2026 Trade Value: Nos. 41-50

This year’s list kicks off with a group I’m calling Tier 14: Tough Calls. Everyone in this group was phenomenally difficult to rank, and I had the hardest time with Tatis, which means we’ll start with him. Still just 27 years old, Tatis is in his eighth major league season (counting the one he missed due to injury and suspension), and he’s under contract for another eight after this one. That’s scary from a team perspective, because it’s a lot of money for a lot of years — $31 million a year or so for the foreseeable future.

The upside here is considerable. Tatis has played at a more than 5 WAR per 600 plate appearances pace for his career, and even if you want to completely ignore everything before that missed 2022 season, he’s playing at a 4.2 WAR/600 PA clip since then, even including his slow start to 2026. In other words, he’s a superstar-level talent. There are maybe 15 hitters with a better track record over that span, and only four of those guys are younger than Tatis. He’s also 16th in total WAR, full stop. A guy this talented and this young would fetch more than his current contract on the open market. This year’s ZiPS projections for Tatis are lower than last year’s – with good reason – and yet he still projects with a smidgen of surplus value, because guys this talented are just rare.

The downsides are enough that plenty of teams wouldn’t be interested in Tatis no matter what. He’s been injury prone throughout his career, and it’s been all types of different injuries, too. That PED suspension is no laughing matter. He didn’t hit a home run until May 30 this year. If your team is resource-constrained, you can imagine wanting to spend your scarce dollars on a player with less volatility. But for teams in the market for stars, the kinds of teams that frequently play at the top of the free agent market, trading for Tatis is an attractive proposition. If you’re interested in the player – and while his skill set isn’t universally adored, plenty of teams see him as a superstar talent – then the contract is an asset, not a liability. In a year, I don’t think Tatis will be at this spot on the list. This is either a phenomenal buying opportunity, or the start of a decline that will take him out of the discussion entirely. And I’d be lying to you if I told you I knew which was more likely.

I considered leaving Anthony off the list, because I think it’s pretty clear that no one would trade for him right this instant, at least not without getting a huge discount. The hand injury that has cost him almost the entirety of the 2026 season is ominous enough — more than two months after hitting the IL, he still isn’t swinging a bat – that I could throw him in the same category as the various injured pitchers and take a mulligan. But I’ve generally continued to rank hitters even when they’re on the shelf, because hitter recoveries are more predictable, and I also wanted to talk about Anthony’s case in particular, so I shoehorned him into the back end of the 50.

Anthony’s skill set is the kind I love: good batting eye, good approach, plus power. He hits too many grounders, but I think that’s just part of the tradeoff when you swing as hard as he does and don’t strike out constantly. Most hitters who combine the same traits have a similar batted ball profile, particularly early in their careers. My evaluation of him hasn’t changed a ton since he debuted – we had him right on the 60/65 FV cusp as a prospect, a power-and-patience thumper with good corner outfield defense, and that’s roughly how I still see him. ZiPS, always a fan of his, has cooled only slightly with a year of extra information.

If I could rank an uninjured Anthony, with the contract extension he signed last year and without his slow start to 2026 (he scuffled in the WBC and the season’s early going before he got hurt), I’d have him at least 15 spots higher. But you can’t pretend that the last six months didn’t happen, and they muddle the picture considerably. He might not return this year – it’s simply unknown. Hitters generally take some time to return to full strength after hand injuries, and the timeline of this one makes that feel even more likely. Two different team people I talked to said some variation of “Do you have to rank him? Can’t you just not?”

I think that it fits the ethos of this series to try to put him somewhere. But just so we’re clear, this spot is basically a shrug emoji. I don’t know! You don’t know either. No one does. Roman Anthony is one of the best players in baseball when he’s healthy, and one of the best trade values, too. But right now, he’s not, and so here we are.

I’ve never ranked a reliever on this list before. My predecessors are surely rolling over in their proverbial graves seeing this. But Miller’s an outlier case, and the fact that he got traded for a top 50 trade value-worthy haul last summer implies that a ranking in this area isn’t out of the question. Oh yeah, and in 64 innings on the Padres, he has a 0.84 ERA and he’s struck out more than half of the batters he’s faced. These aren’t even video game numbers; video games are more realistic. We’re projecting him for 3.7 WAR (?!?!) this year, which would be one of the best closer seasons in history.

Teams that know they’re headed to the playoffs would struggle to find a more potent upgrade than Miller. He shortens the game by an inning, and in the on-again/off-again cadence of postseason baseball, he can do that in a lot of your games. You’ll read about plenty of players on this list who couldn’t hope to impact a game of baseball the way Miller does. Trade value is largely about long team control, with tons of plate appearances or batters faced, and the advantages derived from paying someone less than you’d expect to do so. But Miller’s value, while not spread out across as many innings, is irreplaceable in the way that a nice outfielder or solid playoff starter just isn’t.

