Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning during the regular season you’ll get a fresh, topical story to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
With each dwindling day, as they take calls from half the teams in baseball, the Nationals face a stark reality: they will have made a big mistake if Juan Soto is still on their team Aug. 3.
“At this point I would be very surprised if he’s still there after the [trade] deadline,” says one NL executive. “It’s more likely than not that he is going to be traded.