2026 Trade Value Series Chat

Ben Clemens: Hey everyone. Welcome to the chat.

Ben Clemens: I’m going to let the queue fill up with just a few more questions because I got a late start on posting this, but I’m going to be ready to go in a few minutes.

Ben Clemens: In the meantime, a good rule of thumb in these discussions is that I’m going to end up answering questions about a lot of players. But probably not about the same player many times, if that makes sense

Ben Clemens: So plan on long answers to some of these, longer than my normal chat format for sure.

Ben Clemens: And of course, if you’re not asking a question about trade value, I think you’ve found the wrong place. I have a weekly chat on Mondays that is a great place for all kinds of off-topic stuff, or baseball-related but not trade value related

Ben Clemens: This particular chat is supposed to be about this article series that I just spent weeks and weeks making. So yeah, not answering your question if it’s like, how bout them Cards. we can talk about that later

SPArn: Curious about a couple guys you didn’t mention in HM. Were Sale, Hoerner, or Bryan Reynolds at all close?

formerly matt w: Hi Ben! Thanks for the list and the chat! How close did you have Chris Sale?

Ben Clemens: Okay, on HM’s in general

Ben Clemens: I mean, I’m not hard ranking these guys down to 112 or whatever

Ben Clemens: nobody has time for that, no one wants to see it, no one would actually help me out if I handed them a list with more than 100 names on it

Ben Clemens: I think a better option might be just not doing HM’s

Ben Clemens: because the truth is that we try to avoid people yelling at us

Ben Clemens: by just throwing lots of names on there

Ben Clemens: and then at some point when HM’s are longer than the list, and we’re getting DEEP into people that I gave basically 0 consideration for hte top 50, I say enough

Ben Clemens: so uh, how close did I have Sale? Not close enough to the top 50 to send out a list. but if he’s an HM for you, I have no issue with that whatsoever

Ben Clemens: like, it’s just a lot of names, I’m not super tied to the guys we put on or didn’t

Ben Clemens: but Reynolds? nah

Ben Clemens: Hoerner sure, I dunno, how many stars on big contracts shoudl we list?

Ben Clemens: I’m not super tied to that part of the rankings, just super hard to exert as much focus on spots that low as I am towards the top of the list

jdankosky: The series is great, and always a midsummer highlight! Thank you. One thing I really wish it included is some idea of what exactly it would take to swing these trades? Like, is a top-5 trade value guy worth two 55FV prospects, a 45+ and a MLB player? Or what? I guess I’m asking about “cost” vs “value”

Ben Clemens: uh, no. the top guys are basically not acquirable. But it’d be for more than that, 100%

Ben Clemens: the last guy who was arguably a top 10 trade value to get traded was Soto

Ben Clemens: i had him top 10 that year, I don’t think my industry contacts agreed

Ben Clemens: and he got like a lot more than that, a lot a lot

Ben Clemens: I think you’re talking start with the best several prospects in your system and start adding

Ben Clemens: and that will probably not be enough

Ben Clemens: the truth is that this is kind of a silly exercise if you think about it as ‘these guys will get traded’

Ben Clemens: it’s more like ‘who are the most droolworthy combinations of player and contract’

leoneforthird: How close was Cole Young to the list.  Seems like with his bat, defense, and club control he would be knocking on the door.

Ben Clemens: not closer than colt emerson, if that helps calibrate

Ben Clemens: but he was on my initial list

Ben Clemens: and like, didn’t make me think ‘dang I need to get him on there’

TKDC: I’d suggest at a minimum cutting out the glob of prospects from HM. Because, for example, do you think the Braves would trade Sale straight up for any of tgrm

Ben Clemens: well the prospects would probably be one of the last to go because that’s a cool place to look for future members of the top 50

Ben Clemens: but also, don’t think of this list as ‘would these guys get traded one for one’

Ben Clemens: because lots of teams would not trade thoes prospects for Sale

Ben Clemens: i know that’s annoying, I know we have to mention it way more than people would probably prefer, but you can’t say ‘checkmate, my team wouldn’t trade player 39 for player 38, you dummy’

Ben Clemens: I am with you that I’d be fine having Sale on there

Ben Clemens: but that’s why I think maybe just NO HM’s

Ben Clemens: b/c eh….

