Depending on when you grew up, trading baseball cards was a big deal in the 1960s. There would be some kid trying to take advantage of you for your 1967 Mickey Mantle card in exchange for a 1967 Frank Howard because he knows that you’re a Washington Senators fan. When you trade with emotion, you often make a bad trade if your goal was purely economic. Trades and bartering usually have winners and losers. While you might want a breakeven, they are hard to achieve. Baseball trades are all about improving your team. You can’t trade your best pitcher with emotion as if it is a baseball card.

While the trade of Juan Soto from the Washington Nationals to the San Diego Padres was a blockbuster in a haul of top prospects, there is risk that the prospects will not all meet their projected ceilings. The Nationals received CJ Abrams, MacKenzie Gore, Robert Hassell III, Jarlin Susana, and James Wood. Some would say that Hassell hasn’t shown the potential he had as a Top-30 prospect on Baseball America’s rankings back in 2022. And Susana hasn’t made it to the Majors at this time. But most people feel the Nats won that trade by a landslide.

For Gore and Abrams, their time with the Nats might be coming to an end soon if you believe the trade rumors at the Winter Meetings. The Soto trade tree might continue for a while if Gore and/or Abrams are on the move. It really is a big “if” as nothing has materialized as of this point and time.

Those trade rumors were stoked by Washington Nationals President of Baseball Operations, Paul Toboni, before he even arrived in Orlando for the Winter Meetings. He said in November that the team is “open for business” and willing to listen to all offers for players, including Gore. And Toboni stated his goal is to “bring in as much value as we can” to the organization, but stressed that they are not obligated to trade any player. Toboni will be listening to all offers — but will be disciplined and hold out for the right, compelling package. 

Trading short-term assets for long-term success is not guaranteed. We have seen plenty of deals fail like the trade of Max Scherzer and Trea Turner for four players in return from the Los Angeles Dodgers back in 2021. Teams have learned over the years that it is hard to win a trade against the Dodgers. The Nats received Gerardo Carrillo, Donovan Casey, Josiah Gray and Keibert Ruiz for potentially two future Hall-of-Famers. Carrillo and Casey never played a game in a Nats uniform while Gray and Ruiz have accumulated WAR totals of 0.8 and 0.2 respectively in Nats uniforms while Turner gave the Dodgers 9.1 WAR for his 1⅓ seasons PLUS the Dodgers got compensation for Turner as a QO’d player, and Scherzer put up 2.6 WAR for his one-third of a season with the Dodgers.  The Dodgers drafted Eriq Swan as compensation for Turner. Guess what, Swan was traded this past season for Alex Call. The gift that keeps giving. So the Dodgers got 11.7 combined WAR and Swan — and the Nats got a combined 1.0 WAR, so far, and an expensive extension for Ruiz that still owes him $36.9 million through the 2030 season.

There’s the risk and both Gray and Ruiz were ranked as Top-100 prospects on Baseball America at the time. There were clear question marks on Ruiz’s defense and Gray’s fastball command. But former GM Mike Rizzo made the blockbuster trade anyway. The fear of a trade of Gore or anyone is that the other team knows their players better than other evaluators. The Dodgers have made out well against other teams in trades including a fleecing of Toboni’s old team, the Boston Red Sox, on the Mookie Betts trade for  for Jeter Downs, Alex Verdugo and Connor Wong. At least Wong has accumulated more WAR than Gray and Ruiz.

It is hard to say how much input Toboni had on the trade of Betts at the time. He was the Director of Amateur Scouting at the time, not pro scouting. But now the decisions are all up to Toboni. He traded closer Jose A. Ferrer on Saturday for catcher Harry Ford. That was more of a long-term deal as Ferrer has four years of team control remaining. A move that weakens the Nats’ fragile bullpen immediately but could fix the Nats’ catcher situation for years to come if Ford is the star that some evaluators believe he can be. Ford will get to work with Nats’ catching coordinator, Bobby Wilson, on his defense. Ford’s defense has been ranked below average. The issue is that the Nats ranked dead last in catchers defense the last five years during Ruiz’s tenure and the only team in negative catcher’s defense during that period.

The catcher defense situation was just another strike against Rizzo and the poor player development by the team that was behind at the minor league and Major League level. The hope for better days ahead will be due to better player development and fixing the farm system that had been neglected for far too long. The Nats farm system obviously got a big boost from the Ford acquisition. But he won’t be a prospect for long if the plan is to make him the starting catcher. FanGraphs currently ranks the Nats as the 16th farm system in baseball. That is after picking No. 1 in the draft this year and constantly trading away players. That is not good at all.

Take all of these factors into consideration as to why Toboni might see his first priority is to fix the farm system and get that fixed first by trading away short-term assets for long-term prospects. Nearly five years into this rebuild, and fans might have to endure more years of a rebuild.

Even former Meet The Press host Chuck Todd is weighing in on the possibility of Gore being traded. Todd is a fan of the Nats — but is blaming ownership the right place to put the bulk of the blame? They certainly need to share in the blame. But this should be clear that the years of poor drafts, some bad trades, and poor player development is where this started. What might have saved the Nats from total disaster was the Soto trade.

The problem like we saw in Soto is that the loyalty is to the biggest payday, and Boras clients rarely stay. Pete Alonso just left the Mets for more money. Edwin Diaz left the Mets for more money. It happens all teams, and even the Dodgers. They lost Corey Seager to free agency and have lost other players. All but Diaz, by the way, and just like Gore, are Boras Corporation clients. Holding on to Bryce Harper in his final season with the Nats got the team just a compensatory third round draft pick in 2019. Trading Gore as we discussed the other day is the right move if he won’t agree to a contract extension. But again, being the right move doesn’t guarantee success in the long-term.

With six straight years of losing, and what looks like more to come — this is painful for everyone. Even if ownership gave Toboni $100 million to spend on new payroll for the 2026 season, it probably wouldn’t turn this team into a winner.

Throwing money at the problem starts in hiring better coaches and developmental equipment — and the Nats are doing that. They have added two additional coaches to the MLB staff and many more at the minor league levels. The MLB staff is the largest in Nats’ history. They are buying new software and machines. Assistant GM Devin Pearson acknowledged. “We’ve bought a ton and spent a ton of money, so we should have mostly everything we need to execute,” Pearson said.

The question going forward is whether the team takes the advice of the “voice of the franchise”, Ryan Zimmerman, who said on his podcast that the Nats need to acquire a veteran team leader on a longer-term deal of up to 4-years, do you think ownership will insist that Toboni does that? That should be priority No. 1.