Jackson Merrill had just returned to high Single-A Lake Elsinore after a lengthy stay on the injured list with a wrist injury. The trade deadline had arrived. He and James Wood and the rest of the Storm were on a bus headed to Visalia when the notifications began pinging on his phone.<\/p>\n
Merrill been hurt too long to worry that it was he who was going to be traded for Juan Soto.<\/p>\n
But Wood was on fire in the California League.<\/p>\n
Of course, the Nationals were going to want him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt always gets out on Twitter first \u2014 always,\u201d Merrill recalled. \u201cSo, now we all kind of saw it and we\u2019re like, \u2018Wow, wow, it\u2019s crazy,\u2019 and I\u2019m sitting there. I\u2019m like mad. I\u2019m happy for these guys (in the majors), but I\u2019m mad.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s my best friend.\u201d<\/p>\n
These days, the 22-year-old Wood is just about the best thing going for the Nationals. If he\u2019s got any competition at all, it\u2019s two of the other players who went to Washington in the trade that brought Soto to San Diego at the 2022 trade deadline.<\/p>\n
The 6-foot-7 Wood\u2019s 21 homers are tied for the sixth-most in the majors. Left-hander MacKenzie Gore leads the National League with 123 strikeouts and the majors with 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings. CJ Abrams was an All-Star last year and has 11 homers, 15 steals and an .836 OPS this year as the Nationals\u2019 regular shortstop.<\/p>\n
The Nationals still hope to get production out of Robert Hassell III \u2014 who\u2019s back in the minors after debuting in May \u2014 and the injured Jarlin Susana.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s Wood, Gore and Abrams who have provided something to truly dream on during the Nationals\u2019 4-16 slog so far this month.<\/p>\n
Just like the Nationals drew it up when they decided to move Soto.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, we lost a very special player in Juan, as we all know, but we gained three really special players,\u201d Nationals manager Dave Martinez said Monday afternoon. \u201cYou saw another kid that we brought up here, Robert Hassell. Not the last time you\u2019ll see him, either. But the trade worked out for us really well. I mean, these three guys are the cornerstones of our organization.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an alternate universe, it might have been Merrill on Nationals\u2019 side of the trade instead of Wood. But Merrill was on the injured list while the Nationals were scouring the Padres\u2019 system and there was an understanding that they couldn\u2019t have both of the Padres first picks from the 2021 draft, two prospects who played with each other in the Baltimore area before they were drafted into the system.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt speaks to strength of the system that you can trade for a Juan Soto and keep Jackson Merrill out of that trade,\u201d A.J. Preller, the Padres\u2019 president of baseball operations, said in April. \u201cAnd they still made a great trade, Only time you\u2019re happy a player was on the injured list was at that time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Preller added: \u201cWe knew we were going to keep Jackson out of that deal \u2014 any deal really.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Notable<\/p>\n
Annie Heilbrunn contributed to this report.<\/p>\n
Originally Published: June 23, 2025 at 6:40 PM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jackson Merrill had just returned to high Single-A Lake Elsinore after a lengthy stay on the injured list…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":9541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1370,1266,3549,1306,7264,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-9540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-san-diego","14":"tag-san-diego-padres","15":"tag-sandiego","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114735894528244855","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}