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 2026-2030, 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 2030 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2024 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 guy who would have been 58th if the list went that deep. The magnitude of the differences in this part of the list is quite small, though it picks up around no. 30, as I’ll discuss today. 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 the places where I disagreed meaningfully with the 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.

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

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 2026-2030, 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 2030 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2024 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 guy who would have been 58th if the list went that deep. 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 the 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.

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

“Who you got?” It seems like such a simple question. If you’ve ever swapped baseball cards during recess or tried to pick somewhere to eat on a Friday night, you’ve asked yourself this. The choice between two options seems easy. But then you add a third option, and a fourth, and a 139th, and suddenly you’re obsessing over whether you’d prefer your third-favorite Thai restaurant to your fourth-favorite Italian place. Or perhaps, if you’ve used our new crowdsourced trade value tool, you’re deciding between CJ Abrams and Andrew Abbott. Making decisions is hard!

Welcome to the 2025 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 fourth year doing it on my own.

Of course, “on my own” is a bit of a misnomer. The process of building this list starts with me gathering every possible input I can find: age, contract status, measures of current production, estimates of future production, Statcast data, pitch-level modeling, scouting reports – if it can be written down, I try to consider it in my first pass. I use all of those inputs to come up with an initial quantitative ranking, then hone that ranking by diving deeper into individual player comparisons. After I have things in good order, I consult with the FanGraphs staff to refine my thinking further. (Special thanks are due to Dan Szymborski for his ZiPS assistance, Eric Longenhagen for being a frequent sounding board as I iterated on the list, Meg Rowley for her help shepherding it through to publication, and Sean Dolinar for his technical assistance.) Next, I reach out to sources on the team side. Here I try to gather perspectives on player value from organizations that have different methodological leanings, different budgets and goals, and that are in different places in the competitive cycle. Read the rest of this entry »

Payton Tolle is the top pitching prospect in what is arguably baseball’s best farm system. Drafted 50th-overall last summer by the Boston Red Sox out of Texas Christian University, the 22-year-old left-hander features a fastball that Eric Longenhagen has assigned a 70 grade, and not just because of its high octane. Per our lead prospect analyst, the 6-foot-6, 250-pound hurler possessed “the 2024 draft’s most deceptive secondary traits,” which included seven-and-a-half feet of extension.

I asked Tolle about his four-seamer, which sat 95 mph when I saw toe the rubber for the Double-A Portland Sea Dogs versus the Hartford Yard Goats 10 days ago.

“The velo is something we’ve kind of driven hard ever since I got to the Red Sox org,” said Tolle, who was 90-92 in college and is now topping out at 98-99. “I’m buying into the system, buying into how the velo is going to change how everything looks. I also understand that more swing-and-miss is going to come at the top of the zone. At Wichita State, my first year, I felt like I was almost more sinkers, but then I switched up my grip. I brought my fingers closer together and started to have more ride on it.”

Tolle transferred from Wichita State to TCU for his junior year, where he — along with the Horned Frogs coaching staff — “really dove into how the fastball plays and what we can play off of it.” Since turning pro, that evolution has continued with a heavy emphasis on secondary offerings. Whereas his fastball usage as an amateur was often 70-75%, it has been closer to 50% in his recent outings. A work-in-progress changeup has become more prevalent — Tolle got bad swings on a few of them when I saw him in Portland — but a hard breaking ball is currently his top option behind his heater. Read the rest of this entry »

“Andrew Jackson, in the main foyer of his White House had a big block of cheese. The block of cheese was huge, over two tons, and it was there for any and all who might be hungry. Jackson wanted the White House to belong to the people, so from time to time, he opened his doors to those who wished an audience…”

That’s the late, great John Spencer as Leo McGarry in Season 1, Episode 5 of The West Wing, giving his Big Block of Cheese Day speech to the senior staff in the Roosevelt Room. I like to think of this mailbag as FanGraphs’ own Big Block of Cheese Day. We open things up for you, our readers, to ask whatever questions you have for us, and like Leo, I comb through them and delegate some of them out to our staff to answer. (It’s fun to consider myself Meg’s chief of staff, and in this FanGraphs-as-West Wing analogy, Baumann is definitely Josh Lyman.) And as is the case in the Big Block of Cheese Day episodes, we at FanGraphs always walk away more enlightened baseball fans after answering your questions.

Big Block of Cheese Day came to mind for this mailbag because of a question I received this week that we will get to momentarily. But before then, I’d like to remind all of you that while anyone can submit a question, this mailbag is exclusive to FanGraphs Members. If you aren’t yet a Member and would like to keep reading, you can sign up for a Membership here. It’s the best way to both experience the site and support our staff, and it comes with a bunch of other great benefits. Also, if you’d like to ask a question for an upcoming mailbag, send me an email at mailbag@fangraphs.com. Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s All Star break is a rare gap in the baseball calendar, a chance for everyone to catch their breath before the thrill of the trade deadline — and, if you’re a FanGraphs reader, maybe the thrill of the trade value series, too. It’s also a week with very little baseball, which means the normal format for Five Things will have to take a break. Instead, here are five things that I’m looking forward to in the second half of the season, from trade deadline trendsetters to silly leaderboards to my favorite young star.