Ben Clemens: there are a lot of teams with a lot of fans of a lot of veterans

hrs1: Who was the biggest difference between your ranking and the team sources you talked to?

Ben Clemens: Griffin

Ben Clemens: definitely Griffin

Ben Clemens: and let’s talk about these

warpath: Ben, your placement of Konnor Griffin has generated a lot of discussion. Are you able to share more specifics of what your industry sources had to say about Griffin? It seems like it was near-unanimous that you had him too low, when I think it seems like most of us readers here would have initially placed him lower like you initially did.

Ben Clemens: I mean, it’s probably what you’d expect

Ben Clemens: The guy is amazing, our models love him, our scouts love him

Ben Clemens: can’t-miss bat, precocious for his age, we’ve never seen model readouts like this. I dunno, people really like him. If you’ve read his scouting reports, they look a lot like that, only probably shaded up slightly

Ben Clemens: people love the contract, of course, but that’s not that interesting

Phil: If you had to make a baseball-only valuation for Ohtani, would he still be #1? I get your non-baseball argument, but I still think it requires a weird definition of “trade value,” since I’m not convinced that the off-field value would just translate to, say, the Guardians. And if we don’t care about that, then why isn’t Soto, whose value is similarly untranslatable but for a different reason, ranked?

Ben Clemens: Great question. So, I mentioned in his blurb that if all you care about is surplus value, that anchors him somewhere around the top 10. 8th? something like that

Ben Clemens: but that’s a floor. because teams don’t pay an equal amount for every win

Ben Clemens: or even an equal amount for every way of getting a win, for a given X-WAR player

Ben Clemens: Ohtani’s wins are the most valuable wins. They’re power and strikeouts

Ben Clemens: those are what cost the most

Ben Clemens: and he’s around for a while, and again, it’s an incredible deal. Like, there’s just no way you can beat that deal. you’d be happy if you got HALF an Ohtani for that deal

Ben Clemens: so like, top 5 minimum for me. but probably not number one

Ben Clemens: might still be number one? like, employing the best guy is really good

Ben Clemens: and getting him for a bargain rate is really good

leoneforthird: Since you’ve been doing this who is the highest ranked player to be traded?

Ben Clemens: Soto, in 2022

HappyFunBall: If you had to pick a name on this list as the guy most likely to actually be traded this season, who is it?

If you had to name the highest guy on this list who at least has a realistic chance (not likely, but not crazy) of being traded, who is it?

HappyFunBall: Follow up to my last questions (likely names to be traded) as I look at the list and ask myself the same questions, I think Zach Neto is the answer to both

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I think it’s Neto for most likely to be traded, and if not him CJ Abrams?

Ben Clemens: I wouldn’t trade Abrams, personally

Ben Clemens: but I mean, there’s been enough smoke that it’s worth mentioning

Ben Clemens: in terms of trading him over the years

szakyl: To get a sense of the exponential function of the value on your list, how many Tatis clones would it theoretically take to trade for Ohtani?

Ben Clemens: surely infinite

Ben Clemens: b/c 2 wouldn’t do it, and the deal doesn’t start getting better when you have more people on it

Ben Clemens: like, i wouldn’t want to have 3 tatit’s

Ben Clemens: tatises

Ben Clemens: that’s too many, too much money spent on outfielders, gotta think about roster balance, that kind of thing

Ben Clemens: I think that the big thing with Ohtani is that you’re both getting a ton of wins for your buck, and getting a ton of wins

Ben Clemens: there are lots of players that check one box or the other, few that do both

Justin: Thanks for the hard work and all the legwork you do on the list

Ben Clemens: thank you very much

Ben Clemens: it’s easy for me to look at the comments, around 80% of which work out to ‘you absolute donkey you misevaluated this guy’, and think ‘eh why would I do this?’

Ben Clemens: that’s the nature of comment sections

Ben Clemens: no one goes to a list to say ‘hey good list’

Ben Clemens: but yeah…. I appreciate it. this is a hard task. I think I’m pretty good at it. I think I’ve gotten better at it over time. I’m glad people like it

jdankosky: Thank you for answering my question! If you’ll endulge one more…you’ve made a pretty strong case that clubs themselves won’t pay as much for a defensive win as an offensive win. If this is the case – demonstrably true over time – then why doesn’t WAR reflect that? I mean, if teams don’t think def. is as value, should we?

