2025 Trade Value: Nos. 31-40

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 2026-2030, 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 2030 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2024 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 guy who would have been 58th if the list went that deep. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small, though it picks up around no. 30, as I’ll discuss today. 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 the places where I disagreed meaningfully with the 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 next batch of players.

As we continue with the Superstars on Fair Deals tier, I’d like to introduce you to a game I played that helped me order this section of the list. I call it “Would you rather have Ketel Marte?” Marte is a useful point of comparison because he offers a little bit of everything. He’s great right now, a perennial All-Star. His contract keeps him around through at least 2030. It’s also for less than $20 million a year, so you’re getting a good rate even if he declines somewhat in the last years of the deal. Like great players? Marte is your guy. Like bargains? Yep, Marte.

Seager and his tier-mates clearly belong behind Marte. Seager is great, don’t get me wrong, a borderline Hall of Famer still at the peak of his powers. His batting line this year is bang on his career average, as is his playing time; a few nagging injuries at the start of the season look set to limit him to about 500 PA for the year, right around his average over the last four seasons. If you have someone who can spot him for about a month every year, Seager will give you MVP-candidate production at shortstop year in and year out. Have a shortstop? You could always shift Seager to third base, though thus far, he’s handled short so well that a move hasn’t made sense.

There’s risk here, of course, because Seager is in his 30s and has always been injury-prone. This deal will absolutely look bad in the late 2020s. Plenty of teams wouldn’t even get involved in bidding for Seager. But I think that getting Seager’s game-breaking talent now combined with the relatively short tail, at least as far as big contracts go, would convince many teams to vie for him if he were available in trade. How often can you add one of the best players of his generation while he’s still in his prime?

Most of what I said about Seager holds for Lindor as well. They’re the same age. They’re signed through the same year. Their deals pay them similarly. They’re both elite offensive options at a premium position – Seager’s a better hitter, while Lindor is a much better defender. Last year, I had them both on the list with their order reversed, but I’m favoring Lindor this time. Lindor is somehow underrated despite being an obvious star; over the past four seasons, he’s neck-and-neck with Shohei Ohtani and Bobby Witt Jr. for the second-best player in baseball, trailing only Aaron Judge.

I actually think that Lindor’s value is suppressed slightly by already being on the Mets; they’d make a ton of sense as a suitor if he didn’t already play for them. Come on, though, your big-market team would give up a lot to get this guy! He’s an elite defender and a great hitter, he’s the most durable shortstop in the game judging by playing time, and if you’re shading evaluations based on chemistry fit, well, everyone loves playing with him.

Last year, I had more team personnel question Lindor’s inclusion on the list than Seager’s. This year, the reverse was true. I think that’s as much about playing time as anything else. Regardless, I’ve either made my point well enough or annoyed my sources consistently enough that they seemed, as a group, more accepting of the smattering of high-dollar superstars dotting the rankings this year. Those guys aren’t a fit for every team, and not every high-dollar player deserves a spot on the list, but Lindor’s combination of skill, age, and contract clears the bar for me. There just aren’t many players like this, period. You should get them on your team if you can.

Unlike the trio of superstars behind him in the rankings, Wheeler wasn’t on the top 50 the entire time, but I ended up lumping him in with this tier as I refined my thinking and did more matching of like players. Adding Wheeler to your roster wouldn’t be quite the same as adding Lindor, but it would be pretty close. He’s making a ton of money right now to be one of the best players in baseball. Is it a lot of money? It is. Will he improve your team? It’s unquestionable.

Wheeler is already 35, which initially gave me pause, but I’ve accepted that pitchers don’t age the same way hitters do. By some measures, 2025 is the best season of Wheeler’s career, and that’s saying something given that he’s been the best pitcher in baseball since 2020. He throws six plus pitches and has spectacular command. He works deep into games. He’s only hit the IL twice as a Phillie, and both stays were in 2022 – four days for COVID and a month for forearm tendinitis.

His deal limits him to only a few suitors, no doubt — $42 million is a lot of money. But if you’re looking to spend money to get good pitching, Wheeler is almost as good as it gets (more on this in a few days). He won’t even stick around forever clogging your rotation into his 40s; I think the length of the deal is a sweet spot here. Now, would I rather have him than Ketel Marte? I would not, hence his placement. You could move this tier of four established stars down into the 40s or up to just behind Marte, and I’d have a hard time disagreeing with you; the valuations in this area are all really close and depend heavily on what a given team is looking for.

