2022 Trade Value: #11 to #20

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to next week’s trade deadline to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at the players who fell just short of the top 50, be sure to read the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, which can be found in the widget above.

For those of you who have been reading the Trade Value Series the last few seasons, the format should look familiar. For every player, you’ll see a table with the player’s projected five-year WAR from 2023-2027, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money, if any, the year through which their team has contractual control of them, last year’s rank (if applicable), and then projections, contract status, and age for each individual season through 2027, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2021 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all of the players who have been ranked up to this point.

Now, let’s get to the next batch of players.

If you’ve somehow never seen McClanahan pitch, do yourself a favor and check him out. He’s a joy to watch, if a little bit confusing. His delivery feels like someone tried to smooth out Clayton Kershaw; it has a little hesitation hop, but otherwise looks almost effortless. That seeming simplicity makes his velocity all the more startling; he sits 96-98 mph and mixes in a drool-inducing curveball to go along with two other solid secondaries. He’s putting up video game numbers, making him the front-runner for this year’s American League Cy Young.

He probably won’t pitch like this forever. He’s never shown either this level of pure bat-missing stuff or pinpoint command, even in the minors. Pitchers get better, but they also go on hot streaks, and McClanahan’s season looks to me like some of both. He had Tommy John surgery six years ago, which sounds kind of scary, and the Rays have been judicious with his innings; he’ll reach a new career high in innings pitched sometime in the next few weeks.

Those risks are, in a word, acceptable. McClanahan is only 25 and won’t be a free agent until after the 2027 season. If he’s innings-limited for a year, so what? If he misses some time with injury, so what? The future is unknowable, but one of the best ways a team can “hedge” on a player is by having that player play for them for a long time. Miss out on 2023 McClanahan? That’s fine, because 2024 McClanahan is still going to be good. Miss out on him in 2025 instead? Can I interest you in a nice 2026 vintage?

It’s not quite like that, because each year is correlated with the next one. But it’s kind of like that — pitcher talent can change quite a bit from year to year. You’d be crazy to trade a year of McClanahan for a year of Corbin Burnes, but five shots at McClanahan versus two goes of Burnes? Things aren’t so clear. It feels strange to list such an unproven player at such a volatile position this highly, but that’s just how pitching works these days. And seriously, have you seen him pitch?

I expect this one to be controversial, because McClanahan was a more highly touted prospect who is now leading Manoah in the AL Cy Young race. And a majority of the people I consulted while constructing this list liked McClanahan more than Manoah. I can see why! He’s a lefty who throws 97 mph and strikes the world out. That’s a pretty nice package. Some people also questioned whether Manoah’s build implies some risk of his control backsliding.

Those are legitimate concerns, but nitpicking the order of two great, controllable young starters seems like a waste of time to me. I put Manoah ahead because I really like his profile and because calling it a tie wouldn’t make anyone happy. I’ll briefly lay out the case for Manoah, but just know that teams would be really happy to get either of these two young aces, and if anything, I’m probably too low on the pair.

Manoah sits 93-95 mph with enviable fastball shape on two different heaters. His best weapon is a wipeout slider, and he’s added a solid changeup this year, giving him more ways to handle lefties. He has a Verlander-ish approach to pitching; he often maxes out his velocity late in starts, and tops out above 97 when he really needs it. He’s aggressive in the strike zone, and his four-seamer has enough carry to be a good out pitch, which lets him keep his foot on the gas pedal with two strikes. He’s not posting huge strikeout numbers, but I think that’s more an approach issue than anything else; he seems very averse to wasting pitches, so he’s getting fewer bad swings and living with soft contact in pitcher’s counts instead.

They look nothing alike (and throw with different hands, to boot), but Manoah reminds me of Madison Bumgarner in many ways, from the aggressive approach to the fastball/hard breaking ball/changeup pitch mix. Time will tell if Manoah can repeat his performance and volume the way Bumgarner did throughout his career, but he certainly looks the part this year, and that would be a heck of a pitcher to build your rotation around.

Will it work out that way? I dunno. This could be his best season. This could be McClanahan’s best season. Pitching is volatile. Anyone who tells you they know with certainty which of these two will be better is lying. But in the absence of an overwhelmingly different statistical record, I’ll take the one who looks like more of a workhorse if I have to pick.