Ben Clemens: gets into a question of forward-looking vs  backward-looking

Ben Clemens: and also, what it costs to replace

Ben Clemens: i guess another way of looking at this is like, WAR isn’t supposed to be a measure of what teams will pay for a player

Ben Clemens: it’s supposed to measure what they did on the field

Ben Clemens: if you wanted to make a different kind of WAR, a ‘what teams think about the most likely future outcomes, and hte cost of acquiring thoes outcomes elsewhere, and their opportunity cost in doing so’ then it would be a more complicated measure, but also a valid one

Ben Clemens: I would say that WAR is not really FOR trade value. and moving WAR around to try to mimic that would make WAR worse, without really accomplishing our goals

Bud Smith: I think the fact that there are 200+ comments on each post speaks to the quality of the lists, the information, the effort. They’re all disagreements, but if you got 13 comments that just said “looks great!!!” that probably wouldn’t be very rewarding

Ben Clemens: oh for sure

Ben Clemens: like I said, it’s the nature of lists

Ben Clemens: and of posting them on the internet

rickdugo3000: in a world where Roman Anthony doesn’t suffer the same injury konnor griffin just did — obviously that’s not this world, and that’s part of why he was difficult — bats to his 2026 .352 xWOBA, and looks generally like the guy with a .920 ops in the WBC, is he somewhere else on the list?

Ben Clemens: wonderful framing, and I’ll just say broadly that in a world where Roman Anthony continued playing incredibly well, I’d have him ranked higher

Ben Clemens: but I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out where, because I already have a ton to do in making this list and he’s still not swinging a bat and hasn’t been for a while

Ben Clemens: I probably should have just not ranked him, honestly

Ben Clemens: I did it to stick to some nebulous principles about hitters and stuff. but it’d be easier to say that his health is just too tough for me to parse

Ben Clemens: and so we’re clear, maybe I’m just a complete sheep. But no one I talked to said ‘dude you’re way too low on Anthony we’re not worried about that injury at all, get with the program’

Ben Clemens: and likewise, no one said ‘have Griffin low’

sadman: Why don’t  pitchers apologize when they hit a batter

Ben Clemens: no idea!

Ben Clemens: I totally would

war2d2: Ben! Once again I loved the list as a whole, definitely a highlight on the site every year. You clearly put in a ton of work and it is very much appreciated. BUT! I once again have to ask why Michael Busch didn’t make it. Last year I thought that Masyn Winn was a stretch over Busch, and this year it’s Greene. Less control, plays worse defense, has never had a season as valuable as Busch’s ‘25. The tl;dr is: I think you have a vendetta. Did Busch steal your parking spot? Does his cat poop in your geraniums? Did he not paint his garage door an HOA-approved shade of tan?!? The world needs to know!

Ben Clemens: I think if I bought him as his 2025 self, he would be in there undoubtedly

Ben Clemens: but I kind of thought he was more like his 2024, 2026 line, as a true talent line

Ben Clemens: and a first baseman with a true talent 120 wRC+ is generally not gonna move the needle unless I’m betting big on some improvements

Ben Clemens: I had him in a group with Rice, Ivan Herrera, Eldridge, and maybe one other I’m forgetting

Ben Clemens: and I thought that I’d clearly prefer Rice and Eldridge

Ben Clemens: and was close with Herrera, basically

Ben Clemens: like I mention in these, that part of the list has a lot of very similar values. a different person using roughly the same principles as me to rank the players totally could have had him on the top 50

oaktownblues: What caused you to move Bryan Woo 10 spots higher than the 2025 list? I would think with one fewer year of team control and several new entrants above him, he would’ve moved down

Ben Clemens: it’s a good question, and I think I have two interesting things to say about it

Ben Clemens: one, I try not to look at last year’s rankings until I’ve made my initial cut of the list

Ben Clemens: I don’t want past Ben’s biases to make me stick to some silly guns for too long

Ben Clemens: I do like to look over my old analysis after I’ve made my initial run of the current year’s trade value, and that can be helpful

Ben Clemens: but generally speaking I want to start from scratch each time, so that I get my mindset in ‘what do I think right now’ instead of ‘what did I think last year?’