If he weren’t the best reliever in the game by a fair margin, I wouldn’t have him slotted in here, and honestly, I didn’t really want to. It feels strange to have relief pitchers on this list at all. But this isn’t a guy having one fluke of a great season. This is the closest thing we’ve seen to peak Mariano Rivera in quite a while. It might look different. It feels scarier, for sure – he throws so dang hard that I’m always holding my breath worrying about an injury. But he’s been a reliever for three seasons, and in each of those three, he’s produced 2 or more WAR and put up ludicrous peripherals. He has a 2.15 ERA in that span, and he’s underperforming his FIP by a decent amount. Reliever greatness is often fleeting, and if Miller hits a rough patch, I can’t imagine continuing to have him in this lofty of a spot. But he hasn’t had a rough patch, and while not every team would want him, the teams that would be interested would be really interested.

Last year, I pivoted this list around which players I would trade for Ketel Marte, and which ones I wouldn’t. This year, he’s a borderline top 50 inclusion, and more than one person I talked to thought he shouldn’t be on the list at all. That’s how it goes with guys whose value comes from the fact that they’re crushing it right this instant; one hiccup, and the whole ball of yarn starts to unravel. Last season saw an extra complicating factor emerge. Some of Marte’s teammates were reportedly frustrated with his unplanned absence from the team after the All-Star break, though tensions later calmed, and he and the squad seem to have moved on. In any case, the Diamondbacks shopped Marte over the winter and reportedly fielded competitive offers before choosing to keep him, so this at least wasn’t an insurmountable issue – it’s just one worth mentioning for completeness’ sake.

Marte is still playing at a high level, but it’s not the same form he’s shown for the past three years, when he posted a 140 wRC+ and averaged five wins a season. Now he looks more like a plus bat than a no-doubt elite option, and that changes the calculus significantly. The reason to trade for someone like Marte is to get as much on-field return as possible in the next few years, and figure out the future later. It’s much easier to look past long-tail payroll commitments for an MVP candidate than it is for a nice everyday player.

Marte’s contract isn’t prohibitively expensive; at roughly $17 million per year (deferrals lower it some), it’s perfectly reasonable for an above-average regular. But he’s probably not going to be an everyday player by 2031 – time is undefeated, after all. And when you switch from “this guy is the missing piece for our playoff team” to “this guy makes the team better,” the price per win starts mattering far more. It’s a double whammy, really; a downtick in performance both suggests worse performance in the future and lessens the incentives for teams to pay up for present excellence. Most trades are about surplus value or getting someone who’s currently dominant. Marte doesn’t cleanly fit into either bucket right now, which is why I’ve cooled on him since 2025.

I haven’t cooled enough to take him out of the top 50, though. This is a down year for Marte, but we’re still projecting him for a 3.5-win season and 30-ish homers. He’s one of the best in the game against left-handed pitching in particular, and that skill doesn’t look to have slowed down at all. That makes him a matchup nightmare; he switches sides of the plate against righty pitching and does perfectly fine, which lets him flank left-handed batters as platoon protection. His contact skills give him a high offensive floor, too; when you’re striking out a mere 15% of the time, it’s much easier to contribute even when you’re not 100% locked in. Add in scratch defense at a middle infield spot, and there’s a high likelihood that Marte will deliver value even in a down year. That well-rounded game kept him on the list for me even though his results haven’t been quite as good of late. I don’t feel strongly about the way I ordered the four players in this tier, but I do think that all of them are reasonable inclusions on this list. That said, I also wouldn’t fault you for excluding any or all of them from your own version. That’s why they’re tough calls.

I had a hard time ranking Brown this low. I kept sliding him down the list as I compared the tale of the statistical tape to the players around him, but I didn’t feel good about it, because I’d be really excited to trade for Hunter Brown. That’s why he’s the start of a group of seven players who comprise Tier 13: Value Plays. Everyone in this group is a) someone I’d want on my playoff team today and b) under contract for a reasonable number of years. I like these guys because while they mostly won’t be around forever, you can feel good about getting solid production at an attractive rate for the years you have them.

