Padres fans just got the worst Juan Soto trade reminder on NL leaderboard

Some screenshots need context. But this one might need an ice pack. Your NL OPS leaders: James Wood leads with a .953 OPS. Juan Soto sits second at .947. CJ Abrams is third at .940. It’s more than just an OPS leaderboard. It’s a receipt from the Padres’ most aggressive trade, and Washington has slid it back across the counter.

Every name in the top three traces directly to San Diego’s blockbuster trade for Soto. The Padres sent Abrams, Wood, MacKenzie Gore, Robert Hassell III, Jarlin Susana and Luke Voit to Washington for Soto and Josh Bell in 2022. Soto spent the next season and a half in San Diego, and we know where it goes from there. Yankees, and now the Mets. Seeing Soto on this list would sting enough. Seeing Wood and Abrams bookend him is just cruel.

James Wood and CJ Abrams make the Juan Soto trade sting for Padres fans

Wood is 23. Abrams is 25. Both represented the Nats at the 2026 All-Star Game, and they are legitimate middle-of-the-order forces. We can skip the revisionist history. The Padres didn’t get nothing from Soto.

He helped the Friars reach the 2022 NLCS and gave the lineup a superstar capable of hijacking any plate appearance. He was excellent during a miserable 2023 season that failed for reasons much larger than him. And they also recovered real talent when they eventually sent him to New York, with Michael King headlining that return.

But none of that makes this leaderboard pleasant. San Diego pushed its best prospect chips into the middle, landed one of baseball’s greatest hitters and still never reached the World Series. That was the entire point of paying such an obscene price.

The parade never came. Now Wood and Abrams are blossoming together in Washington while Soto remains an offensive machine with one of the most stubborn strike-zone approaches in the sport. It would be fun to create some fantasy with all three of those guys in the lineup today, but that’s not how the transaction worked.

The actual reality hurts enough anyway. San Diego surrendered two young stars to acquire Soto, then reached a financial crossroads that forced the front office to trade him away before free agency. Four years later, those three players occupy the first three spots on the NL OPS leaderboard.

That is the full cost of chasing a championship and coming home without one.

Padres fans are probably sick of the Juan Soto trade retrospective. But the National League leaderboard couldn’t control publishing one anyway.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow