2024 Trade Value: Nos. 41-50

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 2025-2029, 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 2029 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2023 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.

One note on the rankings: Particularly at the bottom of the list, there isn’t a lot of room between the players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put them there for a reason, but there isn’t much of a gap between, say, the 38th-ranked player and the 60th. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several of the folks I talked to might prefer a player in the honorable mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. I think the broad strokes are correct, and this is my opinion of the best order, but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. I’ll note places where I disagreed meaningfully with people I spoke with in calibrating this list, and I’ll also note players whose value was the subject of disagreement among my contacts. As I mentioned in the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, I’ll also indicate tier breaks between players where appropriate, both in their capsules and in the table at the end of the piece.

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

The first six players on the list belong in a tier together, and some of the Honorable Mention pitchers could credibly fit here as well. Call it “playoff starters with team control” if you’re looking for a label. Gore fits that bill. His talent has never been in question. Watch him for an inning, and you’ll come away impressed by his upper-90s fastball and wait-where-did-it-go curveball. He even throws a credible slider and changeup to support his two primary offerings. Gore’s strikeout and swinging strike rates have increased every year, and his walk rate has consistently declined. The further removed he gets from his disastrous 2021 control implosion, the more confident I get about his medium-term trajectory. The numbers are starting to back me up; Gore’s 3.14 FIP and 3.78 xFIP sound closer to his true talent level than his 4.20 ERA on the year (a .361 BABIP allowed isn’t helping there).

At this point, I think Gore’s reasonable upside is excellent second banana in a playoff rotation. He’s not quite there yet; even though it’s better than before, his command still abandons him frequently enough that I’d be uncomfortable trying to get bulk innings out of him against dialed-in opponents. He’d be a great fit on a team with two inning-eating starters and a deep bullpen; when he’s on, he can be dominant, but he still has stretches where he can’t find the zone.

There’s always injury risk with pitchers, but Gore is at least under team control for quite a while. He’ll reach free agency after the 2027 season, so a team that traded for him would get three years of production at arbitration salaries. That cushions the blow if he has to miss time; two salary-controlled years of Gore is still a nice prize. As you’ll see in a lot of today’s players, pitching is so unpredictable and yet so necessary that a live arm with three-plus years left under contract makes for a hot commodity.

Like Gore, Steele has three years of team control left after 2024. Unlike Gore, he’s peaking right now; he’s 29 and in the midst of the best stretch of his career. His cutter/slider approach has always felt fragile to me, but at this point that assessment strains credulity. He’s working on his third straight year of ERAs and ERA estimators in the low-to-mid-3.00s, with future projections in the same general vicinity. If he’s the third-best pitcher in your rotation, you’re ecstatic. If he’s the ace, you’re probably feeling a little bit undermanned.

Steele tends to miss a few starts with injury every year, but he’s thus far avoided any major setbacks. I gave him the nod over Gore for that reason; Steele succeeds without a ton of velocity, which makes me marginally less worried about his elbow exploding. He’s starting from a higher salary thanks to his Super-2 status, but he’s still a bargain, and team control matters far more than the exact cost of that control at these levels of salary.

No one is going to trade for Steele thinking that they’ll unlock another level of dominance. He’s already maxing out his talent level, and more power to him for it. I often find myself thinking “How did he manage that?” when I watch a Steele start. That puts a cap on his perceived value, but it’s hard to argue with the results. Every team needs more pitching, after all, and you don’t get extra points for looking nice in GIFs.

Get ready to hear a lot of variations on this statement: I like Greene more than Gore and Steele because he’ll be around for longer. Results-wise, there isn’t a lot of daylight between these three. They go about it differently, but a mid-3.00s ERA in a neutral park feels like a median expectation for each of them. Greene does it while touching 100 with his fastball, but he mostly uses that fastball as a setup pitch and goes to his slider when he needs to do heavy lifting.

The “how” certainly matters, but what I’m focusing on for this ranking is the “how long.” Greene signed an early-career extension that pays him roughly $10 million a year through 2028. There’s even a team option for 2029, which will be his age-29 season. If he’s still healthy and effective, that’s a nice bonus, and if he’s not, hey, it was risk-free anyway.

There’s very little separating Greene and the names above and below him, a fact you can clearly see in the ZiPS forecasts. A tiny bit of projectability here, a smidgen of injury risk there, a few extra strikeouts or grounders. When that’s the case, I go to my Sesame Street model to make distinctions. One of these things is not like the other, and it’s Greene’s years of team control remaining. Alternately, how many years of team control do I count? One, two, three, four, (option for) five, ah ha ha! Jim Henson would have been a great talent evaluator, is what I’m saying. Oh, and Hunter Greene is good.

The Guardians apparently have a velocity augmentation factory hidden somewhere in their minor league system, and Bibee has used it to great effect. He’s added a ton of velo as a professional, which is how a fifth round pick from 2021 broke into the majors in 2023 and looked like an impact starter right away. His command and secondaries were always strong points; staple that to a league average fastball, and you’re cooking with gas.

