Before getting excited about potentially landing one of the best players in the game, Boston Red Sox fans should just enjoy the fact that a prominent Major League Baseball writer still considers the floundering team as contenders for something.
When writing about potential fits for Washington Nationals outfielder Juan Soto, MLB.com’s Will Leitch ranked each team’s likelihood of acquiring the superstar. Boston came in at No. 10 out of 14 potential landing spots.
“If you’re going to admit that you should have just extended Mookie Betts, there are worse ways to do so than trading for and extending Juan Soto,” Leitch wrote Wednesday.
One move doesn’t necessarily correlate with the other, but it would be surprising to see Soto in Boston after the prodigy turned down a 15-year, $440 million extension from the Nationals. It would be hard to envision Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom offering similar compensation, especially with Rafael Devers’ contract expiring after the 2023 season.
With Soto under team control through 2024, the Red Sox could hypothetically trade for him without plans of an extension, but it wouldn’t make much sense.
Throwing Boston on the list was thoughtful, but the idea of Soto ending up on the Red Sox is a pipe dream. You could argue that no player is worth the prospect haul he will cost to acquire and any well-run organization knows better than to spend so much capital on one player unless they have so much depth it won’t even leave a dent in the farm system. Few teams are in said position, and the Red Sox certainly are not one of them.