I like to call this tier “Nice Pitchers, Gimme Marte.” That’s because I’d rather have Ketel Marte, but Yamamoto starts to make it a tough call for me. He’s somewhere in between the rest of his tier and the group we just left behind. His deal is both sizable and lengthy, but you’re getting your money’s worth. He’s been better than you might think: through 37 major league starts, he’s already racked up 5.4 WAR (5.8 RA9-WAR). Oh yeah, and he’s only 26 and in the midst of a dominant five-year stretch that includes three straight Eiji Sawamura Award/Pacific League MVP combos as a member of the Orix Buffaloes.

In other words, Yamamoto is one of the best pitchers in the world. No one I talked to disagreed with that. His fastball might not jump off of the model screen, but he moves it around the zone with surgical precision and backs it up with three excellent secondaries. He’s prone to Snell Syndrome, nibbling off the corners and racking up pitches (and the occasional walk) to avoid laying in meatballs. But that’s the biggest knock I have against an otherwise sterling repertoire, and I’m not alone in thinking he’s one of the best doing it right now.

I’d be completely comfortable paying Yamamoto $30 million or so a year for a long time. Happier, in fact, than where I have him ranked here. That’s because he has two opt outs in his contract, after 2029 and 2031, and I think that makes the deal meaningfully worse. If my assessment is right and he’s one of the handful of best starters in the game, he’s almost certainly opting out at his first chance; he’d hit free agency at age 30 and command a huge deal. There are also real risks beyond him exercising those opt-outs. What if he’s more good than great? What if last year’s rotator cuff strain is a harbinger of more injury issues? What if he just gets hurt because pitching is dangerous? The contract has enough wrong-way risk that I knocked him to the bottom of a tier of excellent pitchers who I still wouldn’t prefer over Ketel Marte.

If you’re looking for someone who could have finished lower on the list to accommodate some of the hitters with more years of remaining team control who appeared in the last batch of players, Gilbert is probably your guy. The evaluators I talked to didn’t like the idea of trading for pitchers without much team control remaining. I don’t either, to be honest; MacKenzie Gore, for example, started around here when I began compiling these rankings, but he kept sliding as I compared him to the hitters you’ve read about in the past two days and thought “mmmm, team control.” Joe Ryan is in a similar boat. Those guys are really good! But they won’t be around for forever, and they’re not Zack Wheeler.

They’re not Gilbert, either. He’s been the picture of consistency since his 2021 debut, delivering a solid season every year and improving over time. His 2024 campaign was his best yet, and after a flexor strain that didn’t meaningfully change my injury apprehension, he’s looked even better in 2025. We’re on two straight seasons of top-shelf swinging strike rates, a spectacular development given that Gilbert’s skill set has traditionally tended towards command. He’s 28, he’s only making $7.6 million this year, and you get two more years of him too. For me, Gilbert is clearly a tier above the other arbitration-eligible arms, and I prefer the total package to Wheeler even if Wheeler is better; the monetary difference is enormous.

The downside is that one major injury is basically the whole ball of yarn. That’s what has both my contacts and me down on guys like this. Pitchers inherently carry huge injury risk, and the shorter the deal, the higher the uncertainty gets. If you sign a pitcher to an eight-year contract, you can confidently treat it like a 6.5-year deal with 1.5 years of injury somewhere in there; in the fullness of time, pretty much everyone hurts their elbow or shoulder. But when you have only two years left, it’s an all-or-nothing proposition – an injury might mean missing the entire time – and that matters. If you trade for Gilbert, you’re doing so because you want to win right this minute, but he’s less likely to remain healthy than a hitter with the same amount of team control. How could you take him over, say, Ketel Marte? You couldn’t, so the search continues.

Look out, it’s hot take time. Nothing brings out evaluator disagreements like pitchers who burst onto the scene with ludicrous stuff. “He has the best stuff in baseball, this is too low,” one source told me. “I wouldn’t personally have Misiorowski on my list,” said another. Even the people who didn’t hate my ranking noted that they had a hard time pinning him down. It does feel strange, as Eric Longenhagen pointed out to me, to have The Miz ahead of Roman Anthony, who is also performing in the majors and has far more of a track record of minor league dominance.

