2023 Trade Value: Nos. 11-20

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to the 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 2024-2028, 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 2028 (if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2022 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his technical wizardry. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all of the players who have been ranked up to this point.

At this point, we’re into the good stuff. All of these players are hugely valuable, and few are likely to actually get traded. That doesn’t mean this is purely theoretical, but it’s something approaching that. Like most lists, ordinal rankings can be deceiving; there isn’t an equal value gap separating every spot on the list. I’ve tried to mention where there are large gaps, but don’t read too much into someone being 14th instead of 13th. There just isn’t much difference between those two spots, and both players are a lot more valuable than the guy ranked 21st.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the next batch of players.

Heading into 2023, this is not the Jays player I expected to rate the highest. For all the time I’ve put into broadening and deepening my understanding of baseball over the years, I’m still a Moneyball guy at heart, and Bichette doesn’t fit that aesthetic. That’s underselling it, even; Bichette swings like he’s afraid today is the last day he’ll ever be allowed to.

Do you know the truth about that book, though? It wasn’t really about walks. It was about how on-base percentage was undervalued by the market, and how the A’s capitalized on that by trading for players whose best skill was taking a free base. Bichette gets on base the hard way — by smacking laser beams all around the field — and his career .341 OBP is hardly an illusion. His combination of contact and power is rare, and you can see why he swings so often given that fact; he’s emphasizing the best part of his game as frequently as humanly possible.

We’re on year five of the Bichette experience, and his batting line works out roughly the same every time. That’s enviable consistency, but consistency isn’t the only important thing. I wouldn’t shell out this amount of value for a guy who was stone cold guaranteed to produce a 100 wRC+. Bichette is consistently excellent, and that’s an entirely different proposition. His production doesn’t always look pretty. He’s streaky as hell. His baserunning is all over the place. But since his debut, only Corey Seager and Xander Bogaerts have out-hit him among shortstops (Fernando Tatis Jr. used to fit the bill, but he’s an outfielder now).

Like those two comps, Bichette isn’t exactly a Gold Glover out there. That’s the biggest knock on him at this point. But stapling that nice-for-a-corner-outfielder bat onto a 45 shortstop makes for an All-Star with upside. He’ll have to move down the defensive spectrum at some point, and he’s not a natural fit for either second or third base given his skill set, but that’s an issue for whoever signs him in free agency, not for whoever has him for the remainder of this deal.

It’s wild to me that Ramírez has been doing it for so long. His first 5-WAR season was in 2016. He trails only Mike Trout and Mookie Betts in WAR since then. He’s what you’d get if you took the above-average-at-everything players I like so much and then turned every dial up another few notches.

He runs well. He fields well. He hits the ball hard despite his small stature, and he does a great job of getting to his power thanks to a lift-and-pull approach. He makes an outrageous amount of contact for someone with his batted ball mix. He’s a strike zone genius, running double-digit walk rates and Arraez-ian strikeout rates. He cracks 30 bombs a year but still hits for average. Frankly, he seems like something out of science fiction, the idealized version of a 5-foot-9 baseball player.

Several people pointed out Ramírez’s downside to me. He already has old-player skills, he’s not getting any younger, and his exit velocities are trending down (albeit only slightly), which might be the canary in the coal mine for a broader physical decline. If Ramírez stops kicking out value in every phase of the game the way he has for the better part of a decade, he might be more plus than plus-plus, to use some of my favorite baseball terminology. He’s also no longer on an ultra-cheap contract; maybe he’s not paid like a superstar, but he’s no longer making peanuts.

My counterpoint: Ramírez is a unicorn, and his true best skill is maximizing his physical tools. There aren’t many players in baseball who I’d rather bet on making the most out of what they’re given. He’s a direct analog to Betts, only for a lower AAV and with his contract skipping the low-value seasons from age 36 to 39. I’d sooner move Betts up – and I probably didn’t write enough about him in the Honorable Mentions given how close I was to throwing him on the list despite the gargantuan contract – than move Ramírez further down.

I guess I can’t blame the Marlins for trying to keep Pérez’s innings count manageable, but it’s a bummer that he’s going to miss some time on purpose this year. He’s the real deal, absolutely electric across the board, and I think he’s already one of the best pitchers in baseball. The Marlins take “get your pitchers to the majors as soon as they’re ready” seriously; Pérez is only 20, and despite consistently aggressive assignments, he shredded the minors en route to his debut. He has four plus pitches already, and he’s displaying above-average command against a caliber of hitter he’d never previously faced.

