For all of the other 29 Major League Baseball teams envisioning what Juan Soto might look like in the middle of their batting orders, Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo has put to rest any thoughts that the slugger is leaving the nation’s capital any time soon.
The Washington Nationals are making it clear that they are not trading Juan Soto this season
During a Wednesday morning segment on the Sports Junkies portion of 106.7 The Fan’s programming in Washington, D.C., Rizzo made it very clear that Soto will be a part of the Washington Nationals for the rest of the 2022 campaign and that the team plans to use him as a building block moving forward.
Mike Rizzo makes it clear that the Nationals are not trading Juan Soto. “We have every intention of building our team around Juan Soto,” he says. https://t.co/R3rNiQbltr
— Robert Murray (@ByRobertMurray) June 1, 2022
Washington entered the month of June with an 18-33 mark and in the basement of the National League East standings. The team will likely be a seller at the trade deadline, with Josh Bell as a strong potential candidate to be on the move, as well as other potential assets. However, the 23-year-old Soto will not be one of the Nationals on the trading block.
Rumors of a potential Soto trade have been fueled by reports that Soto rejected a $350 million contract extension from the Nationals before the season began that would have kept him in D.C. for another 13 years. Soto, however, does not become a free agent until after the 2024 campaign, so there is time for the Nationals and the budding superstar to reach a deal.
With Scott Boras as Soto’s agent, you can expect the price to keep Soto to keep climbing. And Soto has shown he is worth a megadeal, finishing as last year’s National League Most Valuable Player runner-up.
The Washington Nationals are not trading Juan Soto. Now they have to rebuild a team around him to get back into contention in the National League East.