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 2027-2031, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money (exclusive of any signing bonus), 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 2031 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons, or has a player or vesting option). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2025 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.

A note on these rankings: At the top of the list, I’ve tried to group like with like, but that’s not always possible when you’re talking about the very best couple of players in baseball. I’ve noted this in the text, but there’s one tier of players today where I think all three have roughly equal value, and another where I feel strongly that the top guy is the best of the bunch. I’ll note the places where I disagreed meaningfully with the people I spoke with in calibrating this list, and I’ll also note the players whose value my contacts disagreed about. As I mentioned in the Introduction and Honorable Mentions piece, I’ll indicate tier breaks between players where appropriate, both in their capsules and bolded in the table at the end of the piece. 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 2027-2031, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money (exclusive of any signing bonus), 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 2031 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons, or has a player or vesting option). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2025 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. 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 2027-2031, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money (exclusive of any signing bonus), 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 2031 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons, or has a player or vesting option). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2025 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. 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 2027-2031, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money (exclusive of any signing bonus), 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 2031 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons, or has a player or vesting option). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2025 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. 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 2027-2031, courtesy of Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections. The table will also include the player’s guaranteed money (exclusive of any signing bonus), 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 2031 (assuming the player is under contract or team control for those seasons, or has a player or vesting option). Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2025 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. Read the rest of this entry »

The concept of trade likely predates written history. If one person has a thing, and another person has a different thing, you better believe that they’re both thinking about whether they’d be better off by swapping those things. That means that the concept of value is almost as old; if things can be swapped, then it’s important to rank them so that you don’t make a bad deal and end up with something worse than what you started with. In other words, trade value lists are one of the things we humans have done the longest. Or at least, that’s what I like to tell myself to feel better when it’s 11:47 PM and I’m wondering whether I’d rather have four years of a shortstop or three years of a mid-rotation starter.

Welcome to the 2026 FanGraphs Trade Value Series. Starting today and continuing through the end of the week, we’re releasing our list of the 50 most valuable players in baseball, taking player performance, age, and contract details into account. Dave Cameron, Kiley McDaniel, Craig Edwards, and Kevin Goldstein have all headlined this list before; this is my fifth year doing it on my own.

Of course, I really ought to put “on my own” in quotation marks. I start building this list by gathering every input I can think of. Age, contract status, current statistics, projected future performance, Statcast data, pitch- and arsenal-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 set of rankings, then refine those rankings by diving deeper into individual player comparisons. After I have things in relatively good order, I consult with the FanGraphs staff to clarify my thinking further and get new opinions on tough decisions. Everyone is a big help, but special thanks are due to Dan Szymborski for supplying the ZiPS projections, Sean Dolinar for his technical assistance, and Meg Rowley for patiently shepherding the project from a spreadsheet to the final product. Next, I reach out to sources on the team side. Here, I try to gather perspectives from organizations with different methodological leanings, budgets, goals, and places in the competitive cycle; basically, as many differing viewpoints as possible. Read the rest of this entry »

Troy Melton has excelled since returning to the mound in late May. Over nine starts comprising 55 innings, the 25-year-old Detroit Tigers right-hander has won five of six decisions while logging a 1.80 ERA and a 3.86 FIP. Sidelined for the initial two months of the season due to elbow inflammation, he is back to being one of baseball’s most-promising young pitchers.

What most stands out about Melton’s campaign to date? From an arsenal perspective, the answer has to be his cutter. Last season, he threw the pitch at a 10.8% clip to the tune of a .368 BAA and a 12.8% whiff rate. This year, the offering has elicited a .083 BAA and a 26.0% whiff rate while being thrown at a nearly-double 20.5% clip.

Why the increased reliance on his cutter, and why has it been so effective?

“I didn’t really change anything, which is the weirdest part,” Melton told me in the days leading up to the All-Star break. “I’ve just been throwing it way, way harder and getting a lot of swing-and-miss. I’ve been throwing my slider harder, too. I got one up to 91 [mph] in my last start, which is well above what I’d been doing previously.

“It’s definitely interesting,” the second-year big-leaguer continued. “It’s not even something I consciously changed, it’s just that I’ve had a little bit more intent. I realized that my intent wasn’t high enough, so I literally started trying to throw harder, and that didn’t sacrifice any execution. I’ve been executing just as good, if not better. My cutter has been kind of been the leading beneficiary of that.”