Thanks to a delayed debut and his current minor league rest stint, Pérez will be a Marlin through the 2029 season. Thanks to those same shenanigans, he won’t even qualify for Super-2 status, which means he’s going to be making peanuts for the next four years. There haven’t been pitchers like him in a little while; the closest examples I can think of appear higher on the list, and even they weren’t as cheap for as long, or as good at such a young age.

ZiPS is a lot lower than I am on Pérez, and I can understand why. It has to be conservative because it surely can’t find many similar trajectories to base his off of. Without getting into the minutiae of how projection systems work, it’s a safe bet to assume they regress more towards the mean when the players are less modelable. That’s all well and good, but I get to use more tools than just projections, and every other arrow is pointing straight up for Pérez. Talent evaluators drooled over him when I brought him up, and one said “Wow, this sounds high, but I guess it’s not.”

There are three things I find myself doing more than previous proprietors of this list. I’ve thrown more long-contract and big-contract guys on here than my predecessors, and I’m still working on finding the right balance there. I like to fill the 41-50 range with cheap, controllable guys with average-player floors. Finally, and most importantly here, I’m pretty aggressive with rookies who can stay afloat in the bigs right away. I’m not saying I’m definitely right – I slapped big values on Bobby Witt Jr. and Jeremy Peña last year, and then moved them down based on more evidence – but that’s the mindset I’m using to rate Pérez. He’s tremendous, and he’s going to be on the same team for a long time at a miserly rate.

How much are teams willing to pay for volume? That’s the question Alcantara poses, and this year has driven that point home even further. His 2022 Cy Young wasn’t due to being completely unhittable; it was due to being great over an outrageous number of innings. Since the pandemic goofed up pitcher workloads in 2020, no one other than Alcantara has topped 210 innings in a season; he checked in at 228.2 last year. That, plus career-best run prevention (2.28 ERA, 2.99 FIP), earned him the award in unanimous fashion.

This year, he’s been meaningfully worse, and that decline hits double for players who get a lot of value from their workload. As I noted last month, it’s a multiplicative effect; Alcantara’s differentiating factor is skill times innings, and that innings number is a big one. Dropping the skill factor hurts more because there are more innings for it to hurt in, and it’s not like he was ever the best pitcher in baseball on a rate basis, so he relied on that multiple to stand out.

What does it mean for his trade value? To me, it means that he’s more of a 3-4 WAR pitcher who will occasionally spike a huge season than he is a Scherzerian presence. The volume is worth something too, even if it can’t be captured by WAR; protecting your bullpen has value, and Alcantara is uniquely suited to eat innings. You get that for four more years at reasonable rates, and the fourth year is even a team option.

I don’t think there’s an argument for taking the pitchers from the tier below – Gallen, Valdez, and Kirby – over Alcantara. He gives you a lot of the same stuff as them, only for longer (Gallen/Valdez) or at a higher expected level (Kirby). I wouldn’t fault you for taking Pérez over him depending on personal preference, though; at various points, I considered doing so myself.

There’s one potential complication: What if Alcantara just isn’t that good? What if his true talent is that of a 4.00-ERA workhorse? That’s a risk, but I don’t think it’s a particularly large one, and it’s offset by the benefits of all the extra innings you might get if that risk fails to materialize. I like betting on great athletes who’ve already had huge seasons. Would it really be that surprising if Alcantara turned in another sub-3.00 ERA next year? I don’t think so, and I think I’m in a comfortable majority of talent evaluators there.

If I didn’t see Webb frequently – as a San Francisco resident, I catch him in person several times a year – I might think he was just a figment of data. He’s almost impossibly consistent, and consistent around a round number to boot. Since 2021, his breakout season, he has a 3.00 ERA, a 3.02 FIP, and a 3.03 xFIP. He’s compiled 4.1 and 4.2 WAR in his last two full seasons, and he’s on pace for 4.5 this year. Heck, even ZiPS is picking up what he’s putting down; look at that pile of WAR projections, all nice and clustered.

Webb would have been a free agent after the 2025 season, but he and the Giants agreed to an extension that will keep him around through 2028. He would have been on this list regardless, but three extra years at sub-ace dollar values kicks him up a notch. He’s durable and consistent. “Pitchers don’t age, they break” is a useful concept when thinking about the risk of long-term contracts for guys who put incredible strain on their elbows for a living. I’m not saying Webb is immune to that, but the people I talked to who care about such things think that Webb’s mechanics are helpfully simple, and that’s a nice feather in his cap.

