Introduction
Players #50 to #41
Players #40 to #31

We’re halfway through the list, and are heading towards the game’s most valuable assets. Today, we mix in a few of the best players in baseball with a few very good young players on some highly team-friendly deals.

As a reminder, in addition to the player’s biographical information, I’ve added a summary of his contract situation, and as a new feature this year, Dan Szymborski has provided me with five year ZIPS forecasts for all of the players on the list, which I’ve listed along with their 2016 projection. Of course, not every player listed is under control for the next five years — some are locked up well beyond that time frame — but this should offer you a pretty decent view of what a player is expected to do both in the short-term and the longer-term, according to Dan’s forecasting system.

For the contract details, I’m only displaying future obligations beginning with their 2016 salary. I’ve tried to ensure that these are as accurate as can be, but they were also collected manually, so there probably will be some mistakes; there are plenty of weird clauses and options that make aggregating all this information particularly annoying. Also, we’re not including things like All-Star bonuses or incentive escalators, as this is intended to give more of a big picture view than be a precise accounting of the exact cost of a future player. A few hundred thousand here and there won’t change the rankings.

Also, keep in mind that some players have contracts that give them a guaranteed minimum, but they are also able to opt-into arbitration when they are eligible. This is pretty common now with prominent international signings, and so some of these guys will probably earn more than their contracts currently call for, but I’ve still just included the guaranteed minimum in the future salary commitment because we don’t know for sure that they’re going to opt into arbitration yet.

Finally, we’ve also included a nifty little graphic at the bottom that visualizes a lot of the information contained below, so if you want to see the projections and contract status for everyone together, you can get a summary of that at the bottom. The chart goes out five years, so some players have additional value beyond what’s displayed, but it should give you a good overview of what each player offers going forward.

Alright, on to the list.

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Don’t allow the recent slump to throw you off. If the Astros were to keep winning games at their season pace, then by next Wednesday they’d have more wins than they did in all of 2013. By Thursday, a week later, they’d have more wins than they did in 2012, and by that Saturday, they’d have more wins than they did in 2011. By the penultimate day of August, they’d have more wins than they did a season ago. And then there would be 31 games left. The speed with which we adjust our expectations means there are people who are disappointed by how the Astros closed out the first half, but this has been a great season, a blessing of a season, a season of competitive baseball that even recently would’ve been almost impossible to imagine. For the Houston Astros, 2015 has been wonderful.

Which comes with the upside: unexpected success. Everybody loves unexpected success. It’s good for the players, it’s good for the coaches, it’s good for the fans, and it’s good for the organization. But this also comes with a challenge: figure out how to navigate the rest of the month. The Astros might’ve expected 2015 to be another year of building. Now they’re in position to trade from the long-term to try to improve the short-term. The Astros will be perhaps the most interesting team to watch in the days and weeks ahead, because if they wanted, they could be awful aggressive.

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If last night’s Home Run Derby was any indication of the interest and excitement that will be on display tonight, there should be a lot of electricity in Cincinnati for the All-Star Game. The disparity of talent between the American League and National League has been an ongoing debate for some tonight, and the result of a single-game exhibition is not going to tell us a lot about the superiority of any league. Looking at the entire talent level of a league is a much better indicator of the league’s as a whole, but tonight we have a snippet of that talent, and for the most part, we have a large portion of the talent at the top.

The All-Star Game never has all of the best players in each league matched up face-to-face. Layers of fan voting, peer selections along with injuries and pitchers starting on Sunday tend to thin the rosters a little. That being said, most of the best players in Major League Baseball are represented on the roster and taking a look at their performance this season, their preseason projections, as well as rest of the season projections can provide a decent indicator of the talent level at the top of the respective leagues.

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Ben and Sam banter about former Pirates executive Merrill Hess and then discuss stories about former Dodgers GM Ned Colletti from Molly Knight’s new book.

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Following last month’s horrific incident at Fenway Park – when a woman suffered life-threatening injuries after being struck in the head by a fragment of a broken bat – it was probably only a matter of time until someone challenged Major League Baseball’s fan safety rules in court. A new class action lawsuit filed in California federal court on Monday does just that, accusing MLB of failing to take sufficient precautions to protect its fans from foul balls and broken bats.

The suit – filed on behalf of Gail Payne, an Oakland A’s season ticket holder – focuses in particular on fans sitting in unprotected seats along the first and third baselines, an area the complaint dubs the “Danger Zone.” According to the lawsuit, although MLB has known for years that fans seated in these sections face a heightened risk of serious injury, the league has failed to take any steps to protect them. The new suit hopes to force MLB to act, asking the court to order the league to mandate that all 30 teams install foul-pole-to-foul-pole netting by the start of next season.

Ultimately, however, Monday’s lawsuit appears unlikely to achieve its ambitious goal, as the case faces several legal hurdles that may prove quite difficult to overcome.

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If you look at the MLB’s gigantic 162-game gauntlet from a certain perspective, the landscape of every division is dictated by intra-divisional match-ups. For instance, in the spread-out NL Central, the Chicago Cubs (47-40 and eight games back of the St. Louis Cardinals) are serious contenders for a playoff spot, while the Cincinnati Reds (39-47, 15.5 games back) have been presumed for the whole season to be trade deadline sellers, with a close-to-hopeless chance of making the playoffs.

The shape of the NL Central looks very different if the season series between the Cubs and the Reds wasn’t played. The Cubs lead 7-2, with ten more games scheduled after the All-Star Break. Take this one match-up out of the two teams’ records and the Cubs are 40-38, and the Reds are 37-40, suddenly a weekend series away from matching each other in the standings. Read the rest of this entry »

Introduction
Players #50 to #41

We covered the last 10 guys on the list yesterday, so today is the next group up. In many cases, these guys are similar performers to yesterday’s group, just with better contracts or more years of team control remaining. In one particular case, there’s an exceptional performer with a somewhat larger contract, but we’ll get to those specifics in the write-ups.

As a reminder, in addition to the player’s biographical information, I’ve added a summary of his contract situation, and as a new feature this year, Dan Szymborski has provided me with five year ZIPS forecasts for all of the players on the list, which I’ve listed along with their 2016 projection. Of course, not every player listed is under control for the next five years — some are locked up well beyond that time frame — but this should offer you a pretty decent view of what a player is expected to do both in the short-term and the longer-term, according to Dan’s forecasting system.

For the contract details, I’m only displaying future obligations beginning with their 2016 salary. I’ve tried to ensure that these are as accurate as can be, but they were also collected manually, so there probably will be some mistakes; there are plenty of weird clauses and options that make aggregating all this information particularly annoying. Also, we’re not including things like All-Star bonuses or incentive escalators, as this is intended to give more of a big picture view than be a precise accounting of the exact cost of a future player. A few hundred thousand here and there won’t change the rankings.

Also, keep in mind that some players have contracts that give them a guaranteed minimum, but they are also able to opt-into arbitration when they are eligible. This is pretty common now with prominent international signings, and so some of these guys will probably earn more than their contracts currently call for, but I’ve still just included the guaranteed minimum in the future salary commitment because we don’t know for sure that they’re going to opt into arbitration yet.

Finally, we’ve also included a nifty little graphic at the bottom that visualizes a lot of the information contained below, so if you want to see the projections and contract status for everyone together, you can get a summary of that at the bottom. The chart goes out five years, so some players have additional value beyond what’s displayed, but it should give you a good overview of what each player offers going forward.

Alright, on to the list.

Read the rest of this entry »