Brown is a top-of-the-rotation starter who could be the best arm on your playoff team. He was phenomenal in 2025, finishing third in Cy Young voting and hitting a career-high 185.1 innings. He’s only 27, and he has somewhere between three and five plus pitches, depending on how you’re counting. Like Justin Verlander, whose delivery Brown patterned his own motion off of, he gives up more homers than you’d like, but he makes up for it with a sky-high strikeout rate and also does a good job of limiting BABIP. No one I talked to seriously questioned Brown’s talent; if you watch him pitch, you can tell he belongs.

That said, pitchers with limited team control are always a risky proposition. Brown missed two months this year with a shoulder strain, and while he’s already made five starts since his return, his command has been rusty. He walked five in his most recent outing, and looks to my eyes like he just needs more reps and more comfort after his injury. Given that he’ll reach free agency after the 2028 season, daylight is burning. If this year is a partial write-off, there’s just not much time for Brown to provide the kind of copious value that makes players fit on this list.

I settled for grouping him with a bunch of players who are similarly good and similarly heading towards free agency. Then I slid him to the bottom of the group because of the injury issue – he has slightly less this-year value than the rest of the guys in this tier, in my estimation. But that’s just a matter of returning to full effectiveness, not a vote against how good he is when he’s right. Teams would give up a lot to get Brown – they’d just do so knowing that a lot of the juice will come in 2027 and 2028. As a side note, this tier would be a reasonable place for several of the pitchers who appeared in the honorable mentions if you’re higher on them than I am. I have Brown as the best of the group because if I’m getting a pitcher for only a few years, I want someone with the potential to be truly dominant, but if you prefer the steadiness of George Kirby or the grounders of José Soriano, this is where I think they’d go.

I started with Abrams off the list, moved him back on, moved him back off, and finally slid him back in at the 11th hour. If you asked me again tomorrow, he might be 51st, or 41st. But despite that indecision, I feel pretty good about my evaluation of Abrams. It’s just a matter of where he fits into the bigger picture, as there are a lot of players who carry roughly commensurate value and who I’d be equally happy to have on my team for the next few years.

Abrams has put together the offensive skills that he intermittently demonstrated earlier in his career, resulting in his best year to date. He makes a ton of contact, particularly for someone with plus bat speed, and gets the ball in the air to the pull side frequently. Put those two things together, and it isn’t hard to see why he’s already set a career high for home runs with two months left to play. He chases too much, which limits his offensive upside, but being “limited” to a line that’s 20-30% above average isn’t so much of a drawback if you bring other things to the table.

And the obvious other thing Abrams brings to the table is game-breaking speed. He’s swiped 30 or more bags for three straight years, though he’s in danger of falling short of that mark in 2026. He also wreaks havoc on the basepaths; he’s posted positive baserunning value in every year of his big league career and is still among the fastest big leaguers. Less clear is where he should play defensively; he’s one of the worst shortstops in the majors by pretty much every defensive metric, but I wouldn’t feel great about asking him to learn a new position on the fly, which means a team trading for him would have to get creative about where he’s deployed in the short-term. But that’s a small nit to pick. We’re talking about a middle infielder – though probably a second baseman – with plus power, plus speed, and a .352 OBP, one who will be around for two more years after this one at reasonable rates. Everyone could use a player like Abrams.

I used Abrams as a barometer for Greene, as they’re both bat-first players with two years of arbitration left after 2026. Greene is working on his fourth straight season of a batting line in the neighborhood of 20-30% above average, though he’s doing it with a little more patience and a little less power so far this campaign. If you’re looking for a hitter to plug into the middle of your lineup and have a spare corner outfield or DH slot, Greene is an excellent option. At this point, there’s little question about what you’re getting. He’s going to strike out some, but he’s going to make up for it with some walks and some dingers, probably with a high batting average to boot, because he sprays line drives to all fields when he isn’t leaving the park.

Greene once projected like a plus defender in a corner, but he’s been mid, as the kids say, for the last few years. I’m not treating his defense as a big drawback – he hits well enough that it’s fine – but it’s certainly not a standout part of his profile. Neither is his baserunning. All you get is the offense – but that’s all you want, so the deal works out just fine.

There’s nothing missing here, per se. The only reason Greene isn’t ranked higher is that he just won’t be around for that much longer. It’s hard to stay at the top of the trade value heap without signing an early extension; as I mentioned in the introduction to this series, there are only two players in the top 40 who are set to hit free agency as early as Greene. For me, he’s clearly above Abrams, but clearly behind the next guy, another corner outfielder with two years left after this one.

Man, does it feel weird to have Acuña this low. He’s been a mainstay at the top of this exercise since before I started doing it; he was first on the list in 2020, the last year before I started contributing, and the lowest I’d ranked him before this year was 11th. He’s an example of the two forces I’ve been talking about repeatedly today, namely that present stars with eight-figure salaries lose some luster when they have a down year, and that players with only a few years left until free agency tend to fall down the rankings rather quickly thanks to how much organizations prioritize cost certainty and team control.