I think this is about as high as I’ll ever put a pitcher with Webb’s skill set on a trade value list. Because his game relies on so many balls in play, there’s a cap on his run prevention skills. In some ways, he’s West Coast Alcantara. He’s also a big volume guy; he already has 11 starts of seven innings or longer this year. If he has a down year stuff-wise, he’s going to look very average out there. That’s the deal when you’re talking about sinker-dominant pitchers.

Still, admit it: You’d want your team to trade for Logan Webb, even if the prospect cost made you slightly uncomfortable. He’s like a security blanket; every time he starts, you’ll feel good about the team’s chances. He’s only 26. His contract is modest in modern baseball terms, so you don’t have to worry about him getting in the way of signing, say, Shohei Ohtani. Maybe contact-oriented pitchers have a ceiling, but Webb is at that ceiling right now.

Man, I’m such a sucker for this exact skill set. Harris is a premium defender with Gold Gloves in his future. He hits the snot out of the ball. He’s on a bargain of a contract that will keep him around forever with annual values from a bygone era. There’s just one question: Can he hit?

If this sounds a lot like Ke’Bryan Hayes to you, well, you’re not wrong. I like Harris’ offense more than I liked Hayes’, but their issues are pretty similar. They both hit the ball into the ground a lot, so those pretty exit velocities don’t come with the power you’d expect. They both have an aggressive approach that puts a lid on their walk rate, and they both strike out plenty.

Harris has made it work for longer at the major league level than Hayes ever did, which gives me a little hope. He’s a tremendous defender; if it turns out that he’s a 95-100 wRC+ bat, that’s Kevin Kiermaier with the Rays, a famously valuable player. Kiermaier is a lofty defensive comp, but Harris looks like he might be in that general echelon; he has huge range and a cannon arm.

There’s also this: Harris had more plate appearances in his good-bat 2022 season than he’s had so far in a down 2023. He’s hitting closer to what I expected him to do coming up, but his career line still looks solid, and projection systems think he’s a slightly above-average hitter. His approach has actually improved, too. He still swings too much, but he’s headed towards average, which is always a reassuring sign. And even if I’m wrong, his contract is so team-friendly – he’s making less than $10 million a year on average over the next seven years.

I’ve been wrong on players just like this before. I like dreaming on good defenders starting to hit more, and I know it. But Harris just checks so many boxes that I can’t help myself. I even had him higher earlier on before talking myself down just a hair. I love premium defenders, particularly young ones on long guaranteed contracts. I like betting on players with top-shelf raw power, or at least its exit velocity proxy. If I’m wrong, so be it. These are the kinds of players I’d target if I were a big league GM.

Every year, I put Robert higher on this list than I expect to. I come into the exercise worrying about the injury risk. It’s no small matter that if he hits 100 games played this season, it’ll be a career high. I look at his approach and grimace; he’s all gas and no brakes at the plate, which leads to some scary strikeout numbers. If you think of touted prospects from the past who haven’t panned out, injuries and approach are frequent warning signs. This really shouldn’t work.

It does, though, because Robert is just that good. He’s an elite defensive center fielder. He has 70-grade power, and he gets to it in-game because he’s adept at elevating the ball despite a voracious approach to the strike zone. When we wonder about whether someone chases too much, they don’t usually have a career 129 wRC+. There’s more than one way to be a successful hitter, and Robert clearly prioritizes putting his cacophonous power on display as often as possible. Can you blame him after seeing it in action?

Thanks to an early-career extension, Robert is due modest salaries in 2024 and 2025. The White Sox also hold team options for the two years after that, and those are slam dunks if he keeps playing like this. The only reason he’s this low on the list is because I really do worry about his strikeouts, but maybe I’m just too afraid to go out of my hitter evaluation comfort zone.

If you’re looking for a high-variance play, this is your guy. The downside feels very real. What if the strikeouts really get away from him? What if he plays 162 total games over the next two seasons? Are you really picking up those team options on the hope that he’ll stay on the field? His health track record can’t be hand-waved away. But the upside is also tremendous. Robert is a top-five position player in baseball right now, and if he’s healthy I don’t see that changing.

I know, I know: Riley’s offense isn’t up to par this year. His contact quality took a small step back. He looks more like a 125 wRC+ hitter – his line is worse than that, but the underlying statistics all look rosy – than a 140 wRC+ hitter. Panic!

I’m not panicking. Riley is a stud on offense, and a down half-season won’t convince me otherwise. He pummels the ball when he makes contact, and he’s actually making contact at a career-high rate. He puts the ball in the air frequently, and he has enough power to turn those into homers to all fields. Take any hitter short of demigod territory, and they’re bound to have a down stretch once in a while even if their long-term talent is unchanged.

