According to recent reports, superstar outfielder Juan Soto declined a 15-year, $440 million extension from the Washington Nationals. Now, the Nationals may look to deal Soto and delve even deeper into their rebuild. Soto could have rejected the deal for a couple of reasons. First of all, he may not want to stick out an entire six or seven-year rebuild with the Nationals. He also may not think the monetary figure is high enough. After all, the $29.7M AAV would place him only 17th in the league. Whether he is traded or not, it's inevitable that Soto signs a massive extension within the next few years.

Soto by the numbers

In his first five MLB seasons, Soto has put up generational offensive numbers. He has the best plate discipline since prime Barry Bonds, walking in 18.9% of his career plate appearances while striking out in just 17.0%. He has a career slash line of .292/.427/.540 and a 155 career wRC+. Soto's batted ball data has been just as great. He has a 12.4% barrel rate, 47.8% hard-hit rate, .416 xwOBA, and 91.6 average exit velocity in his career.

Among active players, Soto ranks 2nd in career wRC+, 1st in career OBP, 5th in career SLG, and 1st in career BB%. Since he entered the league in 2018, he ranks 2nd in wRC+, 2nd in OBP, 4th in SLG, 19th in HRs, and 8th in fWAR. His best season was in 2020, he had a .490 OBP, .695 SLG, 201 wRC+, and 2.5 fWAR in 47 games. He has a 165 wRC+ and .450 OBP since the start of the 2020 season.

This season, Soto got off to a slow start but has started to pick up his production over the past month. In 119 PAs since June 11th, he has a .299/.487/.598 slash line with a 197 wRC+. He's such an elite hitter that fans have called this a down year for Soto despite his 151 wRC+ and .405 OBP. Soto's bat is undoubtedly top five in the league, but there are questions concerning his defense and baserunning.

Soto has had a negative BsR in each of the past four seasons and a negative DEF in each of the past three. He has shown flashes with the glove throughout his career but has had a horrible year defensively in 2022. This season, he ranks in the 1st percentile in OAA with -8 through 752.0 innings. He had 5 OAA in 2021 and 7 OAA in 2019, so there's still potential for solid defense from Soto in right field. If Soto can put it all together, he has the ability to put up eight-win seasons annually.

Contractual comparisons

It's tough to set the market for a player like Soto. He's a 23-year-old, two-time All-Star who has already amassed 21.3 career fWAR. To put that figure into perspective, only 24 players have had more career fWAR through their age-23 seasons and Soto hasn't even finished the year yet. Among those 24 players ahead of him, only Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, and Manny Machado are still active. When Pujols signed his first big contract in 2004, the contract values around the league were much lower. That leaves us with Trout and Machado, who both signed their long-term deals in 2019.

In addition to Trout and Machado, we can compare Soto to some of the young stars around the league today. Fernando Tatis Jr. signed a 14-year, $340 million deal with the Padres in 2021. Ronald Acuña Jr. is signed to an eight-year, $100 million deal but that was signed when he had just 111 games under his belt. Not many players sign long-term deals before they hit free agency, which is part of the reason why setting a market for Soto. In addition to that, Soto debuted younger than any of the young stars in the majors today. Mookie Betts and Francisco Lindor both signed large contracts a year before they would have hit free agency, but they were 27 and 26 years old when they signed those deals.

The five best players to compare Soto's potential contract to are Trout, Machado, Tatis Jr., Betts, and Lindor. Soto's situation isn't really similar to any of them, however. He's much younger than any of Trout, Machado, Betts, and Lindor were, while he's proven more than Tatis Jr. had when he signed his deal. While none of them are great comparisons, they're the best we have.

Soto vs Machado and Trout

Manny Machado, Mike Trout, and Juan Soto all had fairly similar starts to their career. They all debuted at a very young age and had established themselves among the best players in the league by the age of 23. When Mike Trout turned 24 in 2015, he was in the middle of his 4th straight eight-win season and fourth straight top-2 MVP finish. He was a four-time All-Star, Rookie of the Year, and MVP who already had 38.5 career fWAR to his name. When he signed his 12-year, $426.5 million contract in 2019, he had already put up 62.9 career fWAR and was coming off his sixth eight-win season in seven years. While Trout had certainly put up better numbers than Soto, he was also already 26 years old when he signed his deal, the largest in MLB history.

Soto's offensive numbers are lower than Trout's, but they're still comparable. The difference is that a young Mike Trout was one of the best defenders and baserunners in the league. It's really not a great comparison; Trout is far and away a better baseball player than Soto. The question that needs to be answered is whether the three-year age difference is worth the difference between Trout's 8.7 fWAR per 650 plate appearances and Soto's 5.8. The other difference is that the market is a little different than it was in 2019.

Manny Machado serves as a better comparison than Trout because he's closer to Soto's level on the field. In his first seven MLB seasons, Machado had a 120 wRC+ and 30.2 fWAR. He was 25 years old when he signed his 10-year, $300M deal with the San Diego Padres in 2019. Through 2018, Machado had put up 4.8 fWAR/650. While theoretically the extra win a year would be worth about $8M, if it came down to simply $/WAR, Trout would have been worth about $70 million per year. Soto is also two years younger than Machado, so we can establish the baseline that Soto is worth well over $300M over 10 years.

