We’re just about a week from 2022’s trade deadline, and so far, it’s been a quiet one. This weekend’s trade of Daniel Vogelbach for Colin Holderman is the most significant swap yet this July unless you’re a fierce partisan for Christian Bethancourt or Tyler Wade.

It would be highly unusual if we didn’t get a lot more trades of far more significance this week, but knowing what happens will involve some waiting. And since waiting to talk about moves isn’t fun, it’s about time for my yearly feature in which I kick things off with some trade imagineering. None of these are predictions of what actually will happen, but kind of a kickoff exercise where we have a lot of fun discussions — hopefully not too many of them involving people being mad at ol’ Szym!

The San Francisco Giants acquire OF Juan Soto from the Washington Nationals for SS Marco Luciano, P Kyle Harrison, OF Luis González, OF Heliot Ramos, and the privilege of not being P Patrick Corbin’s employer

I’m actually unconvinced that the Nationals trade Soto at all this week and expect a trade to be more likely in the winter than right now. While the Yankees seem to be the clearest target, I think them making a deal is the most likely at a point where they have more clarity on the status of Aaron Judge and how much money exactly they have to play with, especially with Washington’s apparent insistence on including Corbin in a deal.

Corbin is a giant monkey wrench; this is not a simple case of a small amount of money going one way or another, but a deal with more than $60 million remaining, with little hope of it being anything but a de facto charge. I think the inclusion opens the way for a team in a better situation to eat the $60 million rather than give another top prospect. For me, that makes trying to conjure a deal with the Giants work. San Francisco has payroll room to play with and doesn’t have the depth in top prospects that teams like the Yankees and Mariners can offer. Plus, it may just be my memory playing tricks with me, but I remember the Giants having a long relationship with another franchise corner outfielder with tremendous power and nearly clairvoyant plate discipline.

Ramos is basically one of the extras at this point, and González is included because Washington also appears to want current major league talent in return for some odd reason. If Washington’s red line is Logan Webb, I politely thank them for my time and look elsewhere; if I’m starting with a trade of three years of Webb for two years of Soto and a forced acquisition of Corbin, I’m not sure I’d include any prospects of interest. Two top-50 prospects and picking up Corbin’s deal, the financial equivalent of a 65 FV prospect, plus a decent MLB-ready player and an extra or two is as far as I would go if I’m the Giants. Read the rest of this entry »

The Toronto Blue Jays have two of the best pitchers in baseball this season. Kevin Gausman possesses a 3.00 ERA and a 1.99 FIP to go with 116 strikeouts in 99 innings. Alek Manoah boasts a 2.24 ERA and a 3.34 FIP with 110 strikeouts in 120.2 innings. The latter pitched a scoreless inning in last week’s All-Star Game; the former, who surprisingly was not named to the squad, has arguably out-performed his teammate.

Each of the two garnered wins over the weekend. On Friday, Gausman ran his hard-luck record to 7–7, fanning 10 batters over five innings in Toronto’s 28–5 rout of the Red Sox at Fenway Park. On Saturday, Manoah allowed one run over six innings, striking out seven Boston batters along the way, to raise his record to 11–4.

On Sunday, I asked the right-handers about each other. In short, why is the other one of the best pitchers in baseball?

“I would say his character,” Manoah said of Gausman. “His character, his competitiveness, the way he goes about his work every day. He’s had his teeth punched out before, and he’s found ways to get back to the top. So I think his resilience is big. There’s also his ability to adjust from pitch to pitch, from lineup to lineup. He’s very strategic. Read the rest of this entry »

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to next week’s 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 2023-2027, 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 2027, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2021 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. 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’s not much of a gap between, say, the 35th ranked player and 50th. The magnitude of differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several 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 — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Read the rest of this entry »

In what has been a relatively quiet July so far on the trade front, the Mets made two minor trades over the weekend, both with the Pirates. First, they picked up designated hitter Daniel Vogelbach in return for reliever Colin Holderman. In a separate transaction, Pittsburgh also sent catcher Michael Perez to Queens in return for the team’s favorite kind of player: cash.

As a power-and-walks hitter without much defensive value, Vogelbach was not a favorite of prospect-watchers, but the internet at least partially fell in love with him due to his Rubens-esque proportions. While his major league career hasn’t exactly resulted in any Large Adult MVP memes, he’s established himself in the big leagues as a power-hitting DH, albeit one with a fairly limited role. You don’t want him in a game against a left-handed pitcher, and ideally, you don’t want him standing in the field with a glove, either. If you need a part-time DH who can also come off the bench and ruin a right-handed reliever’s evening, though, then Vogelbach is your man. His .228/.338/.430 triple-slash in Pittsburgh is hardly eye-popping, but in 2022, that’s enough to get you a perfectly serviceable wRC+ of 118.

As a Met, Vogelbach’s line should look even better than that, as he’s joined a team that has less of a reason to let him face lefties. With an extremely thin roster, the Pirates started him 14 times against left-handed starters, about 40% of the time. They had no lefty-masher on hand to serve as a complement to Vogelbach, and when he wasn’t starting, they regularly turned to Yoshi Tsutsugo, another left-handed hitter, or used the position to rest other players. The Mets, on the other hand, are quite content to use J.D. Davis against lefties — he’s started all 35 games against them — and appear to have finally decided that his best position is DH. If Dominic Smith had been hitting at all, a trade like this would not have been necessary, but with a .560 OPS this year after last year’s .667, the team is basically at wits’ end when it comes to getting consistent production out of him. I’d actually be surprised if Smith is on the roster after the deadline, and at this point, a divorce may be best for both parties. Read the rest of this entry »

Compared to the never-ending trudge of MLB’s CBA negotiations this winter, the 2022 season feels like a drag car race; I find it difficult to believe we’re already just two months away from the playoffs. But while playoff-relevant teams and their players are primarily thinking about October right now, it would be a lie if they claimed there was no peeking ahead to free agency. After all, decisions to sign or not sign will be among the most significant that players will make in their professional lives, and the right contract can change the fate of a franchise, for good or ill.

