Major League Baseball

Juan Soto trade analysis: Are the aggressive Yankees back? What's next for Padres?

Updated Dec. 7, 2023 10:08 a.m. ET

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The worst-kept secret of the MLB offseason has finally materialized: The San Diego Padres have traded Juan Soto to the New York Yankees.

It's not every day that a 25-year-old superstar switches teams. The final terms of the long-awaited blockbuster include Soto and outfielder Trent Grisham heading east in exchange for pitchers Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito and Randy Vásquez as well as veteran catcher Kyle Higashioka.

With that, let's jump right into the trade impact for both the Yanks and the Pads.

Why the Yankees did it:

After Shohei Ohtani, Soto is the best hitter on the market. He was the Yankees' white whale from the moment the Padres put him on the trading block this winter. The Yanks were pining, borderline desperate, for a Soto swap to ignite their offseason. Any scenario in which he didn't end up in the Bronx would've been a nightmare.

With the deal finally concluding Wednesday evening, New York can proudly hoist the Soto sweepstakes trophy as equilibrium has been restored for the Bombers. Their fan base can be excited, their hopes and dreams for the upcoming season exponentially heightened. The Yankees can finally put their devastating 2023 season behind them.

Soto's lifetime .930 OPS always made too much sense at Yankee Stadium, where the left-handed bat will be aided by the short porch in right field and expected to top the career-high 35 home runs he hit this past season. He drives runners in, which the Yankees desperately need after finishing 29th with runners in scoring position in 2023. He's also durable, having played in all 162 games last year and never missing more than 13 games in a season since debuting in May 2018. That's no small factor for the veteran-laden Yankees. His imposing presence in the lineup will force opposing pitchers to challenge Aaron Judge more than we're used to seeing, what with the slugger having little protection and drawing walks at an enormous rate. Soto, mind you, is even more prone to earn a free pass: His career .421 on-base percentage is easily the best mark in the majors over the past six seasons.

At least for one year, the Yankees will boast perhaps the most dynamic hitting duo in the big leagues. After this year's middling campaign, pressure will be at an all-time high for New York to not just qualify for the playoffs but go deep in them. Soto, who's represented by Scott Boras, will then become a free agent after the 2024 season and likely seek a long-term deal in the range of $500 million. Soto turned down the Nationals' 15-year, $440 million offer in 2022, prompting his trade to the Padres. Now, the Yankees will have the chance to convince him to stick around in the Bronx and extend their love affair into a happy marriage. Adding Grisham to an outfield that lacks an everyday center fielder was a nice bonus in this transaction.

The Yankees simply had to trade for Soto, no matter the pitchers and prospects they hoped to keep. Now, they appear to be all-in on 2024 and, at least on paper, look more like the Evil Empire again. We've gotta give credit where credit is due.

Yankees grade: A

— Deesha Thosar

Why the Padres did it:

After going all-in on 2023 and falling just short of a postseason berth, the Padres are clearly intent on reallocating their resources this offseason. Soto was due to earn around $35 million and will be a free agent after next season, while San Diego entered this winter with massive holes in its staff and a lineup stacked with enough stars to atone for the loss of one of baseball's top sluggers. The Padres currently don't have the rotation of a contender, but they took a positive step on that front with this bittersweet trade.

Rewind to as recently as August and the notion that King could be one of the most important parts of a deal to land Soto would seem entirely far-fetched. But once he moved into New York's rotation for the final month, the right-hander suddenly emerged as a legitimately effective starting pitcher. It wasn't King's first stint in a starting role, but the degree to which he had settled into his spot in the Yankees bullpen over the past few seasons suggested a return to the rotation wouldn't be in the cards again anytime soon. It took an unlikely set of circumstances surrounding the Yankees' catastrophic campaign in 2023 to give him that shot to start again, but he ran with it and showed out at the perfect time.

There's undeniable risk involved here — it's an awfully small sample of high-level starter performance and King's track record of staying healthy is spotty at best. But if all goes well, King will be a key piece of San Diego's staff in 2024.

Of course, it was vital for San Diego to add far more than that.

In a Yankees system chock-full of pitching depth, Thorpe ascended in 2023 to the top of the crop, and made plenty of sense for San Diego to target in a trade of this magnitude. Despite below-average velocity, Thorpe's plus command and deep repertoire was more than enough to dominate the competition during his collegiate career at Cal Poly. With an ideal build and athletic delivery, Thorpe was a sensible target in the draft for teams with strong pitching development. The ingredients were present for the right organization to help his velocity tick up and amplify his entire arsenal in the process.

This indeed came to pass once Thorpe entered pro ball with the Yankees. His heater is still more average than overpowering, but there's a big difference between the 90-92 he showed as an amateur and the 92-94 range where he resides now, especially as he nears the big leagues. More importantly, the added velo has made his already nasty changeup play up even further as an exceptional swing-and-miss pitch and one of the best individual secondary offerings of any pitching prospect in baseball. It helped Thorpe rack up a whopping 182 punchouts across just 139.1 frames in 2023, more than any other minor-league pitcher. With just five starts at the Double-A level under his belt, Thorpe might need a bit more time to marinate in San Diego's system. But he's not far off, and he's an excellent bet to be a long-term solution in the middle of the Padres' rotation for years to come.

Vásquez and Brito slowly climbed through New York's system on similar timelines without much fanfare until their performance in the upper levels warranted more serious consideration as legitimate prospects. They each debuted in 2023, and proved they belong at the highest level, albeit in roles to be determined. Brito is a hard-throwing righty with a good sinker but the rest of his repertoire is fairly vanilla. He profiles well as back-end depth, but the exact kind San Diego was sorely lacking. Vásquez's smaller build evokes questions about his viability as a starter, but he's racked up strikeouts at a much more consistent rate than Brito in the minors. He threw six different pitches at least 10% of the time during his initial run in the big leagues — I'm especially curious to see how pitching coach Ruben Niebla curates his arsenal, though that likely will depend on the role San Diego envisions using him in.

Infusing pitching talent into multiple levels of the organization was an obvious goal in dealing Soto away, and the Padres accomplished that. But the Soto-sized hole in the outfield was always going to need to be addressed in the aftermath, and now Grisham's exodus clouds the outfield picture even further. If they can win the bidding, San Diego would be an excellent landing spot for KBO star and free agent Jung Hoo Lee, a former teammate of Ha-Seong Kim. Beyond that, the Padres are also fortunate that the rest of the position player market has hardly moved whatsoever in the time it took to finalize this Soto deal, leaving them with a plethora of options to add from the outside with the $35 million-plus cleared by moving Soto and Grisham. They could also look to acquire another catcher, as the defensive-minded Higashioka is best served for a platoon role.

As for the pitching haul, landing Clarke Schmidt would have made this deal more palatable for the Pads. But parting with Soto, objectively one of the five best hitters in baseball, was always going to be a tough pill to swallow regardless.

Padres grade: C+

— Jordan Shusterman

Deesha Thosar is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. She previously covered the Mets as a beat reporter for the New York Daily News. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Deesha grew up on Long Island and now lives in Queens. Follow her on Twitter at @DeeshaThosar.

Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He has covered baseball for his entire adult life, most notably for MLB.com, DAZN and The Ringer. He's a Mariners fan living in the Eastern Time Zone, which means he loves a good 10 p.m. first pitch. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.