2017 Trade Value: #1 to #10

Welcome to the final installment of this year’s Trade Value series; you can find links to the previous five posts above. If you’re not familiar with this project, there’s an explanation of the process in the HM post, so that’s the best place to start.

As a reminder for those who don’t like clicking links, however, the five-year WAR projections are based on Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS forecasts, though the players aren’t ranked based on those projections; these figures are included merely as a piece of information to help round out the picture. The guaranteed-dollars line measures the amount of money the player is owed outside of team options or arbitration years; for most of these guys, team options are very likely to be exercised, and many of them will end up making more than the guaranteed-dollars number reports.

Now let’s turn our attention to today’s top 10. In reality, this ended up being two groups of five, with plenty of room for movement within those two groups. And at the very top of the list was the toughest call I’ve ever had to make in putting this project together. The amount of great young talent in the game right now is simply remarkable.

Just as a note: I’ll be chatting about this list at 12 p.m. ET, so if you have any questions, feel free to swing by and I’ll answer as many as I can. Now, on to the top 10.

Corey Kluber was already amazing. He might actually be getting better, though. His strikeout rate has jumped from 26% to 34%. His ground-ball rate is at a career high, but so is his infield-fly rate. He still throttles contact quality. With the way he’s pitching now, he’s in that next tier of non-Kershaw starters. He’s everything you want in an ace.

And, thanks to his contract, he’s the most valuable hurler in the game. Assuming his options get picked up — he’d basically need a career-ending injury not to merit those salaries — he’ll make around $50 million over the next four years. There are some non-public escalators on the options based on Cy Young voting, so it might be more like $55 million.

That’s Josh Reddick money. It’s Mark Trumbo’s AAV, plus an extra year. Fifty million dollars doesn’t buy that much in free agency these days, but it does get Cleveland the best right-handed pitcher in the AL — and with reduced risk in case an injury takes Kluber out before the deal expires.

As with any pitcher, he could lose all of his value overnight. At 31, he might start getting worse soon. There’s a reason the nine guys ahead of him are all hitters. Those guys just don’t get hurt at the same frequency, so it’s tough for a pitcher to get much higher than this. But given what Kluber is now, he’s the pitcher I’d most want in my organization.

It’s getting harder to remember, but just a few years ago, Mookie Betts was a pretty polarizing player. The slight stature and lack of power didn’t scream superstar upside, but Mookie has developed into a better player than even his most ardent supporters would have suspected. Now coming off an +8 WAR season, Betts is firmly entrenched as one of the game’s best.

And as pitchers adjust to Mookie as an offensive threat, he continues to evolve, gradually returning to a more patient approach after spending the last few years swinging more frequently to establish that he did, indeed, have power. Now with more walks than strikeouts, but still slugging the ball, Betts has built the offensive profile of a guy who can remain a great player even if the defense slips as he ages.

The one remaining flaw at this point is his pop-up problem. His total of 22 infield flies leads the majors, and it’s the primary reason he’s running a .261 BABIP; all those easy outs have dragged down his offensive numbers this year. Given that Betts has fixed nearly every other flaw in his game to this point, I wouldn’t be shocked if he figured out how to address this one, too.

He only falls a few spots this year because he’s marching towards free agency. After rebuffing an attempt by the Red Sox to get him signed to a long-term deal this winter, Betts has just his three arbitration years left, and he sounds like a guy willing to go year-to-year in order to get to free agency as early as possible. He’s still a guy every team in baseball would love to have, but he doesn’t look like a guy anyone could count on keeping past the 2020 season, so it’s more short- and medium-term value than long-term value. But few players in baseball will provide more value over the next three-and-a-half years, and the bidding for Betts would be bananas if the Red Sox were willing to listen on their star right fielder.

I don’t know that it’s possible for a Cub to be underrated at this point. But if any Cub is underrated, it’s Anthony Rizzo. Kris Bryant has the MVP award, Kyle Schwarber the postseason hero narrative, and David Ross got all the fuzzy veteran-leader credit anyone could ever be awarded. But make no mistake: Rizzo is an elite player.

Over the last three years, Rizzo has put up seasonal WARs of +5.7, +5.5, +5.5. He’s on pace for a down year of +4.6 WAR this year, thanks to a .242 BABIP. Assuming that bounces up some in the second half, he may still end up over +5 WAR for the fourth straight year. There are few players as consistently awesome as Anthony Rizzo.

Sure, maybe he’s not hitting like Freddie Freeman has over the last year, and he doesn’t have quite the all-around game of Paul Goldschmidt, but when you factor in contracts, Rizzo is the most valuable first baseman in the game. Due just $52 million over the next four years, he and Kluber are basically playing out the same contract, just he doesn’t have the risks that come with pitching for a living. As safe a bet as you’ll get for high-level production at a low cost, Rizzo is one of the main reasons the Cubs’ future still scares everyone.

It really is remarkable that Turner managed to put up +5 WAR in his first year’s worth of games in the majors, given that he spent about half that time playing a position at which he had almost no experience and still isn’t really a finished product as a hitter. This is what unpolished Trea Turner looks like. It’s scary to imagine what he might be if he gets better.