It feels like an eternity ago that we wondered how the Astros would replace Carlos Correa’s production. Peña had less than 150 plate appearances above A-ball before the year started, so he was far from a sure bet. Four months later, that wondering looks foolish. Peña is the second-best rookie in baseball this year, and already looks like a key part of Houston’s next generation of stars.

I’m not totally convinced by his offensive output. His game is built on aggression at the plate; he hunts fastballs and swings freely in the pursuit of them. That strategy has been working so far — he’s doing a ton of damage when he gets something to hit, which more than offsets his extra strikeouts and lack of walks — but I’m not sure that will hold up as pitchers adapt to his tactics by throwing him more bendy pitches, avoiding the strike zone.

But who cares? Peña is an elite defensive shortstop, with huge range, good instincts, and a solid arm. He could be a poor hitter and still be an above-average player. That’s a meaningful boost to his value; you can be fairly sure that Peña will be worth plugging into your lineup for years to come, even if his bat regresses. That redundancy explains the gap between, say, Peña and Nolan Gorman, who’s putting up similar offensive numbers at a younger age.

If you’re going to trade for someone, risk of ruin matters. Teams hate trading for a player and then feeling forced to play them even if they’re below average, and you can understand why. There’s dramatically less risk of that happening with Peña — trade for him, and you’ll almost certainly have something to show for it three seasons from now. As the old adage goes, it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future, but “Peña will be a valuable major league shortstop in three years” feels like a safe one to me.

Catchers mostly aren’t very good hitters — the act of catching is simply too hard on their bodies — but Smith isn’t most catchers. He’s done nothing but hit his entire major league career, and not in some flukish way, either. He has a tremendous understanding of the strike zone, which makes everything else in his game play up. If you’re pitching to Smith, you’ll likely have to challenge him in the strike zone to get him out. He’s not blessed with abnormally great power or anything, but he has good contact skills and mostly swings at good pitches, so he produces above-average power numbers anyway. It’s lazy to make intra-team comparisons, but Smith has a little bit of Mookie Betts in him at the plate, and that’s a very good thing.

In his career, Smith has produced at an All-Star clip, and he’s done it every single year he’s been in the majors. His game is just stable: he doesn’t strike out much, takes walks, and provides roughly average defense behind the plate. It works out to a 5 WAR per 600 PA pace, which is the kind of production you just don’t see from catchers. In my estimation, he’s the best catcher in baseball, and I don’t think it’s particularly close. His bat is so good that he’d be a fine DH or first baseman, but it truly stands out in the wasteland that is catcher offense in 2022; backstops are hitting .226/.296/.368 in aggregate.

I didn’t get much pushback at all on Smith’s ranking when I solicited feedback on this list. Teams would trade a ton for three years of a 130 wRC+ bat behind the plate. If one thing holds him back, it’s the nature of the catching position; it requires extra rest days, which limits total playing time. If Smith gets much better offensively, it might even make sense to play him at first base – or at least, it would for a team that didn’t also have Freddie Freeman and Max Muncy.

Albies has become the go-to example for preposterously team-friendly contracts, thanks to the seven-year, $35 million deal he signed before the 2019 season. He’s a bargain and a multi-time All-Star. For years, he was an automatic inclusion in the top five of this list.

I don’t think he fits there anymore. We’re at the part of the list where almost everyone is on a great contract. Albies offers team control at a bargain-basement salary, but he’s more solid regular than superstar at this point. He has a career 106 wRC+, and a 102 since the start of the 2020 season; that’s pretty much the definition of an average bat. He doesn’t have a true carrying tool on offense; he makes decent contact, which combined with an aggressive approach limits his strikeouts, but he doesn’t walk much or hit for plus power. Sure, he hit 30 bombs last season (and 24 in 2018 and ’19), but that feels more like a career year than the new normal, particularly in this era of a less-lively baseball.

Albies does everything else well, which gives him a nice floor. He plays plus defense at second base and adds value on the basepaths. Until this year, he’d been remarkably durable; he eclipsed 680 plate appearances in each of 2018, ’19, and ’21. This year, he was playing nearly every day until a broken foot landed him on the 60-day IL. Those are real skills! Baseball teams value them highly. But “average bat, great fielding second baseman who adds value on the basepaths” describes a lot of players who didn’t even make this list. Albies’s contract can only carry him so far.