A quick programming note before we continue: No Five Things for the next two weeks, and instead of my regularly scheduled chat appearance on Monday, we’ll have a jumbo-length trade value chat next Friday at the conclusion of the series. Five Things will be back on Friday, August 8, the first week after trade season winds down.

1. Who Will Sell First?
There are six teams hanging onto the fringes of the playoff chase, three-plus games back of the final wild card spot. Most of those teams are in win-now mode, which means they all have interesting players to trade if they pivot to selling. Only one of them can move first, though.

In the AL Central, the entire middle of the division is below .500 and on the ropes. But if all three teams are intent on competing next year – and they all appear to be – they might not have much to offer. Seth Lugo is the best player on an expiring deal, but despite their 11.7% playoff odds as of Thursday afternoon, the Royals might decide to stand pat. They’re right in the middle of the peak Bobby Witt Jr. contention years and wouldn’t get an earth-shaking return back for dealing Lugo. So why not take a slim shot at the playoffs with their current roster? It’s a close call, though I’d probably trade him.

Neither the Guardians nor the Twins have many attractive pending free agents, but in recent days, Joe Ryan has been the subject of trade rumors. Minnesota certainly doesn’t have to deal him; he has two more arbitration years after this season.

That leaves two teams as the likely movers and shakers with multiple good players to trade: Arizona and Baltimore. The Diamondbacks are three below, and with Corbin Burnes out for the year, they’re not at full strength anyway. They also have a treasure trove of players on expiring contracts; Eugenio Suárez is the best hitter even possibly available at the deadline, plenty of pitching labs would love to work with Zac Gallen, and Merrill Kelly and Josh Naylor are proven veteran contributors. Read the rest of this entry »

The rumblings have started. On Tuesday night in the unincorporated territory north of Atlanta, the American League clawed its way back from a 6-0 deficit in the late innings, wrestling the All-Star Game into its first ever swing-off. The problem with the swing-off, the reason for the rumblings, was apparent even before the ninth inning ended: It might be too much fun. Too much fun could result in disaster, an eruption that would reshape the landscape of baseball for all time to come, killing extra innings once and for all and replacing them with something that smacked suspiciously of soccer.

The protectors of baseball’s sovereign dignity chewed their fingernails to the quick as Brent Rooker readied himself in the batter’s box to the opening strains of “Hotel California.” They wailed when he launched two baseballs into the left-center field seats, thrilling everyone with eyes to see or ears to hear. Steven Kwan leapt into the air with the innocent delight of a child. It was a dark omen.

“Will no one think of the children?” moaned the traditionalists when Kyle Stowers punched one over the hulking brick wall in right center and jubilation reigned near Atlanta. Their fear reached a crescendo when Kyle Schwarber duck-walked into the box, leaned back, and shook his bat in all directions as if to ward off any evil, defense-minded spirits. Schwarber, who has spent his entire career smacking monstrous, momentous home runs as casually as the rest of us put our socks on in the morning, had the potential to alter baseball’s future, cementing the swing-off as a consummation devoutly to be wished, a future too fun to avoid. If any player could turn his three swings into three signature homers, it was Schwarber. Read the rest of this entry »

With the draft and the All-Star Game out of the way, the next waypoint on the baseball calendar is the trade deadline. In other words, it is officially Trade Season. And the Royals and Pirates kicked it off on Wednesday morning with the first deadline deal. I got a little excited; sometimes, when the Royals and Pirates make a deal, you end up with Sir Francis Drake’s invaluable contribution to the defeat of the Spanish Armada at the Battle of Gravelines in 1588.

This was not one of those times. Kansas City sent minor league infielder Cam Devanney to Pittsburgh in exchange for Adam Frazier. Read the rest of this entry »

Every July, FanGraphs releases our annual Trade Value Series highlighting the top 50 players in baseball, taking contract status and performance into account. For the past four years, I’ve been in charge of this exercise, with liberal amounts of help from the rest of the FanGraphs staff and some contacts on the team side. This year, I’ve got company. For the first time, FanGraphs readers will be creating their own trade value list. Read the rest of this entry »

Today we turn our attention to some chilly performances at the hot corner. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of a contender (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of roughly 10%) and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far (which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season), I have also incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. That may suggest that some of these teams will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because their performance at that spot thus far is worth a look.

Cubs

The Cubs began the season with 2023 first-round pick Matt Shaw — no. 13 on our preseason Top 100 Prospects list as a 55-FV prospect — as their starter at third base, but he struggled out of the gate, hitting just .172/.294/.241 (62 wRC+) from Opening Day through April 14 before being optioned to Triple-A Iowa. Jon Berti did the bulk of the work in his absence, with Gage Workman, Vidal Bruján, Nicky Lopez and even Justin Turner spotting there as well before Shaw was recalled on May 19. The 23-year-old rookie got hot upon returning, but struggled in June before starting July in a 1-for-27 funk; he is now batting just .198/.276/.280 (61 wRC+) with two homers, 11 steals, and 0.0 WAR. While he’s underperformed relative to his expected stats (including a .350 xSLG), his 83.3-mph average exit velocity places him in the first percentile, and his 26.8% hard-hit rate in the fifth. Notably, he rode the pine in the days leading up to the All-Star break, making one start and two late-inning appearances over the Cubs’ last five games. Manager Craig Counsell called Shaw’s absence from the lineup “just a little breather here.” Read the rest of this entry »