Ben Clemens: but okay, I still do look at last year’s rankings. and I’d say that basically the middle of the list was a hair softer this year and Woo kept pitching really well. like, last year’s Ketel Marte pivot at 30, I think I’d take Ketel Marte’s 2025 outlook over this year’s #30, Dingler (or Jackson Merrill if we want to avoid my re-ranking catchers thing)

Ben Clemens: but also I think my estimation of Woo has gone up slightly

Ben Clemens: I think I mentioned that I had him kinda close to Tolle, Ashcraft, and Messick a bit lower

Ben Clemens: and that the big chunk of hitters I like (Gunnar, Montgomery, Rafaela, Pages, Merrill) could probably go eitehr way

Ben Clemens: but yeah, I dunno, some mixture of ‘teams want pitching’ and ‘he’s one of the best combos of established and controllable’?

Ben Clemens: one shortfall of the tier system is that I wanted a pitcher pairing for McLean, but eh, I would have been happy just floating McLean solo if it came to that

Ben Clemens: Woo was a tough eval, to be clear. Figuring out the T Mobile effect is not easy

rickdugo3000: i guess i’m just wondering if there was anything else with anthony. in red sox land there’s been a lot of talk about his off the field, out and about habits. who knows. im not implying that felger and mazz are impacting your rankings but where griffin had a very similar injury and it did not seem to affect him i was wondering if there was more than just the injury dinging anthony

Ben Clemens: Nah, I mean, I get general bad vibes from the whole situation

Ben Clemens: but, I at least try not to have thoes affect my ranking

Ben Clemens: I’m only human, but I tried to note most of my considerations if they were anything other than like ‘how do they hit and or pitch’

Ben Clemens: Marte, for exmaple

D-Wiz: Hey, good list! (Genuinely)

Ben Clemens:

aldrinbatistarocks: As a certified colson montgomery watcher/enjoyer, I appreciated your very measured appraisal of where he’s at. How different would his rating look if, and this seems relevant given the 2 most recent 1st round picks made by the Sox and some of James Fegan’s reporting abt Colsons future, if Colson was an above average defensive 3rd baseman with the same offensive profile?

Ben Clemens: I think it’s probably very similar, depending on how ‘above average’ he is

Ben Clemens: the truth is that we’re going to learn more about his hitting in the next year than his defense, almost certainly

Ben Clemens: and that that’s going to move the needle by more than a position switch or non switch would

Fangraphs Man: Would you consider a current-year draft pick for this if they were generational like Harper? Or would they be excluded regardless cuz they can’t be traded until the offseason

Ben Clemens: This is a good question, and links back to an earlier one about Yamamoto, so I’m going to add that too

Graham Lewis: Did you see the bit about Yamamoto having an opt-out if he’s traded? Does that change your ranking?

Ben Clemens: So, I think I’d put that guy on here

Ben Clemens: trade value doesn’t imply ‘will be traded’ to me, and really, this is mostly a list of ‘who’s the best to have’ not ‘who will get traded’

Ben Clemens: so I’d just go with it. Though they’d have to be pretty generational, I’d say

Ben Clemens: like, the Griffin ranking is the most I’ve gone for potential over present in my five years running this plus one year splitting it

Ben Clemens: and that was like, everyone I talk to is one way, and I’m still shading vs. them, and they alreayd know my biases and whatnot. I made sure to note that it wasn’t an easy call for me. I imagine that I’d have to be REALLY convinced that some guy who hadn’t even played pro ball yet belongs

Ben Clemens: As for the Yamamoto if-traded opt out, I missed that. And probably it means that in future years I’m just gonna note it

Ben Clemens: because gimmicky, gotcha reasons for players to not be on here aren’t that fun, imo

Ben Clemens: I think the list would be worse for Yamamoto’s lack of inclusion, and quite frankly, it’s not like he or Judge are getting traded anyway

Ben Clemens: so I think I might note that you can only trade for Yamamoto if he’s into it and makes a deal with you about the opt out

Ben Clemens: but eh, I still think it’s useful to benchmark how valauble people think this guy on this deal is

broeygallo: Ignoring the unique case of Ohtani, do you have a view of the shape of the value curve across the top 50? It doesn’t feel linear. Just how much more valuable is a top 10 than a 25, or a 50? 2x? 3x?