Of course, his physical skills might diminish before he figures out the strike zone, and maybe the power never grows, and there’s no guarantee he’ll get better defensively. Improvement is never guaranteed. But baseline Turner is already an excellent player, and yet there are obvious areas where he could make real improvements. It doesn’t seem completely preposterous to suggest that, on pure upside, Turner might have one of the highest ceilings in the game.

The fact that there are so many rough edges to his game mean that there’s more risk here than with almost any of the other players in this top 10, but value is a balance of risk and reward, and Turner’s optimistic outcomes are so good that it makes the downside worthwhile. And with five years of control after this season, there’s plenty of remaining long-term value. If he takes any more steps forward over the next year, he’ll be a legitimate challenger for one of the top spots on next year’s list.

On the one hand, it’s half a season, and no one saw this coming. Consider, for example, what passed for an optimistic scouting report on the Yankees’ right fielder, from Eric Longenhagen’s offseason prospect list for the Yankees, on which Judge was ranked fifth:

While strikeouts are likely to be a career-long aspect of Judge’s profile, he’s shown an ability to make adjustments, and the quality of his contact is great when he’s making it. I have a future 50 on the hit tool and think he’ll get to his power in games, torching out 30 homers at peak with good defense in right field and some value on the bases. He projects as a low-risk, above-average regular.

This was Eric conveying that he was higher on Judge than many others; he ranked the Fresno State product 29 spots higher than Baseball America did on their top-100 list, for instance. And yet, “30 homers at peak” was still part of the report written by a guy who liked Judge more than most.

Judge, of course, hit 30 homers in the first half of his rookie year. Given his size and how hard he hits the baseball, it doesn’t seem crazy to project him for 40-plus homers annually. It’s hard to reconcile the guy we’ve seen in New York this year with the guy the scouting reports suggested, and any time there’s this kind of divergence between what people have seen previously and what we’ve seen in a short sample, it’s wise to not rely solely on what we’ve seen.

But what we’ve seen is so spectacular that I can’t imagine Judge ranking any lower than this. He legitimately looks like a guy who might already be one of the best right fielders in baseball and could become the most recognizable player in the sport. For most fans, the game is the attraction, but Judge looks like the rare athlete who could legitimately change the level of interest in his team by himself. We haven’t really seen anything like him before.

If he were a few years younger, or if we had more than three months of this kind of dominance, he might rank No. 1. And long term, his size might become a durability issue: big guys have generally had health problems in MLB, and Judge is about the biggest big guy we’ve seen. But that is nitpicking. Right now, Judge looks like he’s redefined what 80 power in the majors actually is. Combined with his other skills, there’s legitimate superstar potential here. And he might have already reached it.

For the last couple of months, Lindor hasn’t been very good. Since the beginning of May, he’s hit .231/.285/.388, good for a 75 wRC+, in nearly 300 plate appearances. That’s a long slump, and I understand why his recent performance might cause one to rethink his overall value.

But just as it’s important to remember what we thought of Aaron Judge a few months ago, it’s important to look at the whole picture with Lindor, and what we have overall is a 23-year-old shortstop who has already produced nearly +13 WAR in just over two full seasons worth of action. Despite his recent struggles, Lindor remains a spectacularly talented player.

Selling out for power hasn’t worked for him this year, but if it keeps not working, we should expect that at some point he’ll revert back to his prior approach, taking his line drives and high average instead of trying to maximize his home-run total. And that version of Lindor, combined with his elite defense and quality baserunning, was one of the best all-around players in the game.

He probably won’t ever be the best-hitting shortstop in the game, but few can match Lindor’s overall value, especially players this age. Even with a rough couple of months, Lindor remains one of baseball’s brightest young stars, and Cleveland will happily keep him for at least the next four years.

A couple of years ago, Bryant looked fairly similar to Judge: a high-K/high-power guy who was more athletic than most players with similar offensive profiles and who provided a lot of value with his overall game. But just two years into his big-league career, he’s all but gotten rid of his primary flaw, as he’s now striking out less often than the average hitter. Whether this change helped him stave off an inevitable BABIP regression, or was the cause of the one that has come, isn’t something we can know for sure, but Bryant’s offensive profile looks more sustainable now than it did during his rookie season.

The only things holding down his trade value are his future costs. He already set the record for single year pre-arbitration salary, and if he goes through the arbitration system year to year, he’ll likely smash some more records. With Rookie of the Year and MVP awards already in his trophy case, he can make the same “special case” arguments that helped Tim Lincecum and Ryan Howard reset the arbitration baselines, and as a Super Two, he’s going to get four chances at record raises. If he keeps playing at a high level, it’s entirely possible he could be making $30 million by the time he finishes with arbitration.

Whatever he gets through arbitration, he’ll be worth more than that, since the system is designed to be a drag on young-player salaries. But Bryant is probably going to be the most expensive of these young guys who haven’t signed long-term extensions yet. And considering his signing bonus and how well he’s set up for arbitration, there isn’t much incentive for him to sign a long-term deal that gives up any free-agent years.

