Juan Soto trade grades: Who won the reported Padres and Nationals deal?

IT. IS. DONE.*

(*As long as Eric Hosmer approves it! We’ll get into that in a minute!)

The long-awaited trade involving the Washington Nationals’ Juan Soto has reportedly been agreed to, and the San Diego Padres are the winners (and I imagine this franchise will charter a flight for him, amirite?).

The return? As promised, it’s pretty massive for the rebuilding Nats: Tons of top prospects from a franchise that had plenty of them to spare.

It’s a rough day for Nationals fans, of course, who won’t see the 23-year-old become the franchise staple he was heading toward being. And they dealt Josh Bell to San Diego, too!

So who won and lost this one? Was it even? Let’s break down the trade with some grades:

Per reports:

The Padres get: OF Juan Soto, 1B Josh Bell

The Nationals get: SS CJ Abrams, 1B Eric Hosmer*, OF Robert Hassell III, OF James Wood, LHP MacKenzie Gore, RHP Jarlin Susana

*There’s a report that Hosmer needs to waive his no-trade clause for this, which creates some drama here if he doesn’t!

When you have a chance to go get a superstar like Soto who’s available at the age of 23, you empty the coffers to get him and then sign him to a massive deal to keep him in your franchise for a long time.

The funny thing is: The Padres didn’t give up a ton!

Abrams, Hassell and Wood are all top prospects. Gore was one. But they’re also getting back Bell … and they’re presumably getting rid of Hosmer!

Even if they had paid a bigger price, the grade would still be pretty great. But now?

GRADE: A

The fact that they had to trade Soto in the first place means they deserve an F.

That said, let’s talk about this deal: the return for a superstar of Soto’s caliber probably was never going to be enough. But trading Bell too? Wow.

Look, Abrams was once a top prospect in all of baseball. Gore was right up there too. Hassell is somewhere in the top 20 or 30 right now. Wood’s a top 100 guy.

But they’re taking on Hosmer’s contract now? And they gave up Bell, too, who was a pretty valuable trade chip? Ugh.

There’s no guarantee this group of young talents become stars, of course. Maybe we revisit this in a few years and some of them do. But Soto is the guaranteed megastar, and when you lose out on keeping a guy like that for a long time, that’s rough.

GRADE: D+