#27 Juan Soto's happiness and Ronald Acuña Jr.'s role reversal

Plus: You have to see these softball names.

I know that Is Juan Soto unhappy? has become the most overwrought meta media discourse of the 2025 season — and also that any new take at this point is going to feel like piling on. But I missed Tom Verducci’s story on the situation last week and, rather than cite unnamed sources or vague body language inferences, he quotes Soto’s agent Scott Boras on the record. Hey it’s Hannah and I’ve been sucked into this newscycle.

The “diagnosis” (Verducci’s word) that Boras provides for what currently ails his once-in-a-generation client: “The moniker.” Namely that of the highest paid player in sports history.

On whether Soto regrets leaving the Yankees, where he had arguably the best full season of his career and was demonstrably comfortable, Boras said, “With free agency, any choice you make comes with regrets.” (Which, for some reason, Verducci characterized as downplaying that narrative.)

I want to allow for the possibility that Soto might be unhappy — which Boras seemingly offers some tacit confirmation of by engaging with the premise — without tipping into tabloid-style speculation or hot takes. I actually think it’s humanizing to imagine that an athlete can sign a historically gargantuan guaranteed contract to play for a winning team in a major market and still struggle with … something. The transition or a particular interpersonal fit or the spiral of small sample size underperformance at the plate that is magnified by the circumstances.

The quotes immediately made me think of a story from four years ago — before Soto rejected a $440-million extension offer from the Nationals which led to a midseason trade to the Padres and set him on a circuitous path to New York. It was right after the 2021 trade deadline when Washington shipped out nearly the entire veteran core that had won the 2019 World Series along with Soto.

“I always say I will be a rookie forever. But now everybody is looking at me like I’m the role model, and it just feels weird. I don’t want to feel that way. I want to still feel like I’m a rookie,” Soto told the Washington Post, emphasizing that he didn’t want it to be “his” team.

Soto was only 22 at the time — an objectively crazy age to be in your fourth big league season. And the honesty and vulnerability of those quotes stuck with me. He was expressing a genuine discomfort with feeling overexposed. He didn’t want new teammates and he didn’t want to be The Guy.

That year, he was the third-most valuable player in baseball. So the point isn’t to dredge up evidence that he’ll crumble in the spotlight. I just want to understand the psyche of the superstar. Juan Soto is objectively worth nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in that at least two teams were willing to pay him at least $760 million. He’s as justified as anyone in any profession would be maximizing his earning potential. But I think it’s actually really cool to remember that money doesn’t make him a robot and maybe it hasn’t made him happy, either. Not yet, anyway.

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A reader weighs in

In our last Bandwagon, I mentioned that the players the Nats got in return for Soto were seriously panning out (the overall rebuild maybe not so much…). And even though the Padres didn’t parlay Soto into a ring or constant contention, they also swung a productive trade in exchange for his star power. And then Yankees turned one season of Soto into a pennant. So…everyone wins the Juan Soto trade!?

Reader Shaun Montana says: “I think there's a clear loser of the Juan Soto trade - the White Sox.”

The Padres don't get Dylan Cease from the White Sox without giving up Drew Thorpe, part of their return for trading Soto to Yankees. While Cease is not off to the greatest start this season, last year he was great. Meanwhile Thorpe pitched terribly in 9 starts in 2024, then get hurt, missed the last 3 weeks of the season, was having a fine spring and then - sproing - Tommy John, out until probably mid-2026.

So in summary: the Nationals traded Juan Soto and got all the guys you mentioned; the Padres traded Juan Soto and got Michael King, Dylan Cease, and Randy Vazquez(! - small sample but he's been good for the Dads this year); the Yankees traded for Juan Soto and won the AL in 2024; and the White Sox gave up their best pitcher in exchange for the youngest guy from the Padres' haul for Juan Soto, ended up with the worst record in modern MLB history, and that guy got hurt and will be out until the middle of next year. They lose.

Sounds right to me!

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Ronald Acuña Jr. finally gets to come to the Braves’ rescue

By Zach Crizer

The Braves have long represented, to my subconscious, the type of elusive certainty you stow away as a failsafe. The North star in the woods, the tactile sensation that awakens you from a dream. Water is wet, the sky is blue, the Braves are what they are supposed to be, one way or another.

Since their flash-fried, rule-breaking rebuild and the arrival of Alex Anthopoulos as top baseball executive, they have demonstrated an almost comical duality in winning “one way” and also “another.” To really oversimplify things, the one way involves Ronald Acuña Jr. being a superstar. And another involves improvising when he tears his ACL.

When Acuña got hurt in 2021, Atlanta acquired a raft of likable, all-or-nothing outfielders and hit the jackpot with a World Series triumph. When he went down again last May, a barrage of teammates from an all-time great 2023 lineup followed him to the IL, yet the pitching staff stepped forward and helped the Braves squeak out a postseason berth anyway.

One way, or another.