Meet the new Ozzie Albies! That’s unfair to both Hayes and Albies, but Hayes is going to be regular on these lists for a long time thanks to the eight-year contract (plus a team option) he signed before the start of this season. I expected to get some pushback here when I asked a few contacts where to rank Hayes – I’m generally very high on him – but I got none, because there’s so much to like here when you consider the player and the contract.

First of all, Hayes is the best defensive third baseman in baseball. That’s not really up for debate; he has huge range, a plus arm, and the kind of instincts that make it look like he can see five seconds into the future. Per Statcast, he’s saved 27 outs defensively since debuting partway through 2020, and other defensive metrics generally agree. That’s second only to Nolan Arenado’s 30, but Hayes has played 700 fewer innings. No one else even comes close. You can’t project him to be quite this good going forward, but even discounting his glove somewhat leaves him as one of the best defenders in the game.

Second, he has thunder in his bat. He’s in the 88th percentile for average exit velocity league-wide and the 90th for maximum exit velocity. His swing isn’t ferocious, but he generates loud contact anyway. He walks more than average and strikes out less than average. When you put it that way, he sounds like an excellent offensive player.

One big problem: he can’t get the ball off the ground. His swing is geared for grounders, and he makes his loudest contact at low angles. That explains the anemic power numbers despite plus raw power. If he doesn’t fix that, he’ll be more average bat than slugger; his career wRC+ stands at 102, for example. If he does, even if it comes at the cost of more strikeouts, he could be the next Josh Donaldson, a vacuum cleaner third baseman who does it all.

You’re not guaranteed of that, but even if he doesn’t put it all together offensively, Hayes is a valuable player. He’s playing at a 4.4 WAR per 600 plate appearances clip, the level of a perennial All-Star. Cut that down to 3.5 WAR by discounting his defense, and that’s still a borderline All-Star. He’ll be doing it in Pittsburgh a long time, unless they trade him (trade value, etc. etc.), and he’ll be doing it at a bargain rate, averaging just $8.8 million per year. Hayes is already a foundational piece for the Pirates, and if he can unlock his natural power, he could be more than that.

I’ll admit to being swayed somewhat by the ZiPS projections here. Witt and Peña are putting up similar batting lines, and Peña is a better defender. But ZiPS is buying what Witt is selling, and I used projections in compiling this list for a reason: particularly for players who have had short major league careers, knowing what projection systems think of them is useful information. And what the projections are picking up here isn’t exactly some esoteric signal. Last year, Witt played a half-season in Triple-A at age 21; Peña played a half-season in Triple-A at age 23. Witt struck out meaningfully less often, walked twice as much, and put up eye-popping batted ball numbers. There’s a reason Witt came into the season as one of the top prospects in the game: he has all the tools, and a scorched-earth track record to boot. Doing it in the majors while playing a credible shortstop at age 21? Yeah, that’ll play.

Is he an aggressive swinger? No doubt, and major league pitchers have noticed. They’re avoiding the strike zone and throwing him a heaping helping of sliders. He’ll need to make an adjustment, but assuming Witt will make an adjustment is a safe bet. He’s actually swinging and missing less frequently than he did at Triple-A last year, and getting better as the season wears on. He’s also hitting the snot out of the ball, and he’s the fastest runner in the game.

Could Witt top out around his current production and never turn into a superstar, projections notwithstanding? Absolutely. That’s a risk inherent in any player with such a short track record, and it wouldn’t shock me to see Witt either much lower on this list next year or comfortably in the top 10. His position here represents his immense raw talent, and also the fact that he’s only played in the majors for four months.

Rutschman hurt his right tricep early this spring, which delayed his debut, but it strikes me as highly unlikely that the Orioles were going to bring him up before the full-service-year cutoff anyway. That’s gross, and it’s also part of the story when you’re talking about his trade value; with a year less of team control, Rutschman would be lower on this list. The rest of this writeup will focus on what he does on the field, but it warrants mentioning; I don’t see how you can leave the service time element out when talking about Rutschman.

Anyway: Rutschman is pretty awesome. He put up frankly unbelievable batting numbers in the minor leagues while playing excellent defense behind the plate. I was marginally worried about his underlying batted ball quality, but I only saw a limited sample of his 2021 numbers, and he’s put those questions to rest with the higher-quality data available in the majors; as it turns out, he has plenty of thump and gets to it frequently. He’s not Will Smith offensively, but I’d put him in the next tier down, which is amazing for a rookie catcher.

