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.
The timing of Tuesday’s monumental trade of Juan Soto to the Padres was, to the neutral baseball observer, both a blessing and a curse. The deal went down (at least in principle, try as Eric Hosmer might to delay it) early enough that we weren’t forced to wait on pins and needles all day in anticipation of a resolution. But having the most consequential trade of the day (and perhaps ever?