit in front of Judge or vice versa? We have plenty of time between now and Opening Day to debate this, but Soto is on the record as saying he prefers hitting third, so I say let him hit third. Judge second and Soto third. Sign me up.)

Anthony Rizzo was the most significant bat the Yankees added between the Stanton trade and the Soto trade. They expected more from Joey Gallo, but even the good version of Gallo was not close to Soto. It has been a long, long time since the Yankees added a hitter this good and this impactful. It’s overdue, really. You couldn’t draw up a better fit, offensively.

2. Grisham too, eh? Grisham too. Didn’t see that coming after the Alex Verdugo trade. Multiple reporters say the plan is to keep Grisham and use him as a fourth outfielder. Honestly, with all the injuries the Yankees deal with each season, it probably won’t be long before Grisham the fourth outfielder becomes Grisham the everyday center fielder. You know how it is.

I wrote about Grisham the other day, when he first popped up in the Soto trade rumors, and at the time I said I would understand getting him in the trade, but I wouldn’t love it. That’s still how I feel, even though Grisham won’t be an everyday player (initially). Squint your eyes and there are reasons to like him (hard-hit rate, contact, etc), but he’s so passive. Swing the bat man!

I’ll give the Yankees this, they came into the offseason needing lefty bats and they’ve added lefty bats. Three of ‘em in Grisham, Soto, and Verdugo. A few weeks ago Brian Cashman said he wanted two lefty hitting outfielders and he found himself three before Christmas. Hopefully Grisham and Verdugo hit more than they have in recent years. They’ve been pretty meh lately.

(Before we knew Grisham was in the trade, I was going to write something saying the Yankees need a right-handed hitting fourth outfielder who could spell Verdugo against tough lefties and really go get it center. Someone like Harrison Bader, basically, not that I thought Bader would accept a fourth outfielder’s role. That’s kinda off the table now with Grisham coming over.)

3. On the trade package. Giving up King stinks, he’s great, but it is two years of King for one year of Soto, and King’s value has never been higher than it is right now. He had a successful stint in the rotation at the end of the year and he stayed healthy for a full 162-game season for the first time. This would really sting if it were, say, 4-5 years of King. But two? I can live with that.

I don’t want to be the guy who turns around and says “actually, they all suck” after the Yankees trade players away, though I do want to say you can argue they sold high on King and Thorpe (and even Brito and Vásquez). King had a great finish and stayed healthy this year. But do we know he can actually start? Like every fifth or sixth day for six months? No, we don’t.

(Are we talking about King fronting a Soto trade without that late season trial in the rotation? The Yankees – and King – boosted his trade value significantly with that move.)

As for Thorpe, he had a great 2023 and will be on all the top 100 prospect lists next spring. This is what the Yankees do though. They grow arms and they trade him for impact MLB players (or guys they think will be impact MLB players, their hit rate hasn't been good lately). Here’s what I wrote about Thorpe when I looked at the rotation depth in October:

The 2022 deadline is a reminder not all these (pitching prospects) will stick around, and the Yankees internally rank some higher than others. And, frankly, the Yankees don’t miss anyone they traded. Medina’s stuff plays down because he has poor command, Waldichuk is homer prone (I noted this in last year's top 30), Wesneski has nothing to get lefties out (.411 wOBA allowed this year), and Sears is fine. The Yankees know things about their players we don’t.

I am most curious about Thorpe because, as good as he was this year, it is a low-90s fastball, and how do things go when more advanced hitters don’t chase the changeup as much? I can’t help but wonder whether the Yankees will move him while his value is at its peak, before Triple-A hitters and the automated strike zone ding him in a way Single-A hitters did not.

There’s a “pump and dump” aspect to the Yankees and their pitching prospects. They grab guys like Waldichuk and Wesneski in the middle rounds, coach them up, then trade them for established MLB players. Why can’t Hampton and/or Warren be next? The Yankees are pretty good at developing pitching prospects. It is an area of depth they have traded from repeatedly. Do not be surprised if it happens again this offseason.

The Yankees will miss Brito and Vásquez as depth arms. I was kinda banking on Brito being the new King in the bullpen (that multi-inning guy) when King shifted into the rotation. Brito looked so good in relief this year, didn’t he? Also, shoutout to the scouts and player development people. The Yankees just built a Soto trade package around:

• A pitcher added in a 40-man roster cleanup trade when he was in Low-A (King)
• No. 61 pick in the 2022 draft (Thorpe)
• $35,000 international signing in 2015 (Brito)
• $10,000 international signing in 2018 (Vásquez)
• A backup catcher who was once a seventh round pick (Higashioka)

Thorpe is the only significant investment from a talent acquisition perspective, and he wasn’t a high first rounder or anything. King, a former 12th round pick, came over from the Marlins in the Garrett Cooper/Caleb Smith trade back in the day, and the Yankees got him to where he is now. Brito and Vásquez? Talk about lottery tickets that cashed in. Great work, farm system people.

