Comment When Juan Soto came to the plate in the first inning Monday night, most of those in the lower bowl at Nationals Park stood and applauded. Last first at-bat as a Washington National? As he slid headfirst into the plate moments later, the thought was inescapable. Last run as Nat? In the fourth, when he hit a how-do-you-replace-that shot to left center, you had to wonder. Last homer with the Nats? All the while, the clock was ticking toward Tuesday’s trade deadline — the one Soto has been in the spotlight for more than two weeks. By the eighth inning, so many of the Nats fans among the 29,034 who drank in a 7-3 loss to Max Scherzer and the New York Mets were standing and chanting, “We love Soto!” “It means a lot,” Soto said after taking Scherzer deep and walking in his other three plate appearances. “It feels kind of weird, too, because nothing [has] it still happened, and we’re just waiting.” That’s tough stuff, and on an unusually pleasant August afternoon, you could almost feel it strangling the franchise and its fan base. There’s a chance — a chance — that when Tuesday dawns, Soto faces a future in which he’ll never put on a Nationals uniform again. Take a moment to evaluate what comes back in return. It’s a lot to stomach. “You’re not going to give away these players and not get something in return that makes us feel, ‘Hey, this is going to be our future and this is going to be really good for us,’” manager Dave Martinez said. “Those guys up there [in the front office] we are working diligently to get those players we need if we can get them. If not, we’ve got arguably one of the best young players in the game and I love the kid.” By 6pm on Tuesday the situation is incredibly fluid. By the time you read this in the newsprint, Soto could have been traded. Refresh your Twitter feed frequently. It’s the only way to keep up. “I feel good where I’m at and I understand it’s a business and they have to do what they have to do,” Soto said. “I’m just another player, another employee here – as Zim used to say.” Forever Nat Ryan Zimmerman has never faced such a situation. But here’s an undying truth about any potential Soto deal: The Nationals must ask for an unprecedented return. That’s their responsibility, given that a player of his ability and age has never been traded with two years and two months of control remaining before free agency. For a competitive team, this is not just three pennant races and three Octobers. It’s also two full 162-game seasons that can’t be ignored. As the deadline approaches, Josh Bell expects to think a lot about his time with the Nats But the flip side of asking for such a push — quite appropriately — is that it might be too much for a rival general manager, not to mention a rival ownership group, to swallow. Any club that trades Soto and expects to be able to sign him to a contract extension hasn’t listened carefully to the player — who has repeatedly expressed curiosity about 30 teams bidding for his services in free agency — or his agent. Scott Boras. A potential deal must be based on baseball concept and will be framed as such. But there is undeniably a PR element to it as well. And it would be hard for General Manager Mike Rizzo to stand in front of fans and argue that what he got for a generational talent will transform the franchise if the rest of the industry reacts with some version of “That’s all they got?” This should be a great return, giving fans more reasons to come to the stadium – not just in two or three years, but immediately. This is a tough package for any team to part with. Furthermore, it would make perfect sense for Rizzo to say some version of, “Why is this a bad result? We still have one of the best young players in the game. A new ownership group will be formed this offseason. Maybe they’ll be able to go further than the 15-year, $440 million deal Soto rejected from the Lerner family. I’ve become pessimistic about whether a deal can get done — and it’s more a 65-35 feeling against such a possibility than 90-10 — so Soto will likely trade five minutes after these words are posted. There is no certainty about any of this. Hang on to your hat. Well, wait. There’s a certainty to this: October 2019 and the parade that followed — man, it feels like a lot more than two years and nine months ago. “It seems like a long time ago,” Martinez said. “It does.” MLB trade deadline watch: Orioles send star Trey Mancini to Astros As if twisting that knife, the Mets started Schercher Monday night in what could have been Soto’s final game in the uniform they each wore during that wild run to a World Series title. In an unusually long and painful meeting with reporters before the game, Martinez teared up at times while considering what was and what remains. Since trading Scherzer and Trea Turner — not to mention Daniel Hudson and Yan Gomes and others — at last year’s deadline, the Nationals are 53-111 — numbers that make sense if you watch this team play regularly, but still seem striking in black and white. Martinez said Monday that he has a room in his home where he stores the most important memorabilia he has collected over the years. That’s it since 2019. In these dark days, he often heads down there to reminisce about old photos. “It kind of says, ‘Hey, no matter what happens, the goal is to get back there, right?’” Martinez said. “So every day, I’m going to go down there, pick myself up and say, “Hey, one day we’ll be back there. Just keep those memories intact.” But it’s not just the swirl around Soto that makes those days seem more distant. It is the degradation of professionalism in some corners of his own club. On Monday afternoon, Victor Robles — once the undisputed center fielder of a World Series champion, now a spare with an uncertain future — had a box of T-shirts in front of his locker, handing them out to any interested teammates. On the front: a photo of Robles wearing a clown nose — a nod to last month’s antics after Arizona’s Madison Bumgarner called him a “clown” for hitting a solo home run when the Nats were down by six runs in the eighth . On a winning team, a fun, self-deprecating t-shirt could be unifying. But for a group that has the worst record in baseball — and may be even more assured of that status by September — it’s comical. Who are the clowns, Victor? The effort that went into designing and ordering these shirts could have been better spent figuring out how to keep them from being thrown out on the base courses. But I digress. This, of course, is nowhere near the most important part of this week. The most important part of this week isn’t even about this week. It’s about directing the franchise. And we’ll know something about that direction based on whether Juan Soto gets another round of applause for the home whites on Tuesday night — or whether he’s packed up his belongings and left his hometown club for the last time.