Here’s how I’m squaring all of that up in my head: I’m betting on a non-linear improvement here, and I think the signs of one are there if you look. The stuff? It’s preposterous. Our pitching models barely have a dark enough red to show what they think of it. Misiorowski throws triple digits and somehow that understates how hard his fastball is to hit. His 94-mph slider is the stuff of dreams – or nightmares, if you’re facing him.

Does he have good command? Not yet. His 11.2% major league walk rate is actually the best mark of his professional career. But on the other hand, he’s showing the best command of his career at the highest level of competition, and he’s doing it right now. He’s clearly a freakish athlete – he’s built like a down-scaled Victor Wembanyama and throws 100. I want to bet on a guy like that — an outlier in many directions — also defying the odds when it comes to body control, which means that I want to bet on him honing his command. If he keeps improving on that front, he might be the best pitcher in baseball in fairly short order.

Now, is that likely? It is not. You can see what ZiPS thinks of the median case; Misiorowski has one of the lowest five-year projections of anyone on this list. But I like betting on athletic standouts, and I think that projection systems struggle with pitcher breakouts like this. He’s just different than he was last year. Small improvements in body control can deliver non-linear increases in performance. Would you be shocked if Miz ends up being a Chris Sale type of lanky outlier? I wouldn’t, and he’d be a top five trade value in baseball if that’s the case. I have very little confidence that I’ve gotten this ranking “right.” Heck, he’s Milwaukee’s starter tonight (against Gilbert, funny enough), and I’d have loved to have that data, 1/6th of his entire major league oeuvre, before grading him. But he has to go somewhere, and this is my best guess at this exact moment in time. If you have him a bit higher or a bit lower, I wouldn’t argue with you. I just wouldn’t put him ahead of Ketel Marte.

Woo was another player who rose in the rankings as I did more cross-checking and revising. He’s a George Kirby starter kit, plus-plus command with a good sense of how to use it to get outs. He’ll be around forever. He’s still making a pre-arb salary and won’t even be eligible for arbitration until 2027. Very few pitchers across all of baseball combine Woo’s blend of potential, production, and team control.

I wasn’t alone in questioning the top end outcomes here. I’m hesitant to put a ceiling on performance because players vary more than expected all the time, but I just don’t see how Woo ends up as one of the very best pitchers in baseball without a huge leap forward in his raw stuff. I’m not saying that can’t happen, but I’m absolutely not counting on it; for me, what you see is what you get with Woo.

One acceptable response to that — and a response that I got several times when I brought up these concerns — would be to say “So what?” Woo is unlikely to end up as the best pitcher in his league, but he’s incredibly likely to return huge surplus value year after year. That skill set is a lot less common in pitchers than hitters, and that in itself is valuable. Good teams are pretty good at finding hitters in the upper minors who they can squeeze a few starter-level seasons out of. Our readers know that as well as anyone – you’ve seen the Lars Nootbaars, Dylan Carlsons, and Spencer Steers of the world fall out of the rankings over the years as I’ve focused more on observed trade markets and team feedback.

That isn’t the case for pitching. Everyone needs more of it. No one generates enough home-grown arms. Guys like this, with this much control and this much demonstrated skill, just aren’t available. Naturally, then, everyone wants them. I might have moved Woo too high as a result of what I heard from the teams I talked to; I didn’t have him this high in my own rankings. But I kept listening, and I do get the argument that the the traits and skills with the most trade value should be the ones you have the hardest time replacing. That means singular talents, sure, but it also means guys like Woo who can give you long-term cost certainty at a position where “long-term” and “certainty” are both rare. I still wouldn’t take him over Marte, though.

Oof, this one is tough. Contreras is coming off of two straight superlative seasons and even in a down year, he’s on track for 3.5-4 WAR. He’s that rarest of birds, an offensive difference-maker who plays catcher. He’s not some one-trick power pony who pitchers might just figure out tomorrow; he’s a well-rounded hitter with plate discipline and bat speed to spare. He’s absolutely good enough to stick behind the plate, too; I don’t think he’s a huge asset back there, but I’m not worried about him having to move off the position in the next three years. Oh yeah! He’s around for two more years after this one, and he comes cheap, too; he has a team option that will keep his salary down in 2026 before he dips back into arbitration for 2027.

