As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the week after the All-Star Game to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value in anticipation of next week’s trade deadline. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those 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 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 2022-2026, 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 2026, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2020 post. One note on the rankings: particularly at the bottom of the list, there’s not a lot of room between players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put players where they are for a reason, but there’s not much room between, say, 35 and 60. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several talent evaluators we talked to might prefer a player in the Honorable Mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. We think the broad strokes are correct — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

Below you’ll see commentary from both of us for each player. And now, on to this year’s final group. Read the rest of this entry »

As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the week after the All-Star Game to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value in anticipation of next week’s trade deadline. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those 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 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 2022-2026, 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 2026, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2020 post. One note on the rankings: particularly at the bottom of the list, there’s not a lot of room between players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put players where they are for a reason, but there’s not much room between, say, 35 and 60. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several talent evaluators we talked to might prefer a player in the Honorable Mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. We think the broad strokes are correct — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

As we enter the top 20, you’ll see commentary from both of us for each player. And now, to the next group. Read the rest of this entry »

As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the week after the All-Star Game to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value in anticipation of next week’s trade deadline. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those 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 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 2022-2026, 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 2026, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2020 post. One note on the rankings: particularly at the bottom of the list, there’s not a lot of room between players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put players where they are for a reason, but there’s not much room between, say, 35 and 60. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several talent evaluators we talked to might prefer a player in the Honorable Mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. We think the broad strokes are correct — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

And now, to the next group of players. Read the rest of this entry »

As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the week after the All-Star Game to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value in anticipation of next week’s trade deadline. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those 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 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 2022-2026, 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 2026, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2020 post. One note on the rankings: particularly at the bottom of the list, there’s not a lot of room between players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put players where they are for a reason, but there’s not much room between, say, 35 and 60. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several talent evaluators we talked to might prefer a player in the Honorable Mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. We think the broad strokes are correct — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

And now, to the next group of players. Read the rest of this entry »

As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the week after the All-Star Game to take stock of the top 50 players in baseball by trade value in anticipation of next week’s trade deadline. For a more detailed introduction to this year’s exercise, as well as a look at those 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 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 2022-2026, 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 2026, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2020 post. One note on the rankings after seeing some of your comments: particularly at the bottom of the list, there’s not a lot of room between players. The ordinal rankings clearly matter, and we put them there for a reason, but there’s not much room between, say, 35 and 60. The magnitude of differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several talent evaluators we talked to might prefer a player in the honorable mentions section to one on the back end of the list, or vice versa. We think the broad strokes are correct — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. At the bottom of the page, there is a grid showing all the players who have been ranked up to this point.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the first batch of players. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year since time immemorial (fine, for just over a decade), FanGraphs has produced a trade value series with one goal: rank the top 50 players in baseball by their value in a potential trade. To the surprise of no one, we’re doing that again this year. Over the coming days, we’ll release our list, taking performance, age, and contract into account.

That’s right — we, not I. In past years, the list has been compiled by a single FanGraphs writer — Dave Cameron, Kiley McDaniel, or Craig Edwards. This year, for the first time, it’s a two-person job. We (Ben Clemens and Kevin Goldstein) worked together to construct this list. That was useful for several reasons. First, it led to fewer obvious omissions as we started compiling the top 50. Those likely would have been smoothed out over time, but having two pairs of eyes was incredibly useful at getting an initial list together. Read the rest of this entry »