Ben Clemens: oh, I can give you my tier breakdowns. Basically I’m really high on the top 4

Ben Clemens: then I have a bit of a break (the industry doesn’t) before Griffin and Wetherholt, not a ton of one down to the next hitters (wood Caminero Kurtz)

Ben Clemens: but I had a subjective ‘blend’ of some factors I’m considering, and once you get outside about that area, peopel aren’t close. Like I’m not sure how to think of pitcher value. But I do think that there’s a very large value gap, like double the difference between anyone in the top 10 except Ohtani, by the time you’re out of the top 19 (I wish it were top 20. Everyone above Yordan)

Ben Clemens: and of those, maybe you can have Turang and Elly a smidge lower than the rest, because they aren’t around for as long

Ben Clemens: but I think there’s kind of a big gap from there down. everyone 19 and up is worth quite a bit more than past that, to me

Cheeknbut: ooo ooo ooo would you describe the defensive WAR value vs Offensive WAR value due to externalities ??

Ben Clemens: yeah that’s definitely part of it

Phil: I was interested that you noted some concerns about PCA’s future defensive curve that you didn’t about Rafaela. Is that just because CR is further into his deal, or do you see a difference there (such as CR relying more on instinct and less on speed, which I’d agree with)?

Ben Clemens: a little bit that, a little bit the relative risk

Ben Clemens: Rafaela is making so much less than PCA that I feel like your’e slightly more covered if he’s just a 70 defender

Ben Clemens: but also, yeah, for my money Rafaela’s instincts are the best there are

angryyankeesfan: Did you consider how a new cba could affect pre-arb players if the arbitration system is changed?

Ben Clemens: I did not. It would obviously upend this, and by how much depends on by how much arb is changed

Ben Clemens: but basically my view, based on what I’ve seen from both sides, is that changes to team control are likely to not be HUGELY impactful

Ben Clemens: higher minimum salary makes all the cheap guys a little less valuable, for example, and higher arb scale would as well, but eh, I just don’t see a ton of movement happening there

Ben Clemens: as I mentioned in the intro, I did round down slightly on long contracts, because that feels like a place where there is meaningful uncertainty relative to the arb scale

Ben Clemens: but like, just slightly. if this exercise turned into me reading the CBA tea leaves instead of me ranking baseball players, I wouldn’t really want to do it anymore

cosmichero: If power is more expensive to trade for than fielding or hit tool, why aren’t the 80 bats above the wetherholt/mcgonigle/pca/witt tier? Is it the contracts?

Ben Clemens: well, because the other tiers have the potential for more total juice, even if the juice you’re getting is less valuable per ounce

Ben Clemens: like okay, PCA for example. ZiPS forecasts + my win curve have him with 300 million of surplus value

Ben Clemens: let’s discount that

Ben Clemens: b/c it’s defense

Ben Clemens: i dunno, 250? 225?

Ben Clemens: I have Wood at 200

Ben Clemens: I’m not 100% sure on these numbers. and I also didn’t just stack rank based on surplus value or anything, I don’t have a ‘here’s what teams value per dollar perfectly’ because I don’t think teams exactly enumerate that either

Ben Clemens: but that’s generaly how I’m squaring it

Ben Clemens: if the power guys did a bunch of other stuff well too, they’d be higher

Ben Clemens: like if Caminero was a plus shortstop, I’d have him ahead of McGonigle

Baseball Learner: I look at the big three bashers(wood kurtz caminero), and then I look at Jordan Walker. If the past two seasons hadn’t happened and I was just looking at his prospect report plus this years performance he seems very close to them, no?

