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 2025-2029, 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 2029 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2023 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 60th. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. 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 places where I disagreed meaningfully with 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 bolded in the table at the end of the piece.
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 2025-2029, 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 2029 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2023 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 60th. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small. 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 places where I disagreed meaningfully with 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.
Would you trade me your sandwich for my bag of chips? What if I threw in a pudding cup? Should we swap backpacks? Baseball cards? The desire to work out exchanges – and to do the comparative analysis necessary to decide whether you’d make a trade – is universal. It’s only natural that sports accentuate that feeling: At their core, sports are mostly about deciding which of two things is better.
Welcome to the 2024 edition of our annual Trade Value series. Starting today and continuing all week, we’re releasing our list of the 50 most valuable players in baseball, taking player performance, age, and contract into account. Dave Cameron, Kiley McDaniel, Craig Edwards, and Kevin Goldstein have all headlined this column before; this is my third year doing iton my own.
I say “on my own,” but that only describes the first half of the process. To start, I gathered every possible input I could think of: age, contract status, measures of current production, estimates of future production, Statcast data, pitch-level modeling — the list goes on. I used all of those inputs to come up with an initial quantitatively defined ranking, then honed that ranking by diving into individual player comparisons in greater detail. With that done, I got feedback from the FanGraphs staff (special thanks to Dan Szymborski for his ZiPS assistance and to Meg Rowley for being a frequent sounding board) to refine my thinking further. Read the rest of this entry »
Ah, the trade deadline. It’s a time to dream about the huge moves your club could make. It could go get a big bopper, the kind of hitter who could put the team on his back down the stretch and carry it to October. Maybe you’re more interested in a CC Sabathia-style workhorse, a starter who could anchor your pitching staff and throw as many innings as you need, regardless of what that number is. Perhaps an electrifying defender is on the table, or a game-breaking speedster who could transform your lineup. But let’s be realistic: None of that’s going to happen. Instead, your team is going to trade for a reliever.
Relievers are the common currency of the trade deadline. Every team needs more of them. I don’t see a single bullpen in baseball that couldn’t benefit from adding an arm or two. Meanwhile, most of the acquisitions fans dream about simply aren’t on the table, because those players don’t exist. Sure, half a season of one of the best hitters in baseball is enticing, but you can’t get that at the trade deadline because no team has one to spare, at least not for a reasonable cost. But relievers? Oh, there will be relievers on offer.
Today’s article is something of a real world shopping guide. Obviously, a huge move would be more fun. Maybe Luis Robert Jr. or Garrett Crochet will get traded. Realistically, though, most of the prizes this deadline will be middle relievers. So let’s take stock of an assortment of the best options who might be on the market, as well as what past years suggest about their probable cost in prospects.
A few rules of engagement: I’m looking only at likely sellers, and going team by team. I didn’t use a hard-and-fast rule in terms of playoff chances when constructing my seller’s list, and I’m erring on the expansive side, so if I list your team in the article and you think they’re still in the race, my apologies. I’m using the last few years of trade returns as a guide, and I’m going to stick to naming prospect value tiers rather than individual names. Let’s get started. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
The Austin Slater-for-Alex Young swap that the Giants and Reds made late Sunday night wasn’t going to grab many headlines. Slater is a platoon outfielder who’s struggled to mash lefties this year the way he had in the past, and Young is a funky, somewhat fungible lefty reliever; the Giants immediately sent him to Triple-A Sacramento upon completing the trade. That said, the notable thing about such a minor move is this: Because there are a bunch of teams trying to win, but few that have actually separated themselves from the pack, trades like this could rule the rest of the month.
Entering Monday, 11 of the 30 teams had playoff odds between 10% and 60%, bubble teams that could convince themselves to buy, sell, or do a little bit of both ahead of the July 30 deadline. That doesn’t even include the Reds, who may yet buy, as evidenced by their addition of Slater to add outfield depth. These teams almost certainly won’t go all in by the end of this month. Why risk trading away useful prospects only to miss out on postseason play anyway? Instead, the ones that decide not to punt on this season could elect to trade from positions of depth to patch up the holes in their roster.
The Giants could afford to move on from Slater because they have Luis Matos and Tyler Fitzgerald, two righty batters who are better defensive options than Slater in center field. Meanwhile, Slater should provide the Reds with much-needed outfield depth and allow them to option 25-year-old prospect Blake Dunn, who could benefit from getting regular playing time at Triple-A. On the flip side, Cincinnati could spare Young despite his strong Triple-A performance because it already had lefties Sam Moll, Brent Suter, and Justin Wilson in its bullpen. Conversely, San Francisco could use Young to share some of the load in the most-used bullpen in baseball.