In terms of velocity, Melton’s cutter is averaging 92.2 mph, up from 90.9 mph in his rookie campaign. Locating the pitch better has likewise been a factor in its success, as has its role in his attack plan. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking a lot about the baseball calendar in recent days, specifically how we use it to both mark the passage of time and look ahead to the possibility of what’s yet to come. As fans, we slice up the season to make it easier for us to discuss noteworthy performances, evaluate trends, and justify our irrational faith that our team just might turn things around. As analysts, we know that we shouldn’t draw grand conclusions from these individual slivers — the sample sizes are just too small — but we also recognize the benefits of using these otherwise arbitrary segments to understand the season as it unfolds.

I mention all of this because this weekend is start of the second half of the season. Of course, we all know that the All-Star break hasn’t been the season’s true midpoint for some time now, as Opening Day is scheduled earlier in the year than it used to be while the All-Star Game continues to be played on the second Tuesday of July. Even so, there are three reasons that I continue to find value in splitting up the season in mid-July. First, pausing the regular season for a few days provides a natural demarcation point. Second, with playoff field now expanded to 12 teams, the postseason lasts longer than ever before. Because the team that wins the World Series could play up to 22 additional games, the All-Star break ends up being much closer to the halfway point on the journey from Opening Day to the decisive game of the Fall Classic. Finally, the three-week stretch after the All-Star Game is a frenetic rush to the trade deadline that then rolls right into the Dog Days of August and the strenuous sprint of September. The games after the All-Star break are much more demanding than the ones before it, thus making the few days of respite in July feel like a more representative dividing line than Game 81 in late June.

Anyway, in this first mailbag of the second half, we’re answering your questions on what it would be like if MLB had a loan mechanism like professional soccer, Kyle Karros’ breakout, the longest time a team has spent within a half-game of .500, and what Anthony Rendon’s career might have been. But first, I’d like to remind you that 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 »

The All-Star break affords a good opportunity to run a full update of the ZiPS projections, since the lack of action allows me, the system’s flesh-and-blood creator, the time to refresh every speck of data that ZiPS uses before new games push over my tower of dominoes.

The ZiPS projected standings are the product of a million seasonal simulations; there’s a lot of PC power and a unfortunate amount of linear algebra involved. In order to get a better estimate of the upside and downside of a team, ZiPS takes the important additional step of simulating the roster itself before it ever considers a single game on the schedule. To illustrate, in most of the million simulations, Yordan Alvarez continues to treat opposing pitchers in a rather rude fashion, and sometimes, he even wins the Triple Crown. But in some simulations, he’s merely OK, while in others, he misses time due to injury. In a small percentage of those runs, the injury proves significant and prematurely ends his season. When a player is injured in a ZiPS simulation, the computer fills in the depth charts based on who is left standing. While this isn’t a perfect approach, the overall effect is to give us a range of expectations for the Astros, allowing us to peek as far as as we can into the future until the future actually arrives. Read the rest of this entry »

Here are two things that are true about Red Sox owner John Henry:

1. He owns a newspaper, the Boston Globe.
2. He refuses to speak to the press.

Henry hasn’t taken questions from Red Sox reporters since 2020, amid the nuclear fallout of his club’s decision to trade Mookie Betts. Following Boston’s excision in April of longtime manager Alex Cora and five of his coaches, the Fenway Sports Group boss faced renewed calls to speak publicly.

“The owner’s silence isn’t golden,” wrote The Athletic’s Brittany Ghiroli, “it’s cowardly and speaks volumes about how one of the sport’s most iconic franchises has become rudderless.”

Stephanie Apstein, then of Sports Illustrated, also excoriated Henry for his refusal to face the music, declaring that he “should sell the team” — an opinion shared by the fans who chanted just that at Fenway Park earlier this season.

With the second half of their season beginning on Friday and the trade deadline fast approaching, the suddenly red-hot — but still sub-.500 — Red Sox face a crucial decision point. Will they be sellers if they scuffle or tread water coming out of the All-Star break? Or load up for a run at a wild card berth? Right now, Boston is only a half-game out of the final spot. Will chief baseball officer Craig Breslow be able to add salary to bolster his squad, winners of nine straight and 14 of its last 16? Through it all, Henry has kept mum. Read the rest of this entry »