Over the weekend, Juan Soto reportedly turned down a contract extension worth $440 million, forcing the Washington Nationals to consider trade offers for the 23-year-old superstar.
The asking price to acquire Soto in a trade likely will be historic. Following the 2022 season, Soto will have two more years of arbitration eligibility before hitting the open market in 2025. The team that lands Soto in a potential trade will do everything it can to get him to sign long term.
If the Giants were to try to bring Soto to the Bay, there is one trade in MLB history that is comparable to what the team would need to offer.
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SIGN UP HERE Brittany Ghiroli and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic named the Detroit Tigers' 2007 blockbuster trade for superstar Miguel Cabrera as the most parallel deal to Soto.
At the time, Cabrera was 24 years old and had just finished up his fifth season with the Florida Marlins. He was a four-time All-Star, a World Series champion and owned a career .313/.388/.542 slash line.
In the trade, Detroit acquired Cabrera and pitcher Dontrelle Willis for outfielder Cameron Maybin, lefty pitcher Andrew Miller and catcher Mike Rabelo along with minor-league prospects Frankie De La Cruz, Dallas Trahern and Burke Badenhop.
The Marlins' return for two All-Star players is now looked at as one of the more lopsided trades in history, but at the time, the players Florida acquired were intriguing prospects. Maybin and Miller were consensus top-20 prospects in all of baseball, and De La Cruz could hit 100 mph on the radar gun -- more of a rarity back in 2007.
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As it played out, both Maybin and Miller had decent careers -- just not in Florida.
Maybin played for 10 different teams over 15 big league seasons and logged a career batting average of .254, while Miller eventually became a two-time All-Star reliever in his 30s. De La Cruz appeared in just six games for Florida and was out of baseball by 2011. Badenhop developed into an average reliever with a career 3.74 ERA, and Trahern never made it to The Show.
On the flip side, Cabrera went on to win two MVP awards for the Tigers and is one of 28 players in baseball history to mash at least 500 home runs. Detroit won four division titles with Cabrera and made a World Series appearance in 2012 before, of course, being swept by San Francisco.
So, what does this mean for the Giants?
RELATED: Juan Soto trade: What could Giants package look like in deal with Nationals?
In order to trade for Soto, the Giants would need to part with most or all of their top four prospects in Mario Luciano, Kyle Harrison, Luis Matos and Will Bednar. Two-way prospect Reggie Crawford, selected 30th overall in the 2022 MLB Draft, would be in the mix as well.
There has not been a superstar as young and as talented as Soto on the trade market since Cabrera. While departing with a large chunk of the organization's future can be scary, trading the farm to acquire a generational talent can work out like it did for the Tigers.