Comment As Mike Rizzo, Washington Nationals general manager and president of baseball operations, made his radio appearance on The Junkies on 106.7 the Fan Wednesday morning, he did so with the baseball world listening far more intently than usual. . In less than a week from now, the trade deadline will have passed and gone, and Rizzo’s Nationals will have traded a 23-year-old talent or not, rocked the baseball world or not. Each word could offer a clue, a clue of sorts as to the path he and the Gentiles will take. And while Rizzo carefully avoided offering any such prediction, he made it clear that one line of Soto trade speculation — that the Nationals could use a Soto deal to try to offload big contracts, like pitcher Patrick Corbin’s deal — was not part of it. of the organism. designs. “We have never contacted a team and talked about Juan Soto and any kind of contract with any player. We are not going to reduce the return for any player by adding a bad contract. We’re not there in our organization right now,” Rizzo said. “We want to get the most for every transaction we make. So we’re definitely not going to stick with anybody’s contract with anybody’s deal, including Juan Soto or Josh Bell or anybody.” Why Patrick Corbin’s name appears in Juan Soto’s trade speculation If the Nationals hold that line, that means interested parties would have to package numerous top prospects or major league-ready youngsters to lure Soto away from Washington, that they won’t be able to mitigate the loss of a prospect simply by handing over money. Very few teams, if any, have enough surplus prospects and young major leaguers to make such a deal. And those who do may not feel the need to do so right now, particularly if a new ownership group makes Soto available again this winter. “We’re in discussions with Juan Soto with a lot of teams that I think have real interest in him,” said Rizzo, who declined to discount the possibility of the Nationals trading the star outfielder. “I will say this: We should get the deal that we want that has the most reasonable chance of becoming a championship organization than not trading him,” Rizzo said. “That’s it in a nutshell.” The fact that Soto became the center of attention for this year’s trade deadline is largely the result of a now-infamous leak: A week and a half ago, Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic reported that Soto had turned down what would have been more guaranteed money in major league history, $440 million over 15 years, and that the Nationals should consider trading him. Speculation flew about the source of the leak, after Soto was visibly upset after the information was made public. Had the Nationals leaked the details to signal that Soto was available and make it clear that they had really, seriously tried to sign him? “Leaks are so difficult. In this age of social media, who knows where some of these things come from. All I can tell you is that it clearly did not come from me for sure, 100 percent for sure, or our office. That much I know for sure,” Rizzo said. “We had this information three weeks before it leaked. We had plenty of time to leak it, if we wanted to leak it. Leaks never help the situation. It was disappointing for me.” Juan Soto was surprised the Nats might trade him. Trea Turner knows the feeling. Rizzo, who told the Junkies in June that the Nationals would not trade Soto, went on to add that the now-public information about the negotiations caused problems for Washington afterward. “It didn’t help us in anything we were trying to do. It didn’t help us maintain a good relationship with Juan and it didn’t help us with any kind of leverage at the trade deadline,” Rizzo said. “It really didn’t help us. We were hurt that the details were revealed.” The source remains unclear. The Post confirmed the details of the conversations, and Soto said he was disappointed they came out, suggesting he would not have instructed anyone in his camp to make them public. Ahead of the All-Star Game in Los Angeles, he answered questions about his future with his agent, Scott Boras, by his side, his Home Run Derby title overshadowed by the idea that the Nationals might be considering a an almost unprecedented deal for him. He suggested that he did not know what to trust in the organization since the situation had changed so dramatically. “With his agent’s knowledge, we told him when the deal was rejected, we said, ‘We’re going to have to explore all our options.’ And that’s all we’ve ever said,” Rizzo said. “I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t explore all the options that are presented to us now. We have a very good option: We have a talented Juan Soto for two and a half more seasons. This is option A, this is good. But we also have to think about options B and C.” “My job is to make this organization a perfect winner again, like we did from 2012 to 2019, being a consistent winner,” Rizzo added. “I have to find ways as the caretaker of this franchise to make us a championship organization for a long time to come.”
