The trade deadline is a week from Monday, and between now and then, we’re probably going to see a lot of moves. Not a lot of big moves, necessarily, but with a lot of buyers in the market for bullpen upgrades, we’re probably looking at a large number of depth acquisitions. Just for the fun of it, let’s wildly speculate on where the biggest name guys might go before August 1st. Keep in mind that no one really knows what is going to happen, so this is more of an exercise in frivolity than a serious attempt at forecasting the deadline moves. Let’s see how many wild guesses I can get right.

The Indians have put themselves in a strong position to make the playoffs, and with the fickleness of starting pitching — see Mets, New York — they will try to take advantage of this opportunity. Generally reluctant to trade their best young prospects, I think they’ll back off that stance this year, and move either Clint Frazier or Bradley Zimmer, plus some lower level pieces, to make the big league team as strong as possible.

Predicted Additions
Jonathan Lucroy, Will Smith, Daniel Hudson, Coco Crisp

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Ten days from the trade deadline, we usually spend most of our time talking about whatever star player is eligible for free agency at years end, and is on a non-contending team looking to upgrade for the future. David Price, Johnny Cueto, and Yoenis Cespedes last year, for instance. This year, though, that guy doesn’t exist; the big pending free agents on rebuilding teams are guys like Rich Hill and Jay Bruce. And because of the dearth of quality players likely to change teams over the next week and a half, the guy who is generating the most conversation leading up to the deadline is… Kyle Schwarber?

Yes, at this point, the hot name that everyone wants to talk about is an injured 23-year-old catcher/outfielder who won’t be healthy enough to play again until next year. Despite the Cubs best efforts to tamp down rumors, leaks out of New York keep suggesting that Schwarber is the guy the Yankees covet, and given the Cubs well-known interest in Andrew Miller, there appears to be mutual interest in players from both sides, with a stand-off emerging over whether the Cubs should surrender Schwarber in a deal for the game’s best left-handed reliever.

The Cubs continue to insist they aren’t going to do it, seeing the move as shortsighted, giving up too much long-term value for a short-term boost. Their Wednesday night acquisition of Mike Montgomery gives them a quality lefty to stick in their bullpen, and relieves some of the pressure to pay the going price for Miller, though, of course, I’m sure they’d still love to have him. But it seems they’d like to acquire him while retaining Schwarber, preferring to have both on next year’s roster as they make perhaps their final run with Jake Arrieta at the front of their rotation.

But if the Yankees hold fast, and say it’s Schwarber-or-nothing, are the Cubs wisely protecting their future, or passing up an opportunity to increase the odds of bringing Cubs fans their first World Series title since 1908? Well, it all depends on what you think Kyle Schwarber is going to turn into.

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In his latest trade rumblings column, Ken Rosenthal has a pretty fun story.

Here is an example of a trade that recently was discussed but never got close, and would have amounted to a bombshell if it had come to fruition.

The scenario, according to major-league sources, unfolded like this:

The Cubs tried to acquire left-hander Drew Pomeranz before the Padres sent him to the Red Sox for Class-A right-hander Anderson Espinoza. Simple enough.

The Cubs’ plan, though, wasn’t to keep Pomeranz, who is under club control through 2018. No, the Cubs wanted to spin Pomeranz for a starter who is under even longer team control.

I could not determine the identity of that starter — it was a pitcher whose “name is not out there (publicly), and probably is not going anywhere now,” one source said.

In any case, the Cubs balked at the Padres’ request of infielder Javier Baez for Pomeranz, believing it too high a price. The second part of the deal — the spinning of Pomeranz for the unidentified starter — would not necessarily have worked, either.

This is an intriguing idea for all kinds of reasons. For one, what do the Cubs need with another starting pitcher? Their rotation is already pretty excellent, so making a complicated three-way trade to either acquire a #6 starter or bump Jason Hammel from the rotation while he’s running a 3.34 ERA would be a bit weird. They could use some rotation depth in case of injury, but if you’re acquiring Pomeranz — potentially the most valuable starting pitcher to be moved this month — because you want to flip him for someone even more valuable, that guy has to be pretty good, right? You’re probably not going to pay the price for Pomeranz, only to ship him off for some guy you’d stash in Triple-A, if you’re a win-now contender like the Cubs. At least, I wouldn’t think so.

Of course, it’s not entirely unheard of. The win-now Dodgers inserted themselves into the Todd Frazier trade, getting a package of prospects they liked from Chicago more than the ones they sent to Cincinnati, rather than just keeping Frazier for themselves. Maybe the Cubs knew that some other team hunting for Pomeranz was willing to part with a guy they liked for the future, and they thought this was their best chance to get a young controllable starter from a team that they don’t match up well with in trade. And perhaps they’d think about using that starter as a reliever down the stretch, strengthening a bullpen that could use an upgrade, with the idea of moving him back to the rotation next year.

So, just for the fun of it, let’s try to figure out who this mystery pitcher might be.

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Last week, when the Red Sox jumped the starting pitching market — surrendering Anderson Espinoza, their best pitching prospect in the deal — to acquire Drew Pomeranz from San Diego, the general consensus was that the team overpaid, like they did in acquiring Craig Kimbrel some months earlier, as the team tries to take advantage of David Ortiz’s last year in baseball. After all, Pomeranz was traded for Yonder Alonso a few months earlier, and despite a great start to the year with the Padres, no one really knows how well he’ll hold up down the stretch, given that this size of workload isn’t something he’s handled before. And just days before the trade, Baseball America had rated Espinoza as the #15 prospect in baseball, 24 spots ahead of Manuel Margot, the primary chip the Padres acquired from the Red Sox in exchange for their closer over the winter.