Soto vs Tatis Jr.

Perhaps the most similar situation to Soto's is that of Fernando Tatis Jr., who signed a fourteen-year, $340M deal with the Padres prior to the 2021 season. Tatis Jr.'s deal bought out the final four years of team control as well as ten additional years. If Soto were to sign a contract extension right now, it would only buy him out for two years of team control. Those two years of team control are typically very cheap, as Tatis Jr. is making just $5M in 2022 and $7M in 2023 before his deal ramps up to $36M a year for the last six seasons.

Assuming he can stay healthy, Tatis Jr.'s deal is actually very team-friendly despite the large figure. The actual extension part of the deal (2025 onward) works as a $306M deal over ten seasons. When he signed the deal, Tatis Jr. had just 143 games of MLB experience. In those games, he put up a 150 wRC+ and 6.3 fWAR, numbers comparable to Soto's career numbers to date. Signing Tatis Jr. to such a large deal was risky, as he was very young and there were still questions regarding his game. As a less risky, better player with less team control, Soto deserves a figure larger than Tatis Jr.'s $340M.

Soto vs Lindor and Betts

Francisco Lindor and Mookie Betts' respective situations when they signed their long-term contracts with the Mets and Dodgers are much more similar than either of them are to Soto. In fact, it's safe to assume that Betts helped set the market for Lindor. Prior to the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Betts signed a 12-year extension totaling $365M with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The advantage that we have in comparing Betts and Soto is that they are both right fielders.

Through his first six seasons, Betts had a 135 wRC+, 42.8 BsR, 116 DRS, and 37.3 fWAR. Compared to Soto's 5.8 fWAR/650, Betts had 6.7. The pro-Betts argument would be that he was coming off of a two-year stretch in which he put up a 158 wRC+, 17.0 fWAR, and won an MVP Award. Betts was definitely the better player than Soto, but like Trout and Machado, he was older.

Francisco Lindor signed a 10-year, $341M extension that will keep him in New York through the 2031 season. In six seasons in Cleveland, Lindor was a 119 wRC+ hitter and 38 DRS/82 OAA defender, amassing 31.0 fWAR in 777 games. On a rate basis, he put up 5.7 fWAR/650, the closest figure to Soto's 5.8. Perhaps Lindor's most valuable trait in Cleveland was his durability, as he played at least 158 games in three straight years.

The reason I used Betts and Lindor as comparisons for Soto is that both their contracts were signed in a post-COVID market. While they were similar situations to that of Machado and Trout, they were signed within the past two years and they can give a framework for the megadeal that Soto will inevitably sign. The $440M offer that Soto rejected would have made him the highest-paid player in baseball history, but the length of the contract and the situation in Washington may have skewed his perspective.

Projecting Soto's Value

Prior to the 2021 season, FanGraphs and ZiPS projected Soto's full career trajectory in an attempt to pinpoint the value of a potential extension. Since then, he has outperformed that ZiPS projection. He was projected to have a 163 OPS+ and 6.3 fWAR in 2021 but he put up a 177 OPS+ and 7.0 fWAR. That same ZiPS projection has Soto as a 7+ win player through the 2027 season and a five-to-six win player through 2030. They project his bat as consistently above a 170 OPS+ through 2029.

Soto and the Nationals agreed on a $17.1 million salary to avoid arbitration, an $8.6M raise from his 2021 salary. If Soto doesn't sign a long-term extension before he hits free agency, he's on track to set the record for highest arbitration salary. The record is currently held by Mookie Betts, who made $27M in 2018. These are rough estimates, but Soto could make around $23M in 2023 and $29M in 2024, so let's start with that as the baseline for a potential extension.

Nuances

If we look at strictly $/WAR, Soto has been worth $170.8M up to this point in his career and has been worth $20.3M this year. Generally, one WAR is worth about eight million dollars. It's not an exact science, though. Players don't actually make $80 million when they have 10 WAR seasons. If he's, on average, a 7 WAR player until he's 30, that would make him worth $300M through 2029. If he's a 4.5-5 WAR player from ages 31 to 35, that's another $180M-$200M.

Another thing to consider is that the market value is continuously increasing. In 2010, one WAR was worth roughly $6 million. In 2020, it was worth around $8M. How much one WAR will be worth in 2030 is almost impossible to project. Either way, Soto is projected by ZiPS to finish this season with a 5.7 WAR and to be a 7.7+ WAR player for the next three seasons, a step up from the long-term projections done in 2021.

Concluding remarks

The idea behind all long-term deals is that the team underpays early and overpays late as the player regresses. While Soto won't make the $50M+ that he'll be "worth" early on in his deal, there's a good chance a long-term deal would even out over time. The earlier estimations would make Soto worth about $550M over 12 years. He won't see that much money, but there's a good chance he beats Mike Trout's record-setting $426.5M deal. If he actually does sign a 15-year contract, he should become the first 500 million dollar man in MLB history.