The Yankees paid a handsome price for one year of Soto (and two years of Grisham). They’ve done a number on their upper level pitching depth this week, though churning out capable depth arms and building new breakout pitching prospects is kinda what they do. They bet on that ability at the 2022 trade deadline and they just made that bet again.

4. The outfield defense will be … interesting. Earlier in the day Wednesday, Aaron Boone said Judge in center field is “in play,” and that will surely be the case now. I don’t love it, Judge turns 32 in April and he’s coming off a major toe injury, but it seems the Yankees are doing it. I’m more worried about Judge wearing down than I am him suffering an injury. Shrug.

The Yankees figure to put the defensively deficient Soto in Yankee Stadium’s small right field, and I could see them playing him in left in, say, Fenway Park or Minute Maid Park, where there is less ground to cover. Judge and Soto will obviously play everyday. I suppose Grisham could wrestle playing time away from Verdugo if he hits and if the defense is bad enough.

As for that outfield defense, yeah, it could be rough. Probably not as rough as the Hideki Matsui, Johnny Damon, and Gary Sheffield unit in 2005 (-61 DRS!), but Verdugo-Judge-Soto figures to be below average. Judge is okay in center more than amazing and Soto’s not good. Verdugo can be adventure at times too. He’s prone to dumb mistakes, similar to Gleyber Torres, and dumb mistakes in the outfield often lead to extra bases.

I’m curious to see how Grisham is deployed, at least before someone inevitably gets hurt and he becomes an everyday player. Would the Yankees really pull Soto for defense in the late innings of close games? I mean, if it’s a close game, you kinda need to keep Soto’s bat in there. The fact Grisham and Verdugo are both lefties means you can’t platoon them either. Then again …

2022-23 Verdugo vs. RHP: .282/.328/.441 (107 wRC+)
2022-23 Verdugo vs. LHP: .244/.320/.331 (81 wRC+)

2022-23 Grisham vs. RHP: .178/.294/.329 (82 wRC+)
2022-23 Grisham vs. LHP: .230/.317/.397 (104 wRC+)

… maybe you can? Verdugo plays against righties and Grisham plays against lefties? That 104 wRC+ against lefties comes in only 277 plate appearances spread across two seasons. Not sure I want to put a ton of stock into that. Bit of a weird situation here in which two left-handed hitters are going to compete for playing time. No easy way to do it.

Also, we could finally see Judge in left field whenever Grisham plays over Verdugo. The Yankees had Judge play some left field last Spring Training and they said they were going to do it during the regular season to get Stanton in the outfield more often, though that never happened. Judge in left feels like a thing we could see when Grisham and his great glove is in the starting lineup.

The Yankees are trading defense to get offense – Soto’s worth it, Verdugo ehhh – and, for the most part, this aligns with their pitching staff. Their rotation is mostly strikeout and shallow fly ball pitchers, and the bullpen is all power sinkers and grounders. Runs will be given back defensively though. It’s inevitable. The offense should more than make up for it. That’s the plan, anyway.

(Jasson Domínguez is coming back eventually and will slot into the outfield too. Worry about that when it happens though. There's no sense in rushing him.)

5. The Yankees need some pitching now. The Yankees really took a bite out of their pitching depth this week. They traded one MLB starter (King), two at worst No. 6 starter types (Brito and Vásquez), two potential second half options (Thorpe and Richard Fitts), and an up and down bullpen guy (Greg Weissert). They also lost Matt Sauer and Mitch Spence in the Rule 5 Draft, so yeah. (More on the Rule 5 Draft on Friday.)

As things stand right now, in the early morning hours on Dec. 7th, the rotation depth chart looks like this:

1. RHP Gerrit Cole (amazing)
2. LHP Carlos Rodón (injured and ineffective in 2023)
3. LHP Nestor Cortes (injured and ineffective in 2023)
4. RHP Clarke Schmidt (set a new career in innings in 2023, by a lot)
5. RHP Luis Gil (coming back from Tommy John surgery)
6. RHP Clayton Beeter (on 40-man roster, no MLB experience)
7. RHP Will Warren (not on 40-man roster, no MLB experience)

I really like Warren and think he has a chance to help the Yankees meaningfully next season, but geez, the Yankees really thinned out the rotation depth chart. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is out there (more on him in a bit) and rumors about a Frankie Montas reunion persist, but the Yankees will need more than even those two. They need a few starters to stash in Triple-A too.

Fortunately, Spring Training is more than two months away, and the Yankees have more than enough 40-man roster flexibility – they opened another two spots with this trade – to be active on waivers and chase non-tendered pitchers with a minor league option(s) remaining (Kolby Allard? Dakota Hudson?). More trades are possible too (Everson Pereira for a pitcher maybe?).

Clearly though, the Yankees will spend the next few weeks replenishing their upper level pitching depth after all their activity this week. You need a lot of innings to get through the season – a lot – and, right now, it’s a little up in the air where a not insignificant chunk of those innings will come from. I suspect we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about arms the rest of the winter.