Giving up a top-15 prospect for a guy with as many question marks as Pomeranz comes with is certainly a gamble, as the deal will look disastrous if Pomeranz can’t hold up through October and Espinoza reaches his upside. But I can’t help but wonder if this deal is perhaps an example of how public prospect ratings and a player’s current market value can diverge pretty significantly.

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With Tyler Thornburg traded to Boston today, we’re re-featuring this post, since it is now relevant again.

We are now officially two weeks away from MLB’s non-waiver trade deadline, and one thing is clear: over the next 14 days, you’re going to see a lot of relievers on the move. The teams that are definitely selling don’t have many starting pitchers to move, and the crop of walk-year hitters isn’t so great either, but what these non-contenders do have an excess of are relief pitchers.

Aroldis Chapman and Andrew Miller from the Yankees. Alex Colome and Xavier Cedeno from the Rays. Tyler Clippard and Daniel Hudson from the Diamondbacks. Ryan Madson and John Axford from the A’s. Jeanmar Gomez from the Phillies and Joe Smith from the Angels will probably be on the move, and that isn’t even counting guys like Mark Melancon or Steve Cishek who could get moved if things go south for their teams over the next couple of weeks. With nearly every contender looking at bolstering their bullpen, there’s enough demand to clear the supply of available relievers, but we’re definitely not looking at a shortage at the position like there are at other spots this year.

But yet, if I was hunting for a relief pitcher over the next two weeks, my first call would be to the Milwaukee Brewers. They’ve been baseball’s most aggressive team in remaking their roster since David Stearns took over last year, and you know that front office is looking for any opportunity they can to add long-term value, knowing their chances at contention over the next few years are slim at best.

Jeremy Jeffress, the team’s closer, is already generating plenty of trade chatter, as you’d expect from a closer with 23 saves, a 2.35 ERA, and a 96 mph fastball, but he’s not the guy I’d be after. Will Smith would have been a really interesting name if he hadn’t blown out his knee in Spring Training, and while he’s recovered enough to get back on the mound, he doesn’t really look like his old self right now; missing velocity and strikeout rates lead me to guess that the Brewers hold onto Smith and hope he rebuilds some value as he gets further away from the injury, then look to move him over the winter or next summer.

No, the guy I’d want is Tyler Thornburg.

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And now here we are. After ticking through 40 of the most valuable players in baseball, we’ve come to the top 10, and what a remarkable list of players it is. The wave of young talent that has poured into baseball makes this group the best crop of talent I think I’ve ever seen in doing this exercise, and for the first time in a long time, there was actually a real question about who would rank #1. The top four, in fact, shifted around numerous times, and I didn’t settle on their final order until yesterday. And even at #5 and #6, you could make a legitimate argument that they belong in the conversation. This is a deep, strong, elite group of young players. With these kinds of stars already dominating at an early age, baseball looks to be in very good hands for the foreseeable future.

As a reminder for those who didn’t read the first four parts of the series, we’ve significantly upgraded the way we’re presenting the information this year. On the individual player tables, the Guaranteed Dollars and Team Control WAR — which are provided by Dan Szymborski’s ZIPS projections — rows give you an idea of what kind of production and costs a team could expect going forward, though to be clear, we’re not counting the rest of 2016 in those numbers; they’re just included for reference of what a player’s future status looks like. And as a reminder, we’re not ranking players based on those projections, as teams aren’t going to just make trades based on the ZIPS forecasts. That said, they’re a useful tool to provide some context about what a player might do for the next few years.

With those items covered, let’s get to it. Here is my take on the 10 most valuable assets in baseball.

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And now we’re really getting into the best players in the game. This group is made up of some of the elite performers in the sport, and the quality of short-term value is nearly as high as it is with the top 10. The difference for most of these guys is price and control years; many of them are into their arbitration years and are close enough to free agency that they don’t bring a lot of long-term value. But their short-term impacts are still large enough to put them among the most valuable assets in baseball.

As a reminder for those who haven’t read the first three parts of the series, we’ve significantly upgraded the way we’re presenting the information this year. On the individual player tables, the Guaranteed Dollars and Team Control WAR — which are provided by Dan Szymborski’s ZIPS projections — rows give you an idea of what kind of production and costs a team could expect going forward, though to be clear, we’re not counting the rest of 2016 in those numbers; they’re just included for reference of what a player’s future status looks like. And as a reminder, we’re not ranking players based on those projections, as teams aren’t going to just make trades based on the ZIPS forecasts. That said, they’re a useful tool to provide some context about what a player might do for the next few years.

With those items covered, let’s get to the guys who just missed making the top 10.

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We’re now halfway through this year’s trade value list, and today’s crop is an interesting group, comprised almost entirely of outfielders and pitchers, many of whom have signed long-term deals at bargain prices, relative to the current market rates for players of their abilities. This group skews a little older than the last ten names we discussed, but the oldest player here is still 29; youth is still a near-requirement for making this series.

As a reminder for those who haven’t read the first two parts of the series, we’ve significantly upgraded the way we’re presenting the information this year. On the individual player tables, the Guaranteed Dollars and Team Control WAR — which are provided by Dan Szymborski’s ZIPS projections — rows give you an idea of what kind of production and costs a team could expect going forward, though to be clear, we’re not counting the rest of 2016 in those numbers; they’re just included for reference of what a player’s future status looks like. And as a reminder, we’re not ranking players based on those projections, as teams aren’t going to just make trades based on the ZIPS forecasts.

That said, they’re a useful tool to provide some context about what a player might do for the next few years. And for prospects who haven’t yet been called up, we have to guess when they’ll become arbitration eligible, since we don’t actually know how their organizations will handle the service time issue yet.

With those items covered, let’s get to the middle of the list.

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