Ben Clemens: Yeah sure

Ben Clemens: but like…. they did

Ben Clemens: also like, surely you have to consider that Kurtz, who I think is the weakest of that tier, has played maybe 1100 professional PA and has done nothing but hit

Ben Clemens: Skills feel more stable. Walker, who I really like, has fewer years of control and I’m a lot less confident in his bat

Ben Clemens: like it or not, projections matter for this, and projection systems are way higher on the guys who consistently do it over years than profiles like Walker’s

Ben Clemens: he played in the majors last year and had a 66 wRC+! I sure hope that form is over and done with forever

Ben Clemens: but you know, he did

Ben Clemens: I should have mentioned him int he big bats at the end of the 50 group

Ben Clemens: he was in there too

Ben Clemens: and I talked to people about him

Ben Clemens: I think that the general view I got was kinda 6 of one, half dozen of another

Ben Clemens: I remember asking one person if they’d think I was crazy for having him on, and they said def not, but that he wasn’t a must

Ben Clemens: I thikn that’s about right. here the risk is just, is this real? or are you buying the mirage

Ben Clemens: and that’s a subjective judgment, and a tough one at that

drplantwrench: how does lebron signing with the 76ers affect the angels trade deadline approach?

Ben Clemens: well it makes me, as someone who really wanted to see LeBron and Steph play together, very grumpy

Ben Clemens: are there any Angels decision makers who are Warriors fans? or potentially Heat fans?

Baseball Learner: How much of Schlittler’s ranking is based on the assumption the if he lost a tick and needed to find a breaking or off speed pitch to balance things he could?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, I basically think that he could

Ben Clemens: I don’t think he’d do it seamlessly or anything, but I feel that good pitchers generally have ways of adjusting

Ben Clemens: I htink the reason that the people I talked to in general had Burns ahead of Schlittler is that they see traits in him that make them think he’d be better at adjusting

Ben Clemens: and I kind of buy it, my shortcut for that is basically the prospect pedigree and  some subjective grade of athleticism

jrf29: In general, how close are your sources to each other and how do you balance them / decide which ones to lean into when there are large differences in opinion?

Ben Clemens: I have a mixture of people I’m friendly with and have talked to for years, plus one offs or people I ran into in the last year and want to talk with, and I generally try to get a good mixture of team profiles and what drives them

Ben Clemens: like, two of the people who I’ve gotten feedback from for many years in a row tend to have mostly opposite views

Ben Clemens: that’s kinda fun

Ben Clemens: I think that I struggled with this more when I started doing the list, when I felt that my job was to reflect the baseball industry’s trade value rankings as perfectly as possible

Ben Clemens: I’m more comfortable now saying these are MY rankings, and that I tried to keep them in touch with reality based on chatting with some peopel I know on teams. And that lets me take their advice under advisement better and listen to arguments/be persuaded a little bit more by what I think is better rather than what I think is most commonly thought

Mr. Redlegs: Great list! Seemed somewhat odd to have Hunter Greene completely off due to injury but Hunter Brown on the 50. Is this because the list was made before Greene had a few starts to show he’s healthy? 3 vs. 5 starts don’t feel like a meaningful difference.

Ben Clemens: yeah. probably should have just left Brown off too. It’s an artifact of when I started doing the list

Ben Clemens: same deal with Kurtz not being on there last year, that kinda thing

Ben Clemens: I could just have a harsher injury filter next time maybe. But basically I started looking in early July

Baseball Learner: I think the 5 year future war for judge is low and iirc you did a piece on this in the off-season?

Ben Clemens: five years is pretty hard to figure out

Ben Clemens: but I did write about how it’s basically impossible for us to go into next year thikning someone is a better hitter than Judge

warpath: Do you have any additional insight to share after doing this list for a few years and learning a few things? For example, this year there seemed to be a de-emphasis of catchers, which was interesting to me. It also made me really sad to see Spencer Strider fall completely off, and makes me wary of any of these pre-arb pitching extensions.

Ben Clemens: oh yeah

Ben Clemens: Let’s see. One, I think I have a much better handle on the kinds of players who teams would actually be interested in on a big contract, and also the kinds of young role players teams most covet

Ben Clemens: I’ve been moving pitchers in general higher on the list even as the attrition rate remains high because that’s just how teams behave with pitchers

Ben Clemens: I also do some back checking to see which archetypes of players that I rank have aged poorly

Ben Clemens: that has something to do with the catcher de-emphasis, which is actually a few years in a row

Jay: One thing I find interesting about Walker is that this good version of him just makes way more sense than the 66 wRC+ version, right? Like a 6’6″, 250 lb dude with the fastest bat in the majors and elite EVs but somehow he has an ISO under .100? That’s way more unique and strange than what we’re seeing this year. That’s why I find his breakout way easier to buy into than someone like Otto Lopez for example.