There’s an undeniable risk here. Sometimes a slump is just a slump, but sometimes it’s a new level of performance. I think the smart money is on a short-term blip, but Riley’s ZiPS projections have declined from the offseason (though they’re still up from last year at midseason). Even granting that risk, I’d try to buy in at a discounted rate, because I think Riley is the real deal, and if you acquire him, you’ll have him for a long time.

Only one of the people I consulted in making this list pointed to Riley’s contract as a worry, and I’ll give you the same response I gave them. I just can’t get that worried about a contract that ends in his age-35 season. Honestly, it’s almost a benefit; the alternative would be having him leave in a few years, and those back years aren’t likely to be huge overpays. $22 million a season isn’t a millstone-level contract these days. I model contractual commitments with some time value of money and some general future discounting, and for players who aren’t on the wrong side of 30, I generally prefer more years of control to less, even if the rates aren’t a huge bargain. (For what it’s worth, the purely-modeled version of this list, before I touched it at all or asked for any feedback, had Riley 15th.)

And there are even some exciting developments on the Riley front this year. He’s looking better on the defensive end, and that was my least favorite part of his game before this season. He’s a lot more valuable playing third base than moving to first, and I think he’s a lock to stay at the hot corner for the next half-decade now. If you think Riley might just be an okay hitter who spiked two incredible years, this ranking is too high. But I think he’s an excellent hitter with rock-solid underlying metrics, and I’d feel pretty great if I could pencil him into my lineup for most of the next decade.

Jeez, Braves, let someone else play for once. Atlanta is positively awash in great players, with longtime trade value darling Murphy just another example. The guy just does everything. He’s always been an elite defensive catcher. His 2021 season (100 wRC+, 3.3 WAR in 448 PA) felt like a preview of a Molina-eque career to come. Now, he also bops.

What can you do other than marvel? I can’t imagine Murphy will keep up this level of offense — catching is exhausting and he’s improved basically every facet of his game this year — but if he keeps even 50% of his gains, he’s going to be a monster. That’s what ZiPS seems to think, and it matches with my own intuition.

In case there weren’t enough things going in Murphy’s favor, he’s a great thrower, so the increased importance of controlling the running game in 2023 makes him look even better. That’s not supposed to be a knock on his other defensive skills, though. He’s also a top-notch receiver and nearly as good as a blocker, something I can say with greater certainty now that Statcast measures blocking directly.

Because this is Atlanta we’re talking about, Murphy signed an extension that will keep him around for a long time just before going on this tear. He has five years and $69 million left after 2023, a club option after that, and I mean, what?!? Who was his agent? Fine, the contract bought out three years of arbitration, but not at particularly lofty rates. Dude posted a 5-WAR season last year – he was already a star when he signed a contract that pays him like Andrew Benintendi.

I’m sad that Murphy doesn’t fit into the top 10 on this list, because he’s a consistent performer whose game I think flies under the radar even after escaping the A’s. If it’s any consolation, he’s a tier ahead of everyone we’ve already talked about today. I don’t think there are any good arguments for having Murphy lower than this spot on the list, and I’d be comfortable putting him as high as sixth. What an awesome player.

McClanahan is an ace-level pitcher with eye-popping stuff. He sits 96-98 and touches 100 mph when he needs to. His changeup is off-the-charts good. His breaking balls turn hitters into pretzels. He’s scuffled a tiny bit with command this year, but his career numbers look solid. It’s hard to post numbers like his by accident.

Due to some injuries early in his career, the Rays have been quite cautious with his innings counts, but he’s been sneaky durable. He missed a few turns around the All-Star break for maintenance reasons, but he’s started the same number of games as Framber Valdez in the last three seasons, and more than Blake Snell or Shane Bieber, to name some well-regarded hurlers.

Now, does he come with risk? Absolutely. He doesn’t have an especially long track record of success; 71 starts is just not a lot when you’re trying to predict how good someone will be for the next four years. But that’s the reason he’s so high on this list: You get him for the next four years. I don’t think there’s much chance that McClanahan is actively bad. It’s just a question of how good he is and whether he’ll stay healthy.

If he pitches like a number one starter for the next four years, I have him too low. If he misses a year and a half with a major arm injury, I have him too high. That’s the balance of risks here. Pitchers with this combination of stuff, track record, and team control don’t come along very often. When they do, they’re among the most valuable players in the game.