Padres first baseman Eric Hosmer has rejected a trade to the Nationals, tweets MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale. Both reporters have made clear that the Padres’ blockbuster deal to acquire Juan Soto from the Nats remains in place.
Hosmer’s eight-year contract with the Padres, signed in February 2018, includes limited no-trade protection of which the Nationals are a part. It appears the Nationals and Padres agreed to versions of the Soto trade with and without Hosmer, word of the larger Soto trade leaked to the baseball media, and then the Padres took it to Hosmer to decide. As is his contractual right, Hosmer chose not to move from the Padres, the team he chose as a free agent, to the last-place Nationals.
2022 marks Hosmer’s fifth year as a Padre, a tenure that has mostly disappointed outside of the shortened 2020 season. Hosmer has a 104 wRC+ in 934 plate appearances since the beginning of the 2021 campaign, so he’s still modestly above-average with the bat.
More to come…