Ben Clemens: oh 100%

Ben Clemens: I’d rather have Walker than Lopez, even though one of them is a plus shortstop and the other is an indifferent (at best) right fielder)

Ben Clemens: I’ll be honest with you, one of the past biases that I have tried to actively push against is ranking guys like Lopez

Ben Clemens: where you kinda add all the little values up and go oh hey, this kinda works in my algorithm

Ben Clemens: but then you evaluate him with a fresh eye, and is he really a +hit +field shortstop? It’s possible but I don’t think it’s likely

Ben Clemens: I think I used to get more caught by that kidn of guy, good-field middle infielder spiking a good hitting year

Ben Clemens: Andres Gimenez sends his regards

Dave: Given the number of Tigers on here, those players’ respective proximity to free agency, and the team’s current record… did they just fumble roster construction this year?

Ben Clemens: a little bit that, a little bit injury bad luck, a little bit sometimes baseball happens

Baseball Learner: How many teams can really set aside the money to pay shohei 70 million down the road?

Ben Clemens: I mean, every team is getting mroe than that just in national TV money

Ben Clemens: they might not want to

Ben Clemens: but yeah, I dunno, I think a lot could

Ben Clemens: there are a lot of teams that have players with salaries that are at least comparable to his, like how many teams don’t have two players whose combined AAV eclipses Ohtani’s?

Ben Clemens: not zero, of course

Ben Clemens: but most of the league could make it happen. They wouldn’t, obv. They couldn’t. Shohei’s not playing elsewhere. This whole thing’s kinda silly in that regard

Jewish Pache: Thank you for all the hard work. Broadly speaking, what are the biggest differences between your trade value series and a simple boring expected value series? I view it as the intersection of affordability (how many teams would be in on this guy) and variance (what’s the highest opinion one of those teams could reasonably have of him)? Do you have any heuristics like that or is that just too reductive

Ben Clemens: yeah, I think it comes down to variance plus “how good of a job does surplus value do of capturing what makes a player good”

Ben Clemens: and the answer to that is I think, eh, sometimes good sometimes bad

Ben Clemens: like everyone’s very happy to cite the projections when it makes their dude look good, you know?

Ben Clemens: but here’s a secret, by ZiPS, I think Colt Emerson should have been in the top 5 in my first run of this

Ben Clemens: don’t think any of you guys were yelling at me for missing THAT one

ajleff: How close was AJ Ewing?

Ben Clemens: probably should have been an HM

Ben Clemens: another casualty of the timing of this, for sure

Ben Clemens: like since the day I made my initial list for the first time he has 105 PA and a 137 wRC+

Ben Clemens: and I probably anchor too much on the first run, because for most of the players, the stuff that happens between first run and list publication isn’t half of their MLB pa

Ben Clemens: but yeah, consider him an HM, I’d say

Ben Clemens: I did make an exception to that style for the Miz last year

Ben Clemens: but only becuase he was such an outlier

Ben Clemens: if Ewing was posting a 300 wRC+ instead of 137 I’d have spent more time on him

broeygallo: Besides Griffin, what other names surprised you in terms of industry feedback being higher than public consensus? Lower?

Ben Clemens: Chase Burns is the one that most comes to mind

Ben Clemens: with several people saying they thought it was at least reasonable to have him as the #1 pitcher

Ben Clemens: not that anyone said he MUST be or anything

Ben Clemens: I think I mentioned that I thought I was into Burns

Ben Clemens: other than that… maybe Colson Montgomery?

Ben Clemens: I’m just higher on his power playing despite whiff issues than the people I talked to

Ben Clemens: I think I noted that in his writeup. Generally speaking I’m above the crowd on him

warpath: Raleigh was a pretty interesting one to me. For me he’s basically in a “distressed asset” tier right now all on his own. How hard is it to tier a guy like him or Gunnar Henderson?

Ben Clemens: oh yeah, super hard!