If you trust scouts (and I do in general), his defense is excellent. It certainly passes the eye test; he looks smooth both blocking and receiving. More generally, he just looks comfortable and competent overall, and while that’s not something I included in his ranking, it certainly wouldn’t make me less confident in trading for him.

As I’ve mentioned repeatedly in this exercise, I’m wary of overvaluing catcher defense, particularly framing. Rutschman’s deal is long enough that a robo-zone is almost an inevitability by the end of his team control years, which makes things even more complicated. But teams would break the bank for six-plus years of a catcher who already looks like one of the best in baseball, whether or not he steals a few extra strikes here and there.

Buxton presents a unique challenge in these rankings, because he has a unique contract. His MVP bonuses – $3 million for a 10th place finish up to $8 million for winning – mean that his salary isn’t set in advance. That’s a really good matchup of outlay and reward, though; if you’re paying Buxton more than expected, he’s realizing the good half of his outcomes, which mostly involves staying on the field.

That’s because when Buxton is on the field, he’s the real deal. He’s the best defensive center fielder in the game, and also one of its premier power hitters. I think everyone knows about the defense – one Buxton highlight is all you need to have his blazing speed become evident – but the power is truly gobsmacking. He has hellacious bat speed and gets to all of his power quite frequently. He’ll likely always have contact issues, but he’s improved markedly when it comes to pitch selection, and I could see that trending in the right direction in future years even if his power dips somewhat.

As for the injuries, I’m heartened that Buxton is seemingly trying harder to keep himself healthy. He’s hardly stealing bases at all, saving his full-speed bursts for when he really needs them. I don’t think he’ll suddenly be the picture of health, but this year has been encouraging on that front so far.

Some teams might prefer a player with a lower ceiling but a greater chance of staying in the lineup. Lots of teams, though, think they’re better than their competitors at keeping players on the field, and some of them are even right. Buxton is the kind of risk teams like to take; if things go very wrong, his contract isn’t onerous, and things will likely go very right when he’s available. Teams don’t like to gamble, as I’ve mentioned over and over again throughout this exercise. Most front offices live by the words of Joey Knish: “You can’t lose what you don’t put in the middle.” Buxton might make them consider the way Mike McDermott finished that thought, though: “But you can’t win much, either.”

Here’s a list of lefty batters I’d take over Tucker over the next three years: Juan Soto, Yordan Alvarez, Bryce Harper, and maybe Rafael Devers. Harper and Devers were on the honorable mention list (and either could easily have been in the top 50). The other two are in the top 10. Sure, Freddie Freeman is great, and if you want to put him over Tucker I wouldn’t fight you over it, but Tucker reminds me of a young Freeman, a gap-to-gap machine with the raw power to hit line drives out of the park.

Tucker’s offensive approach is downright elite. There’s no question he’s up there looking to swing, and he’s aggressive in the strike zone, but his eye is so good that he rarely chases anyway. He hits for what I’d consider an appropriate amount of contact; he’s not David Fletcher up there, but I wouldn’t want him to be, and accepting swing-and-miss for power is a good deal if you’re still making as much contact as Tucker is.

The fringe benefits are nice, too. Despite middling straight-line speed, Tucker is a threat to steal 20 bags a year. He has excellent baserunning instincts and plays faster than his measurables. He’s a plus defender in the corner outfield, and could probably fake center if necessary, though the Astros are awash in glove-first center fielders at the moment, so that’s guesswork.

Admittedly, this spot on the list assumes teams are interested in cheap production. Tucker will have his first trip through arbitration this winter, which means he’ll be meaningfully underpaid relative to his production for the next several years. How you calibrate the tradeoff between talent and compensation affects Tucker’s spot on the list. If you think teams trading for players this good would prefer a bona fide superstar over Tucker, even on a bigger contract, you could slide him down as low as 20th. But you generally won’t go wrong by betting on teams to covet ultra-cheap, star-level production. Tucker has quietly started to fit that description, and he’s only 25. He’s part of Houston’s new core, and I assume the Astros are going to keep this ranking strictly theoretical by signing him to an extension this offseason.