The Yankees or Padres will be very different after the Juan Soto move.

The Yankees or Padres will be very different after the Juan Soto move.

For the Yankees, this accomplishes their quick change in the outfield. Soto will play every day, and Grisham will be the fourth outfielder who will likely come in when Giancarlo Stanton sustains an injury and the DH spot opens up. What the Yankees should expect at this point is that bad thing to happen.

As of this writing, Soto and Grisham had only been with the team for 24 hours. However, the outfield now looks like it will have newly acquired Alex Verdugo within left, Judge in the middle, Soto in right, and Grisham in center field, where he will play defense like a pro.

Soto has had a mixed record as a defender. Only two for his six seasons have been above average, while the others have been well below.

It’s not always easy to trust year-to-year defensive measures, but they are interesting to keep an eye on.

Grisham, on the opposite hand, has performed great on defense ever since he got there. He will likely be very helpful late in games or often, based on how things go.

The Yankees are going to see the most progress, though, in the lineup. They were 19th in the Major Leagues with a wRC+ of 94 in 2023, which is not nearly good enough over a team that wants to compete.

The Yankees had about the same amount of events in the outfield, but Judge’s excellent 458 plate appearances made it look better.

Things change a lot because of Soto. He has a career wRC+ of 154, which puts him 32nd all-time, right between Willie Mays as well as Frank Robinson.

Soto and Judge are good at protecting each other, and his presence helps the Yankees fix a problem they’ve had over the past years: putting good players in the middle of the lineup when they don’t belong there.

One example is Gleyber Torres. He is a good hitter, yet should he be hitting third or fourth for a top-tier contender? Most likely not, and he hopefully won’t have to now that Soto and Judge are together because they are a scary pair.

At this point in his career, Grisham is best known for how well he handles the ball in the outfield, although he has also shown some potential at the plate.

The lefty possessed 110 wRC+ in 779 plate appearances between 2020 and 2021. In the shorter 2020 season, he was one of the top 20 role players by fWAR.

He has had two bad years at the plate in consecutive years, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if he went back to that standard at some point, especially as a lefty batter in Yankee Stadium.

They gave up a lot of pitching depth in both the big leagues and the minor leagues. Michael King has proven to be a great pitcher for a few years now.

As a starter last year, he had a 2.23 earned run average and even better performance near the end of the season.

In short runs in 2023, both Jhony Brito as well as Randy Vásquez showed why they could be useful additions to the big league pitching staff. The Yankees don’t get all of that for free.

The Padres might be able to add Drew Thorpe to their rotation before the end of the 2024 season. He was one for the best pitching talents in baseball.

San Diego also got Kyle Higashioka, who has been with the team since Bobby Abreu played right field. This is a bit of a letdown for him.

It is hard to make deals where we trade a guy like Juan Soto, but we were keen on making sure we met a lot of needs before we did so.

“We were able to get some depth with quality,” Preller said at a midnight news conference within Nashville, Tennessee, where the winter meetings for baseball were coming to an end.

Michael King, Drew Thorpe, Jhony Brito, Randy Vasquez, and Kyle Higashioka were traded by New York to San Diego. New York also got outfielder Trent Grisham to back up its new starting outfield.

Soto hits left-handed, which makes him a great fit for Yankee Stadium’s short porch in right field. He also gives Aaron Judge and the Yankees a big-time bat that they can use together to make the most dangerous 1-2 punch within the American League.

The 25-year-old Soto has been named an All-Star three times and won the Silver Slugger four times. Many people think he is one of the best young hitters of his age and compare him to Ted Williams.

Andy Martino of SNY said that the Yankees could still trade for Soto after they bought Alex Verdugo for the Red Sox in Tuesday night. Judge will play center field and Verdugo will play left field. Soto will mostly play right field.

This past weekend, talks between the two sides broke down because New York refused to agree to what it saw as an outrageous price.

But once both sides got back together, the deal went quickly because there was a good plan in place.

It’s been a while since Soto’s defense was good enough to win the Gold Glove for left-field play in 2019. In recent years, he has spent most of his time in right field. At Yankee Stadium, right field is a lot easier to play than left field.