Ben Clemens: the truth is that these lists don’t actually exist on the team side

Ben Clemens: It’s not like I call someone up and they go ‘oh let me crack open the vault with our team’s personal trade value list on it so we can compare’

Ben Clemens: it’s just not relevant, right? given that you can’t actually trade for htem, it’s less important to hone your model of where Yordan Alvarez fits vis a vis Elly De La Cruz than to figure out which waiver wire claim to make

Ben Clemens: so when I bring up someone like Henderson or Raleigh, I feel like I’m getting slightly less informed takes in general, which makes sense to me

Ben Clemens: or at least, slightly less actively interested

Baseball Learner: (not a question but thanks sooo much. The list is awesome, and you being responsive in this chat makes it so much better!)

Ben Clemens: thanks very much

Ben Clemens: I’m gonna do a last speed round of answers here and then call it a day

Ben Clemens: I think I wrote around 25,000 words this week, my fingers are a little tired

Ben Clemens: but I want to mention that this is very fun, and I’m glad everyone liked it or at least found some joy in looking through it

Arathorn: You said a few things that made me wonder about park effects — do we (in the public space) underestimate them? Overly group them?

Ben Clemens: i think we in the public, counting me unless I’m trying hard to pay attention, underrate them

Ben Clemens: particularly really extreme ones

Ben Clemens: Seattle and Sacramento should both make me question my evaluation of people more than they do

InsertWittyNameHere: Is there anything in the next CBA you can think of where it would facilitate more trades?

Ben Clemens: if you look at other sports leagues, I guess I’d say more trading of draft picks and shorter maximum contract lenghts would do it

Ben Clemens: I don’t even think I hate shorter max contract lengths, though I don’t think that would be a compromise that gets through. too much for hte players, not enough for the owners, on that front

oaktownblues: You acknowledged the fact that the 2024 draft was responsible for 4 of the top 15. In a redraft, do you think they would go in the order they’re ranked on this list?

Ben Clemens: ooh, good one. Griffin would surely go #1

Ben Clemens: I bet Burns would still go #2. He’s right up there, the Reds clearly like him

Ben Clemens: so like, no I guess, but close to it

hrs1: You were pretty clear about being lower on catchers in general. Among sources who were not, where would the highest ranked catchers fit in?

Ben Clemens: mid-20s area

Ben Clemens: maybe upper 20s, move the big contracts down and put dingler next to McLean?

crossedup: Thank you for your contributions to helping people make both the best and worst trade offers.

Phil: Missed the chat last week when this would have been a more pertinent question, but with the crowd TV game, I really struggled with guys like Trout. Well, with Trout. Would I rather have Trout on my team than Chase Meidroth? Sure, but Mr. Reinsdorf would presumably disagree. Does he actually have negative trade value?

Ben Clemens: yeah, more or less

Ben Clemens: it’s taken a long time to get here, but we have him down for like… 6 WAR the next four years? maybe 8 WAR if you think our aging curves are too harsh

Ben Clemens: and he’s making like 140 million over that time

Ben Clemens: would you give him 4/35 this winter? I probably wouldn’t. and that’s with including some upside for the fact that employing Mike Trout soudns fun

Ben Clemens: yeah it’s tough though!

Ben Clemens: because I don’t know that I’d feel the same way about a guy who is younger and projects better

Ben Clemens: but I do think ti’s a fun question

Ben Clemens: trade value is in the eye of the beholder, and i think that it accrues disproportionately, on the high end, to the very best players

Ben Clemens: and at that point contracts start mattering a bit less, because they’re all huge bargains

Ben Clemens: but for guys like Trout who are not among MLB’s best (anymore, obviously he’s generational), that calculus stops working

Ben Clemens: if you’re not great ,the salary starts mattering MUCh more

ransohs: first of all, how dare you

Ben Clemens: delightful

Ben Clemens: what a way to end the chat

Ben Clemens: thank you all for hanging out, and I hope you enjoyed the list

Ben Clemens: My regularly scheduled chat will be Monday at 2PM ET, and then we’ll have a wrap-up of the crowdsourced trade value results next week as well

Ben Clemens: as always, thanks for all your feedback and intereste

Ben Clemens: interest*