Acuña is hardly having an awful year, but it wouldn’t be up to his usual standards even if he were healthy, and he’s been out for the last month thanks to a hamstring injury. He should be back soon, but this will be three straight years with significant missed time, enough that you’d be foolish to expect a perfect bill of health from here on out.

Of course, if the negatives seem obvious, the positives are pretty clear, too. Acuña is one of the best hitters in baseball when he’s fully healthy. He swings ferociously hard, but he’s not just up there hacking. He has a polished sense of the strike zone, and he’s very aggressive attacking pitches he can drive. He’s so good at that, and so powerful, that pitchers try to avoid him, and he’s run walk rates around 15% for a while now. He’s actually more of an outlier in the on-base sense than the power sense – and he’s a huge outlier in both. I think his days as a devastating baserunning threat are over, but that was always just a cherry on top, not the whole sundae.

I grouped him ahead of the two other players who will hit free agency after the 2028 season, because even though he’ll earn more in salary, I think he’ll make up for it in on-field value. But unless you think Acuña will return and immediately play like an MVP, there’s really no way to move him much further up the list than this spot. The team control math is just too daunting.

Here’s a good contrast to Acuña. Rice will probably never post another half-season this good. His core skills – great plate discipline, solid bat-to-ball, and a feel for lifting the ball to the pull side – are all working in concert rather beautifully at the moment. He’s pretty much maxed out on them, which I can appreciate as an analyst. If I were telling Rice what he should do to get the most out of his skill set, I’d basically tell him to keep doing exactly what he’s doing now. That makes me think that a wRC+ in the 125-135 range is a good long-term estimate, and the projection systems agree with me. At 27, he’s probably more in the “maintaining skills” part of his career than the “adding new things” phase.

But I’d still take Rice over Acuña, and if anything, you could argue that we should have a tier gap here, because those extra two years of team control are very important. The salary matters, too; Rice won’t even be arbitration-eligible until 2028, which represents some meaningful cost savings. As an added bonus, it’s insurance against Rice turning out to be a flash in the pan; his arbitration awards will scale with how well he does in the next year and change, so you’re basically guaranteed a bargain if you employ him.

One person I talked to thought I was being too pessimistic in my assessment that Rice had already reached his ceiling. They would have had him 10 spots or so higher, and while that’s not my view, I can understand where they’re coming from. One consideration I rejected, though: I don’t think he’s anything more than an emergency catcher, so I considered him as a 1B/DH only. For now, he looks like a solid source of homers and walks at a good rate for a good length of time. That might not be particularly multi-dimensional, but they’re the two most important skills in baseball. Anything more than that is just a bonus.

Harris deserves a career achievement award for the most difficult player to rank. He’s been everywhere from the top 15 to off this list in recent years, and the various cross-checkers I’ve asked about him, both internally and on the team side, are just as confused as I am. Some of that is probably me changing my evaluation criteria as I get more experienced at this exercise. But a lot of it stems from the fact that Harris has been extremely hot-and-cold, which makes estimating his true talent level an impossible task.

The upsides? They’re clear. He’s a Gold Glove caliber-center fielder with a career batting line that’s 10% above average. He hits for power and average; he makes plenty of contact, particularly in the strike zone, and also has great top-end power, particularly when he gets a fastball he can turn on. I think it’s fair to say that he’s a mistake hitter, but pitchers do make mistakes, and he tends not to let them get away with it when they do. He’s also only 25, light years away from free agency thanks to an extension, and making an average of $12 million a year, which is a bargain.

There’s basically just one downside, but it’s a huge one: His approach at the plate is voracious to the point of damaging his overall game. He’s chased pitches outside the strike zone more than all but three batters in baseball this year, and that isn’t a new thing. His 4.1% career walk rate is no surprise. It’s hard to sustain good batting numbers when you swing at that many bad pitches, and Harris’ last few years show the depths he can reach when he’s off of his game. He hit .249/.268/.409 last year, a barely-playable mark. His game feels solvable, exploitable almost, and he feels like a lock to spend a decent chunk of his career batting eighth or ninth. It’s just really hard for hitters to change this aspect of their game; if you chase too much, the most likely outcome is that you’ll continue to do so. I think the most likely outcome for Harris is a string of good seasons with the odd clunker mixed in, just like he’s been doing for years. I think that plenty of teams would sign up for that roller coaster ride given the good contract and phenomenal glove, but it’s worth noting that not everyone covets that kind of profile.