I don’t think there’s a lot more in the tank here; like Steele, Bibee seems to be maxing out his strikeout potential, and his command is already excellent, so it’s not exactly easy for it to improve even further. I do think that Bibee is a good bet to churn out 150-175 innings of good pitching every year, though; I love a well-rounded skill set that doesn’t rely too much on a single pitch, and I particularly love pitchers who pair that with good command.

Bibee has another pre-arbitration year and then three years of arb, so he’s going to be both cheap and effective for quite a while. That comes out to one fewer year of control than Greene, but I’d prefer Bibee’s contract to Greene’s nevertheless; having all the years be contingent gives the team more protection in case of injury or underperformance. You can plow the next four years of savings into upgrading elsewhere, which is worth taking into account when you’re looking at players who are nice but hardly franchise cornerstones.

Let’s bring back special pitching correspondent Count von Count for this one. Five! Five years of cost-controlled pitching! Ah ha ha! That’s the elevator pitch for Rodriguez; he’s pretty similar to the guys behind him on the list, only you get him for more years. He has some Gore to him – he pairs a big fastball with multiple wipeout secondary pitches. He also has some Greene to him – he’s using that fastball a little bit less despite its enviable velocity because his other pitches are just better. He doesn’t quite have Bibee’s command, but he’s still above average there.

If there’s one thing to be worried about in his profile, it’s that he’s had a couple of non-elbow-related IL stints in the past three years. Rodriguez was out for months with a lat strain in 2022, then missed a few turns in the rotation this year with shoulder inflammation. Even as TJ has become commonplace, shoulder injuries remain scary and unpredictable, and every 30-year-old knows how backs can act up on you.

I think that risk is manageable, because you’re getting plenty of upside. If Rodriguez never improves from here, he can still be a playoff team’s third option. His changeup is hellacious, and on any given day, one of his two breaking balls is often cooking; you can dream on improvement very easily. I can imagine a world where everything clicks and he’s suddenly a 2.75-3.25 ERA guy instead of 3.50-4.00, which is where we’re projecting him. High floor and achievable ceiling? Sounds good to me.

Jones was the most controversial pitcher of this group in my cross-checking process, but not in any consistent direction. The anti-Jones case is easy enough to make: He’s a littler dude, listed at 6-foot-1 and 180 pounds, with outrageous velocity and (until this year) scattershot command. Pitchers of his general stature and style have excelled (Spencer Strider and Tim Lincecum come to mind), but durability has always been a concern. Jones has only made two starts on regular rest this year, and he’s currently on the IL with a lat strain. Scary!

The pro-Jones case is even more straightforward: The only starter in all of baseball with a better fastball is Paul Skenes. With beautiful shape and newly pinpoint command, Jones comes after hitters early and often. He’s missing bats at an elite rate as a rookie with only two pitches, and his curveball and changeup are both promising. He could excel as a two-pitch guy with good command or as one who improves either of those options just slightly. Getting 150 innings a year of a Strider starter kit makes for a tremendous pitcher, even before you consider how much he might improve with a little more experience.

I put Jones at the head of this group because I think he’s the most likely to end up as a true ace, but I’m sympathetic to the argument that he’s also the riskiest of this tier. He won’t reach free agency until after the 2029 season, and still has two more years at the league minimum, so we’re talking bargain-basement costs here. Even if Jones spends the next half-decade as a streaky and sometimes-injured rotation option, he’ll be a tremendous value to whichever team rosters him. The chance of spectacular success puts him over the edge for me.

Believe it or not, I didn’t get a ton of pushback to this tier, which extends for the next four players. None of the contracts are backbreaking in either years or average annual value, though obviously they’re not going to be amazing five years down the road. Not everyone agreed with the placement – I think that several team sources would have preferred to see this group at the top of the honorable mentions instead of on the list proper – but I don’t think anyone was completely aghast about it or anything.

Lindor was a less universal inclusion in this group than the next names you’ll see, more or less because of concerns about how his defense will age. He’s a good rather than great hitter; he racks up MVP-candidate value because he’s also a great defender and baserunner. A move down the defensive spectrum would really sting given that context.

I’m of the “let’s find out later” contingent on that front, though. In his age-30 season, he’s about as fast as ever, and Statcast thinks his defense is still elite. He’s also working on his third straight season of a 120 or better wRC+; that would play at first base, never mind shortstop.

Trading for Lindor would mean assuming some future years of pain, no doubt. He’s just not going to be the same player seven years down the road. Half the teams in baseball, maybe more, wouldn’t even consider rostering him. I just think the numbers speak for themselves; the only way you’re getting a better shortstop for the next few years is by going hilariously higher up on this list (or going two slots higher, hashtag foreshadowing).