On a larger scale, we may even see something analogous to the 2022 trade that sent Josh Hader from the Brewers to the Padres. Both teams were in a playoff position at the time of the deal, and the Brewers were actually in the better spot despite being the “seller” in the trade; they held a three-game lead in the NL Central when the trade went through. San Diego got a struggling Hader back on track and advanced to the NLCS, while Milwaukee missed the playoffs altogether. However, two years later, it’s become clear that the Brewers also improved because of the move. Robert Gasser, one of the two prospects they received in the trade, made his big league debut in May and was excellent across five starts before he went down with a season-ending elbow injury; he’s a key part of the Brewers’ future. The other prospect, outfielder Esteury Ruiz, ended up as Milwaukee’s most valuable return piece, even though he played just three games for the team. The offseason after acquiring Ruiz, the Brewers flipped him to the A’s in a three-team trade for All-Star catcher William Contreras, then with the Braves, and a solid reliever, Joel Payamps, from Oakland.
Trading major league players like Hader always contains the risk of upsetting the apple cart and messing with team chemistry, but if better fits come in return, that certainly can soften the blow of losing an All-Star. The Orioles’ surplus of position players naturally comes to mind, with Cedric Mullins, Colton Cowser, Heston Kjerstad, and Austin Hays all jockeying for playing time in the outfield, and Ramón Urías and Jorge Mateo blocking prospects Connor Norby and Jackson Holliday. Baltimore could choose to move any of these position players (excluding Holliday) considering it is in dire need of controllable starting pitching; Corbin Burnes is a pending free agent, and Kyle Bradish and Tyler Wells are out of commission until at least the middle of next season.
Contenders with expendable pitchers are tougher to find, though the Mariners are the obvious exception. They have five solid starters and sorely need to upgrade their offense. It’s hard to imagine they would trade any of their top three guys (Luis Castillo, Logan Gilbert, and George Kirby), but Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo could and should be available for an impact bat. Seattle’s rotation depth beyond Miller and Woo is uninspiring, so if needed, president of baseball operations and master trader Jerry Dipoto could ask for a replacement fifth starter in the trade or swing a separate deal to get one. Perhaps the Mariners could swap strength for strength with the Orioles and also acquire lefty Cole Irvin in addition to a hitter.
More teams could use starting pitchers than the Mariners have to offer, though. Fortunately, fringier contenders like the Cubs, Mets, Blue Jays, and Rangers have a few possible trade pieces. Luis Severino, Jose Quintana, Yusei Kikuchi, Max Scherzer, Michael Lorenzen, and Andrew Heaney are all free agents after the year, and we might even see some non-rentals move, such as Jameson Taillon, Tylor Megill, Chris Bassitt, and Jon Gray. Giving up controllable starters likely would allow these teams to net a stronger return, and if they are worried about giving up starters who are under contract beyond this season, they could always replace them through free agency during the offseason.
That’s not to say teams won’t trade major leaguers for a package of prospects, because, as always, they certainly will do that! The White Sox and A’s, for example, won’t want major leaguers in return for anybody they trade. But teams who go right down to the wire in deciding whether to buy or sell almost definitely will try to contend again in 2025. For that reason, they probably won’t simply deal controllable players for anything other than controllable players who fit their roster a little bit better. And that sure could lead to some fun trades over the next three weeks, ones that are more impactful than swapping Slater for Young.
The 2020s have been a quiet time for the Boston Red Sox. Since winning the 2018 World Series, their fourth in a 15-year period, Boston hasn’t looked much like one of the titans, ready to throw down with the Yankees or Astros in brutal warfare for baseball supremacy. Instead, as an organization, the Red Sox have taken on the character of a genial, pastorale retiree, gently reclining on the porch of an American Craftsman house, as if they were in a 1980s lemonade commercial.
On Independence Day in 2022, Boston was second in the AL East with the junior circuit’s third-best record, but in the space of a month, it had lost Nathan Eovaldi, Garrett Whitlock, Michael Wacha, and Rich Hill to injuries. It was the prime time to make trades, but the Red Sox did basically nothing that would have helped them maintain their playoff relevance; their pitching staff’s 6.30 ERA for July dropped them below .500 by the time the Sox made their pointless acquisition of Eric Hosmer at the trade deadline. At last year’s deadline, when they were just 3.5 games out of the final wild card spot, they decided the day was intolerably hot and they were content to sip the last of their sweet tea as they watched and waited for the fireflies to come out at the dying of the day. Once again, Boston is in contention during trade season, a half-game up on the Royals for the last AL playoff spot, and it’s time for them to get up off the porch. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
With less than four weeks to go until the July 30 trade deadline, now’s a great time to start taking a lay of the land and determining which teams will be buying, which will be selling, and which are caught in the middle. I looked at the AL teams on Tuesday, so today, let’s cover the NL clubs. Read the rest of this entry »
Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.
With just four weeks to go until the July 30 trade deadline, now’s a great time to start taking a lay of the land and determining which teams will be buying, which will be selling, and which are caught in the middle. I’ll tackle the AL today and the NL on Friday. We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s get started. Read the rest of this entry »
