This was originally going to be a full trade deadline preview, but let’s face it, there just isn’t a lot of interesting things to write or read about the Nats trading Josh Bell or Mike Soroka for their future 20th best prospect. Since Andrew Flax covered that ground well, I’m going to focus on the big fish, a MacKenzie Gore trade.
The idea of a Gore trade seems to be more of a product of bored writers looking for patterns based off of three observations. First, that the Nationals are bad this season. Second, that Gore has the same amount of time until free agency as Juan Soto had when the Nats traded him. And third, that Gore has Scott Boras for an agent. Bingo bango, you have a situation that demands a trade.
Except that analysis misses a lot of key context differences. To start, the Nats roster today is significantly better than their roster in 2022. On this day three years ago the Nats had two players with a fWAR above one, Juan Soto (2.8) and Josh Bell (2.2). Their next best players were Keibert Ruiz, Victor Robles, and Patrick Corbin. Today they have five, James Wood (3.3), CJ Abrams (2.9), Gore (2.8), Mitchell Parker (1.2), Trevor Williams (1.2), Brad Lord (1.2), and Mike Soroka (1.1). Yes you read that right, both Wood and Abrams have a better fWAR than Soto had when he was traded.
Now you can quibble with how much Parker, Williams and Soroka will really figure into the Nationals future plans, but by future talent today’s Nationals are still in a much better place than they were in 2022. The 2022 team had nine players under 25 make an appearance by the trade deadline, this year’s team nearly doubles that with 17. On the offensive side the Nationals now have a solid core with Wood, Abrams, Dylan Crews, Brady House, and Garcia. Obviously you would love to see Crews and House already hitting at Wood/Abrams levels, but I am confident that with the peripheral numbers we see from both they should be fine.
You know where the Nationals do not have much if any young depth? Pitching. Especially now with the news that Travis Syroka is getting Tommy John surgery. Last year’s surprises Parker and Jake Irvin have a taken a step back and are looking at best like 5th starters. Fellow surprise DJ Herz is out for the year with an injury. Cade Cavalli is struggling to regain his form and Josiah Gray is still MIA. The Nationals do not have enough pitching to be able to cover up a Gore-sized hole on the team.
When the Nationals traded Soto (and included Bell in the deal) they didn’t need to care what came next because they had literally traded all of their good players. That would not be the case this time, without Gore where is the potential path to success for that offensive core? At the level the Nationals owners want to spend they need to be building a good team around that core while they are still cheap. Another 2-3 year wait for a pitching staff to be built will put all of these players in arbitration contracts getting steadily more expensive.
Speaking of contracts, one of the main reasons for the Soto trade was that he turned down their 15 year, $440 million contract extension offer. The Lerners had decided that was the most they were going to offer, Soto knew that was nowhere close to what he would get as a free agent. Time has proven Soto correct as the New York Mets ended up giving him Bryce Harper’s contract on top of that $440 million to sign him this offseason.
While MacKenzie Gore is a fine pitcher, his next contract is going to be nowhere close to these numbers. Last offseason, Max Fried (equivalently talented, two years older) signed an 8 year, $218 million contract with the Yankees. The Nats have already signed a pitcher for more than that when they signed Strasburg to his 7 year, $245 million deal. This is comparing apples to omakase.
The Soto trade, while disappointing, has been a great success for the Nats in bringing back three stars and a top prospect. Based on those results it’s obviously tempting to double down and try to get even more good players out of the trade tree. However, stripping out context and expecting a great return because that’s what happened in the past is literally the gambler’s fallacy. The Nationals are better off sticking with the group they have and going all-in this offseason to build around them.
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