6. So long, Mike. Losing King is tough, man. It’s Soto, so you do what you have to do, but it’s tough to see that guy go. He’s a great pitcher, he’s funny and affable, and you don’t have to try hard to root for him. The Yankees need more players like King. I’m gonna miss him. I hope King thrives in San Diego and in two years we can talk about a free agent reunion. I’m sad to see him go though. So it goes, so it goes.

7. So long, Higgy. The Yankees are blessed with catching depth at the moment – they still have five catchers on the 40-man roster – and someone was going to go this offseason. That someone was always likely to be Higashioka, who was the oldest and closest to free agency (and second most expensive based on arbitration projections) among the catchers.

Higashioka grew up in Orange County, so this is something of a homecoming for him (he's a surfer too, he must be thrilled). He was also the longest tenured player in the organization. The Yankees drafted him way back in 2008. Any idea who the longest tenured player is now? It’s Judge. He was drafted in 2013. The next longest tenured are a couple 2015 international signings: Florial, Oswaldo Cabrera, and Carlos Narvaez.

Anyway, Higashioka was a solid dingers-and-defense backup for the better part of a decade, and a very popular teammate too. I know he will be missed in the clubhouse. Whenever he’s done playing, I expect to see Higashioka back in the organization. Scouting, coaching, something. Just feels like the logical next step. Good luck in San Diego, Kyle. Enjoy the fish tacos.

8. What about Yamamoto? Jon Morosi says the Yankees will have their in-person meeting with Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Monday, and Andy Martino reports Hal Steinbrenner is willing to push payroll above $300M to get Soto and Yamamoto. Good. Ticket prices continue to climb and every few months I have to sign up for a new streaming service to watch games that have been peeled away from my YES subscription. It’s time for Hal to hold up his end of the bargain.

The Yankees only have Soto for one year. Cole turned 33 in September and Judge will turn 32 in April. This is the year to really blow it out and spend huge. Then, when Soto and Verdugo and Gleyber and others come off the books next offseason, the Yankees can recalibrate, and figure out what to do with their payroll then. Once you’re at $290M or whatever, just keep going.

Yamamoto will play almost the entire 2024 season at age 25 and the Yankees should sign him because players this young and this talented do not come along very often, and that is especially true when they only cost money. You can draw a straight line from passing on Bryce Harper to having to trade King and Thorpe for Soto. If the Yankees don’t want to trade Roderick Arias for Sandy Alcantara or whoever in a year or two, then sign Yamamoto now.

Jon Heyman and Jayson Stark (subs. req’d) both reported Yamamoto’s price tag could approach $300M, though I think they mean contract plus posting fee? I gave Yamamoto a $250M contract as part of my Offseason Plan and that came with a $39.375M posting fee. Figure a $257M or so contract is what gets the total to $300M. It’s not unreasonable for a player this age and of this caliber. Whatever the number, it’s time to make YamaSoto a reality.

(The Soto trade may not take the Yankees out of the running for Yamamoto, but I think we can safely say they’re out on Cody Bellinger, Jung-Hoo Lee, Kevin Kiermaier, and any other outfield candidates they’ve been connected to in recent weeks. Flipping Grisham and Verdugo for pitching and then signing Bellinger would be something though.)

9. What about an extension? It’s not happening. Don’t waste time thinking about it. Several top Boras clients have signed extensions one year prior to free agency (Jose Altuve, Xander Bogaerts, Stephen Strasburg, etc.), so it’s not impossible, but it seems pretty clear Boras and Soto are intent on testing the market. That’s Soto’s right. He’s earned it.

Soto rejected a $440 million extension from the Nationals during the 2021-22 offseason. He then made $17.1M in 2022, $23M in 2023, and he’s projected to make $33M in 2024. That means Soto needs “only” a $366.9M contract next offseason to come out ahead. Seems doable. Will the Yankees go there? I’m not sure. Let’s let 2024 play out first, then circle back.

(Judge set the market for best in the game kinda hitters at $40M a year through age 39. Beginning in 2025, that means 14 years and $560M for Soto. Honestly, that’s not that crazy when you figure what Shohei Ohtani is about to get.)

The Yankees now get a head start on selling Soto on the organization, and, as I’ve said before, Soto hating it would be valuable information too. You’d rather know that now then find out after you give the guy $500M next offseason. I don’t expect that to be an issue though. The trade gets the Yankees one year of Soto. No more, no less. With any luck, Soto will be so great the Yankees have no choice but to extend him in a year.

(Soto is a slam dunk qualifying offer candidate. He could have a Gallo-esque season and the Yankees would still make him the qualifying offer given his track record and pedigree. It’ll only be a compensation draft pick after the fourth round given their luxury tax status, but the Yankees will recoup a prospect that way should Soto leave as a free agent this offseason.