Check out this wild sounding trade rumor: the Nationals send Alfonso Soriano, Bill Bray and Jason Bergmann to the Mets for Xavier Nady, John Maine, and Jeff Keppinger. I don't know–it seems a little too heavily weighted towards the Mets, if you ask me. You can get fired up about this one over at MLB Trade Rumors.
"Last year [1986], in 415 at bats, he had 27 homers and 80 steals. That’s 40 home runs and 120 steals for a full year. […] This year [1987], in 93 at bats, he’s hitting .409 with those 12 homers, 27 RBI, 28 runs and 13 steals. For a full year, that projects to … well, it doesn’t project to anything. It’s nonsense. More than 70 home runs, 170 RBI, 180 runs, 80 steals. Wayne Gretzky stats for baseball." - Thomas Boswell, on Eric Davis
Maybe those three guys for Soriano alone would be fair. Maine is supposed to be good if he can parlay his minor league success to the majors (not happening so far in limited play) but Nady has always been part of a platoon and if he were to be a fulltime player his stats would suffer greatly. Keppinger projects to be a slugger who should maintain a high average if his minor league numbers translate to the bigs, but a lot of things would have to go right for this to be an even trade for the Nationals.
There's also talk of a 3-way trade that sends Soriano to the Cubs, pitching to the Reds, and Wily Mo Pena to Washington. I like it! Some folks have predicted Eric Milton going to the Nats as well.
I'm not high on Milton (although RFK would help a lot) but Pena could be sweet!