Marte isn’t exactly paid like a superstar; his contract treats him more like a low-end All-Star. In the past two years, he’s been more than that; since the start of 2023, he’s racked up a gaudy 8.4 WAR, a rounding error away from a top 10 line among all hitters. He’s not doing anything new; he’s just put together all the skills he showed in the past at once. He has a plus batting eye, makes a ton of contact, and hits for bruising power from the right side of the plate.

Marte has shown flashes of this form before, notably in 2019 when he put up a .329/.389/.592 batting line in the year of the rabbit ball. He’s doing it in much tougher conditions this time, and he’s going to flirt with a career high in homers despite the miserable offensive environment. He’s also playing excellent defense, once one of the biggest sticking points in his profile; as it turns out, a permanent move to second base has served him well.

Why isn’t Marte higher given all that praise? Essentially, I think his upside is capped. When he’s firing on all cylinders, he’s 40-50% better than average offensively, and he’s never going to be a huge defensive asset. He’s also 30, so it’s probably not getting better than this, and this isn’t a Lindor situation where the status quo is an unending string of six-win seasons. If Marte is the best player on your team, your team probably isn’t good enough.

I like the contract. I like the talent. I like that Marte is playing better than ever, and in a way that looks sustainable to me. I’m just pumping the brakes a little bit because I think the most likely outcome is a 3-4 WAR guy in future years, not a 5-6 WAR one. Consider it a hedge.

Let’s continue the contract discussion from the Lindor section. Seager is owed a lot of money, over a lot of years. He’ll earn that money, though. We’re talking about a career 134 wRC+ hitter coming off of an MVP-caliber season that was cut short by injury. He’s mashing again this year, walking more than ever and still striking out much less than average. You don’t get a hitting metric named after you if you don’t rake.

Most of what I said about Lindor applies here too. Six years down the road, Seager’s compensation will be higher than his skill merits. That’s unavoidable. Today, though, he’s a crazy bargain. He’s one of the best handful of players in the game, and he’s making what two mid-tier starters make combined. The reason his deal looks so onerous in the far future is because he’s sacrificing value today. Every single team in baseball, even the ones that habitually cry poverty, would trip over themselves to sign Seager to a one-year, $32.5 million deal. They’d trip over themselves to do two or even three years at that rate. I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t hit like an All-Star for the next three years.

It’s not like there are no risks. I don’t know how long Seager will stick at shortstop, for one thing, though his bat would be comfortably above average at DH, never mind third base, his most likely landing spot. He’s definitely injury prone, though I think that’s overblown: He’s 57th in plate appearances since signing in Texas, right in line with a lot of players who don’t have a reputation as being brittle. And if you’re wrong, you’re going to be really wrong, in a way that hurts the franchise a bit in the future. But for this kind of talent – a top 10 player when healthy – the juice is worth the squeeze.

It was always going to happen this way. When Harper signed with the Phillies after the 2018 season, his deal felt like a high-water mark. I mean, $330 million! Those are A-Rod numbers. But Harper has been more than worth the deal so far, and with the inflation that’s gone on since then, his $25.4 million average annual value looks downright affordable these days. Harper has been awesome the entire time he’s been in Philadelphia – he has an aggregate 147 wRC+ as a Phil, better than his time as a National – and there are no signs that he’s slowing down.

There are better hitters in baseball – but there aren’t a lot of better hitters. I’m not sure I’d put an 80 on his raw power, but his game power definitely deserves that mark. No one strikes fear into pitchers quite like Harper, with his sell-out, uppercut swing and thirsty, let’s-go-mash approach. We’re talking about a guy with a premium batting eye – he just happens to use it in anger. Harper walks 15% of the time despite hating to walk. He’s trying to hit everything to the right field stands, and he’s doing it more often than not. He also rips line drives and has a league-average contact rate despite that huge swing. He’s a spectacular talent, and his skill set feels like it will age well to me.

Sure, he plays first base, but that just doesn’t bother me much given his spectacular offensive production. I think that positional adjustments are too harsh to transcendent hitters who happen to play first base or DH. The guys who are 10% above league average? Sure, they’re properly penalized; a lot of minor leaguers could do a similar job. But true top-of-the-line hitters like Harper are so rare that teams will happily plug them in anywhere; he’s a massive improvement over an average first base hitter, just like Seager is a massive improvement over average shortstop hitters. Oh, and he might be a really good defensive first baseman, too.

I’m quite confident that Harper should be the leading name in this tier. I thought about sliding this group up the list into the 30’s, even; it’s really hard to get hitters like this, and none of these contracts are even particularly underwater from a pure surplus value standpoint. No one’s going to trade you Bryce Harper – or Seager, Marte, or Lindor. But if they were available, there’d be robust bidding. It’s all well and good to protest about contract size, but when the rubber hits the road, teams want Bryce Harper, and they’d give up good prospects to get him.