The Major League Baseball trade deadline is just days away and teams are making deals for players as we speak.
The Washington Nationals started entertaining calls for Soto once he declined a 15-year, $440 million contract extension. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic revealed which teams are considered frontrunners.
Rosenthal said the San Diego Padres and St. Louis Cardinals are at the top of the list.
“The perceived frontrunners are the Padres and the Cardinals,” Rosenthal said. “The Padres are a team, we’ve seen this before under general manager A.J. Preller, they are extremely aggressive and they have prospects, no doubt. Preller would love to get Soto to go with [Fernando] Tatis, [Manny] Machado and that excellent rotation.”
However, Jon Heyman would later report that the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres are “presumably” out of the Soto trade sweepstakes.
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“That’s two teams originally in that are presumably out now on Soto (Mariners traded best prospect in Castillo deal),” said Jon Heyman.
The Los Angeles Dodgers and Texas Rangers are two other teams who also can’t be forgotten on a possible deal.
“Jon Heyman of the New York Post wrote last night that the Cardinals, Padres, Dodgers and Rangers are among the teams generally viewed as those best positioned to pull off the blockbuster,” said Anthony Franco of MLB Trade Rumors.
“That wasn’t a comprehensive list of clubs with interest, although Jim Bowden of the Athletic tweets this evening that only four clubs remain in the market. Bowden adds that the Padres and Cardinals are among that group of four, but the identities of the other two teams remain unknown. To be clear, it’s not a certainty that no one besides St. Louis, San Diego, Los Angeles and Texas is still in the mix.”
It’s only going to get crazy as the next few days roll along.