If it weren’t for my general downgrading of catcher value this year, I would begrudgingly place Contreras ahead of Marte. Yes, you get less team control, but I’m not putting a ton of value on the back half of Marte’s 30s, and Contreras gives you spectacular production at a position where even playoff teams sometimes settle for embarrassing options. But even though it’s close, I lean Marte, which gives Tier 11 its name: Nice Catchers, Gimme Marte. Honestly, it’s hard to go wrong at this point in the rankings, though. Take these guys. Plug them into your team. Prosper. We’re squarely into the “these players are untouchable” part of the list, where it’s all hypothetical, but I’d still take Marte over these two excellent catchers.

Rutschman kept falling and falling as I refined my thinking. Model-wise, he was meaningfully higher when I started making the list, and even with his projections ticking down as he continues to scuffle, he forecasts as one of the best catchers in baseball going forward. This isn’t some guy who popped off for a few seasons and got figured out; Rutschman has been excellent since his debut, which makes his offensive swoon (he has an 83 wRC+ in the last calendar year) all the more baffling.

The upside here is enticing. Rutschman started his career with two straight five-win seasons. He might have been dealing with injury for some of this down stretch, though he and the team deny it. (He is, of course, on the IL now with an oblique injury.) This is what I mean when I say that catcher performance is maddeningly difficult to predict. Rutschman felt like one of the safest bets in the majors a year ago. Now he’s caught squarely in the vortex of wondering if he’ll ever get it back.

I expect him to bounce back almost fully. The Statcast numbers still look great. He’s getting BABIP’ed to death, but his contact quality has already rebounded to his pre-2024 form. I can tell myself all of that. I can tell myself that I’m getting one of the great prospects of our time, with multiple years left on his deal, for the lowest price I could ever expect to pay for him. But I just can’t bring myself to rank him ahead of someone who I know with certainty would be one of the best players on my team now and in the immediate future.

You could slide Rutschman even lower if you wanted to. You wouldn’t be alone. But you’d also make some of the other people I talked to mad, because a few wanted Rutschman a little higher up based on his pedigree. He was both a controversial option and, for me, yet another player I’d prefer Ketel Marte over.

He finally appears. I used Marte (the only member of Tier 10: Ketel Marte) as a pivot point as I honed my rankings, and I’d suggest this test as a great “Do you actually think this guy has huge trade value?” barometer. Marte has huge trade value. That’s inarguable. He’s in the tail end of his prime, he’s been 50% above league average offensively for the better part of two years, and he plays defense and runs the bases well enough that he can keep playing second for you for a while. He’s cheap, under $20 million a year in average annual value. He’ll be around for the remainder of his prime (and then likely a little bit after that), so if you want to contend for several years, he’s an awesome team fit.

Are these projections a little scary? Sure. He doesn’t have quite the track record of hitting that would really make ZiPS go nuts. But I’d take the over on 4.3 WAR for next season, and I bet you would too: Marte has played at a 5.4 WAR/600 clip for the last three years, and even better than that for the last two. He’s even hitting righties well this year, with real under-the-hood changes to his approach and bat speed. There are 10 position players I’d take over Marte if I had to win a game tomorrow, but I don’t think there are 20.

Marte’s past health issues and current age are certainly downsides. As you’ll see when we start getting into the nosebleed heights of this list, the very best trade values combine present production with long tails of high projected future value. Marte falls short of that by a bit, but honestly, it’s not by a ton. Look through the 20 names behind Marte on this list. Maybe you’d prefer one of those guys on your team over Marte – but I wouldn’t. He’s gonna hit a lot. He’s gonna be around for a while. The rankings previous to this were warmups, more or less, part of a big field of players who are really good and whose value in trade is very close, close enough that picking between them is more guesswork than science. No one ranked behind Marte has any business in the top 25, in my opinion. No one ranked ahead of him has any business off the list. Many slots are debatable; I’m not the sole arbiter of value or anything close to it. But I really do think that the Ketel Marte test is an excellent barometer for trade value.