As we reach baseball’s trade deadline, the point of no return, I thought I would enlist ZiPS to the task of projecting which possible free agents have helped their cases this year. After all, the salaries players can expect to get in free agency can change decisions teams make right now. Just to keep everything on an even playing field, the exact order is based on theoretical four-year contracts.

1. Aaron Judge, New York Yankees (+$32 million)

Judge made a massive gamble on himself entering the season by turning down a deal worth $230.5 million over eight years, and while I don’t think there’s any possible season that would have actually catapulted him into the $300 million-plus territory that’s generally populated by younger players playing more crucial positions, he’s done about all he can to make his case. The projection systems all have his mean outlook getting him just over that 50-homer line for the second time in his career, and in a much more difficult environment for home run hitting than existed in 2017.

ZiPS isn’t convinced, though, that Judge is going to do better than the Yankees’ initial offer, and as great as he’s been, I still share that skepticism. He’s establishing a higher baseline for himself from which to decline throughout his 30s, but some of the reasons that hold down his value still remain: he’ll be 31 in 2023, and he’s a corner outfielder. I don’t think there’s any team in baseball that will give Judge more money than the Yankees will be willing to, and I don’t think the Yankees have any intention to offer him $280 million. Feel free to pop back into the comments in six months if I’m wrong!

Read the rest of this entry »

As is tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using the lead-up to next week’s 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 2023-2027, 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 2027, if the player is under contract or team control for those seasons. Last year’s rank includes a link to the relevant 2021 post. Thanks are due to Sean Dolinar for his help in creating the tables in these posts. 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’s not much of a gap between, say, the 35th ranked player and 50th. The magnitude of differences in this part of the list is quite small. Several 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 — but with so many players carrying roughly equivalent value, disagreements abounded. Read the rest of this entry »

The trade deadline is nearly here and once again, team behavior will be affected by 40-man roster dynamics. Teams with an especially high number of currently-rostered players under contract for 2023 and prospects who need to be added to the 40-man in the offseason have what is often called a 40-man “crunch,” “overage,” or need to “churn.” This means the team has incentive to clear its overflow of players by either packaging several to acquire just one in return, or by trading for something the club can keep — international pool space, comp picks, or, more typically, younger players whose 40-man clocks are further from midnight — rather than do nothing and later lose some of those players to waivers or in the Rule 5 Draft. Teams can take care of this issue with transactions between the end of the season and the 40-man roster deadline in November, but a contending team with a crunch has more incentive to do something before the trade deadline so the results of those deals can bolster the club’s ability to reach the postseason.

In an effort to see whose depth might influence trade behavior, I assess teams’ 40-man futures every year. This exercise is done by using the RosterResource Depth Chart pages to examine current 40-man situations, subtracting pending free agents using the Team Payroll tab, and then weighing the December 2022 Rule 5 eligible prospects (or players who became eligible in past seasons and are having a strong year) to see which clubs have the biggest crunch coming. I then make an educated guess about which of those orgs might behave differently in the trade market as a result.

Some quick rules about 40-man rosters. Almost none of them contain exactly 40 players in-season because teams can add a player to the 40 to replace one who is on the 60-day injured list. In the offseason, teams don’t get extra spots for injured players and have to get down to 40 precisely, so if they want to keep some of their injury fill-ins, they have to cut someone else from the 40-man to make room. Read the rest of this entry »

Baseball’s annual rituals have been around for so long that they feel like an immutable part of the fabric of life. Pitchers and catchers reporting, the All-Star break, September playoff chases and, of course, FanGraphs leaving your favorite player off of our top 50 trade value rankings, which we do to spite you (and them) specifically.

I kid, of course, but today does mark the first installment of our annual Trade Value Series. In the following days, we’ll release our list, taking performance, age, and contract into account. Dave Cameron, Kiley McDaniel, and Craig Edwards all helmed this exercise at various points in the past, and after tag-teaming with Kevin Goldstein last year, I’ve taken over on my own.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t gotten help. I considered a broad range of inputs: estimates of current value, projections of future value, age, contract status, positional scarcity, Statcast data, and anything else I could dream up. From there, I solicited feedback from the rest of the FanGraphs staff (special thanks are due to Dan Szymborski for his ZiPS assistance and Sean Dolinar for his technical wizardry) and consulted with several outside sources, both public- and team-side, to compile the final order. Make no mistake, this is still my list, and it’s an inherently subjective estimation, but I’d like to think it’s an informed one. Read the rest of this entry »

Hunter Mense had some talented teammates during his relatively brief playing career. None were more talented than a teenager who went by one of his middle names. Now the assistant hitting coach for the Toronto Blue Jays, Mense played alongside Giancarlo Cruz Michael Stanton during their time together as Florida Marlins farmhands.

“I knew him as Mike,” Mense said of the the 2022 All-Star Game MVP, who began going by his given first name after reaching the big leagues. “I remember reading about, and him telling me that he could have played D1 basketball or D1 football. He looked more like a D1 football player than he’s ever looked like a baseball player.”

It goes without saying that the Brobdingnagian superstar is a stupendously good baseball player. According to Mense, who doubles as Toronto’s minor-league hitting coordinator, Stanton’s work ethic was off the charts. Wanting to improve defensively, the 6-foot-6, 245-pound outfielder would often “drag a coach out to the field” and have him hit balls in his dirction before batting practice.

Not surprisingly, Stanton also went the extra mile as a hitter. Read the rest of this entry »