But it’s still four years of one of the very best players in baseball. Even if he’s expensive by relative standards, everyone would happily line up to be the one cutting that check.

This is where it got particularly difficult. The differences between the top three are absurdly small. You can’t go wrong with any of these guys. There is no wrong order here; it just comes down to preference.

And Corey Seager is unquestionably awesome. If this was a what-they’ve-done-so-far exercise, Seager might be No. 1. He’s put up over +12 WAR in less than two season’s worth of playing time and he’s 23. I know, based on the conversation considering last year’s ranking, that a lot of you guys think he belongs at the top of the list — or, at least, at the top of the young-guy tier.

But once again, when I ran this by my friends in the game, the general consensus was that Seager is just a tick behind the two guys ahead of him. The bat is special, but he’s probably the least physically athletic guy in the top five, and there remains skepticism about his actual value at shortstop. While the public defensive metrics like his work at shortstop, more than one person pointed out that the Dodgers pitching staff induces the weakest contact of any group in the game, and suggested that our models are attributing to Seager some value that actually belongs to the Dodgers’ pitchers.

Everyone agrees Seager is a legitimate franchise player, but there remains some thought that he’s more of a super-high-floor guy and doesn’t quite possess the upside of the two guys ahead of him on this list. And for whatever it’s worth, ZiPS is in agreement with the industry on this one. Seager is a fantastic player, but enough people think this is close enough to his peak that he only rises one spot on this year’s list, despite performing well enough to move higher. If he continues to prove the skeptics wrong for another 12 months, he’ll certainly be considered for the top spot again next year.

Yeah, it finally happened. For the first time since 2011, Mike Trout is not atop this list. Or, to put it another way, the last time Trout wasn’t No. 1 in this series, he was in Double-A.

He remains, of course, the best player in baseball, and not by a small margin. He impacts the game like no one else. He has at least a chance to go down as the best baseball player of all-time.

But as we are regularly reminded when we see All-Stars traded for guys in A-ball, trade value is more complex than a player’s present abilities. Age matters. Salary matters. Years of control matter. And while Mike Trout is the best player on the planet, he’s also due $100 million over the next three years, and then he’ll hit free agency looking for the kind of contract that only a few teams will even be willing to consider.

Realistically, it’s hard for anyone to see Trout as a long-term asset anymore. You get three-and-a-half historic seasons, and then you probably watch him leave. And since the teams that could afford to give up the kind of talent it would take to get him are all luxury-tax payers who have been over the limit for years, they’d end up paying something closer to $50 million per year to have him on their rosters, or else they’d be looking at dumping another quality player to reduce their luxury-tax payments.

Even with all that, he was still almost No. 1. This was nearly a coin flip. I’m sure a good chunk of the people reading this, including people who actually would have to make a decision like this, would just say “I’ll take the best player alive and worry about the rest later.” And I almost would, too.

But there’s a new kid in town with whom everyone is also in love, and is in the midst of a Trout-like season of his own, and fits in every team in baseball’s payroll. So, with all due respect to the greatest all-around player I’ve ever seen, the new King of Trade Value is…

The A-Rod comparisons are unfair, but with what Correa is doing this year, they also don’t look completely insane. In his age-20 to -22 seasons, Rodriguez posted a 138 wRC+; Correa currently stands at 135. The breakout that everyone’s been expecting looks like it is here, and with his 161 wRC+ so far this season, Correa has officially become a superstar.

Now, before we say too much, I should note that those ZiPS projections aren’t as rosy as they were a year ago, when the system was forecasting Correa to surpass Trout as the best player in baseball in a few years. Dan Szymborski made some adjustments to his model over the winter, and the result was a bit more conservative forecasts for elite young players — Seager’s projections are also worse this year than last year — so Correa is no longer expected to quite reach Trout’s level.

But a +7 WAR forecast is still pretty amazing and speaks to the rarity of Correa’s offensive abilities at this age. His power development has made him an elite hitter for any position, but he’s also improved enough defensively that no one is talking about moving him off shortstop anymore. So for the foreseeable future, the Astros have a guy who hits like a first baseman playing shortstop.

The industry adores Correa. As I noted last year, when I polled people in the game on the Correa-versus-Seager question, the answers overwhelmingly come down in Correa’s favor. The same was true this year. Correa’s monster first half isn’t seen as just a nice stretch; people have been expecting this to happen. This is what people thought was coming. No one is surprised that Correa has turned into one of the best hitters in the American League, even though he’s still just 22.

And, of course, there’s the contract. Even with generous arbitration estimates, he’s probably looking at something in the $40 to $45 million range over the next four years. So not only does he provide an extra year that Trout does not, he also gives you roughly $60 million to spend on someone else. And because he hasn’t yet landed that made-for-life contract, an acquiring team have a few years to talk him into signing a deal that buys out some free-agent seasons, potentially giving them some longer-term value as well.

So, by the slimmest of margins, Carlos Correa is our new most valuable player in baseball when contracts are included in the discussion. There’s a reason the Astros are so good right now. Their shortstop is the biggest one.