What’s incredible is that almost a year after The Reckoning, there isn’t much of a difference between the team Juan Soto is on now and the team he was substituted from ten months ago.
The Padres have Soto and Xander Bogaerts and Fernando Tatis Jr. The Nationals have Jeimer Candelario and Lane Thomas and Joey Meneses. Which team is 22-26 and which is 20-28 this morning? can’t you tell You’re not alone!
As Soto returned to DC Tuesday for the second time since last August’s mega trade, the Nats continued their not-so-bad, but not-so-bad game with a 7-4 loss. MacKenzie Gore — perhaps the best of the many blue-chip contenders Washington got from the Padres for Soto — couldn’t get out of fifth. He had a speed of 99 mph when he knocked out Tatis, the game’s first batter. He then threw 100 more pitches in 4 2/3 innings and failed to qualify for a decision.
“He gets in and is overwhelmed,” said Dave Martinez afterwards. “Not the first time.”
And yet, the Nats, having no expectations, came back from a 3-0 deficit before their bullpen broke late against a San Diego team that was without Manny Machado (broken hand) in the lineup and was desperate for a spark .
It’s never going to be normal to see Soto come out of the third base shelter at Nationals Park. Even though the stinging pain of his departure has subsided, the arm of the collective fans still figuratively hurts. Of course, what really hurts is that the 2019 team never really had a real chance to defend their championship. COVID-19 wiped out all fans during the truncated 2020 regular season and deprived the Nationals of a key revenue stream. And Steven Strasburg and Patrick Corbin paid dearly for the work of their passed pawns in the postseason from the bullpen.
Instead of conceding their title the next season, as every baseball team has done since Augustus E. “Ted” Moneybags invented the luxury suite after winning it all and drawing a few million people to the park, the Nationals clinched another their cash registers on it. And we’ll never know how losing the expected millions of dollars combined with the never-ending, money-sucking MASN saga starring the Orioles forces the Lerners to decide how much they’d be willing and how much money I can spend, to keep not only Soto but also Trea Turner.
Soto “what-if” about the post-19 nats themselves.
“It was really frustrating,” he said Tuesday from his locker.
“I think 2020 was a good team,” he continued. “We had everything we needed to compete. But then came COVID and everything went wrong, (and) back again. Lots of players – I test positive at the start of the season. And it was a tough moment. But at the end of the day we enjoyed it, we still have our rings. It was quite difficult to get my ring into my apartment. But it is what it is. I’m still a champion and I always will be.”
Soto is showing signs of life for San Diego after a brutal start. He produced a 3-on-4 score on Tuesday, including a smashing goal in game seven against Erasmo Ramírez.
Still, it will take most of the next decade to determine who “won” the trade. For one, it’s baseball. Some prospects explode; others simmer slowly and then brightly; others go out before they ever get hot. Second, there’s no telling where Soto will end up when he moves to free agency after next season.
Meanwhile, the five candidates Washington got back for Soto weave their way through the nats system. CJ Abrams and Gore are already firmly entrenched up here, and outfielders James Wood (High-A Wilmington) and Robert Hassell III (Double-A Harrisburg) are coming up. They don’t all become stars. But what if one or two exceed expectations?
Wood has scored plenty in one of the tougher minor league parks. But he’s showing signs of life: When he came into play Tuesday, he’d hit three homers with 14 RBI in the first three weeks of May. At 1.90 meters tall and weighing 110 kilograms, one’s head is reeling over what the 20-year-old Wood could be – could be – in a few years’ time. Hassell has recovered from a wrist injury and increased his batting average by more than 100 points this month in Harrisburg after being promoted from Single-A Fredericksburg in early May. Right hurler Jarlin Susana, six feet tall and still only 19 years old — “He’s like a big teddy bear,” Martinez said earlier Tuesday — is more of a wild card, but he also showed some form in Fredericksburg.
yes it is may There are also setbacks, aching arms and disappointments to come. I know. Or a kid could flash like a meteor at Double A like in 2018 and never come back.
The Nationals haven’t disgraced themselves for more than a quarter of the season. If the loss of Cade Cavalli to Tommy John’s surgery early in spring training was a major blow to the organization, it was something of a balm to see Gore and Josiah Gray make huge strides in their development to date in 2023. (Cavalli spent the last few days up here at the home club before returning to Florida on Tuesday to continue his rehab.)
It’s no secret how Mike Rizzo would ideally like to rebuild – through the start of pitching and the way he anchored the 2010-19 Nats around Strasburg and Max Scherzer. Gray has been far better at keeping the ball in the court so far this season. On Sunday he was far from his best against Detroit. His walks have increased in his recent starts, and Gray ran six in five innings against the Tigers. But he held Detroit down for just one run and took the win.
Gore wasn’t so lucky on Tuesday. In the first round, he conceded a two-run home run to Bogaerts. After defeating Soto in a dirty corner in the third round, Gore pulled in on Bogaerts after a pitch, sparing his right ankle in the process. Every home fan’s heart lay in his chest. But Gore got back on the bump and promptly fired on Bogaerts in another nasty turn. He hadn’t gotten off to a good start. But no problem. When it comes to G-and-G, like almost every other 25-year-old and younger in the home shelter, it’s about where they are in two years. They’re the bridge to whatever’s next for Nationals.
“I think we want to go out and do our job on everything,” Gray said of himself and Gore earlier this month. “We know the pedigree that we had going into the big leagues. We want to take advantage of that and say people are right, you might say. We don’t want to claim that we will be the next Strasburg-Scherzer combination. We just want to go out there and prove we can pitch, prove we can win games for this team. Whatever our career takes, we’ll wait and see. But right now we just want to keep the team in the games, put in a couple of good innings, some length, just do what we can.”
If LSU right phenom Paul Skenes goes to the Nationals with the second pick in the July draft, as many suspect, Washington could at least start dreaming of a Gore/Gray/Cavalli/Skenes rotation by 2025 or 2026. Even if it were just two of those four hits, Washington would be out of Corbin’s contract after the next season and past Strasburg after ’26 and free to attack the rotation.
For now, Martinez just wants Gore to settle in and settle down. Gray has learned to induce more contact this season. But it took a tough 2022 to see the light.
“Josiah has been much better at handling the high leverage situations this year,” Martinez said. “I often left him alone. He did a really good job. MacKenzie, we still have to get him there. And it’s the same. With Josiah last year teaching him in those big moments how to control the heartbeat, how to slow everything down and how to get to the next pitch. I think, MacKenzie, we need to get him there immediately. And there are days when he does it really well. And there are days when things kind of get out of control.”
So the Nationals’ return journey continues, intermittently, as their last great domestic superstar sets out, searching for the happiness and seemingly limitless future he had here not so long ago.
(Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)