2023 Trade Value Series Chat

Ben Clemens: Good morning. Let’s get started.

171: Wow, Ben waking up to do a chat at 7 am local time. The dedication! Love this guy!

Ben Clemens: I’m leaving for a brief vacation today so I actually insisted on it

Jacob: Kinda a trade value q, do you think buxton will ever figure it out again or is he cooked

Ben Clemens: Man, I happened to catch a lot of his at-bats in this week’s Twins/Mariners series, and he’s clearly compromised right now

Ben Clemens: I think they need to try to get him healthy, he could play a long time like this and not figure it out

Guest: I’m sure a few people have asked about Jackson Holliday, so let me ask about Jacskon Chourio instead.  Why not HM for him?

Ben Clemens: For guys like that, prospects who aren’t gonna be on the top 50 (we agreed to just one prospect on there, to be like ‘yeah okay prospects are neat but not really what makes this series interesting’), I just ask Eric who I should throw on there, more or less

Ben Clemens: I think I wrote Chourio down initially and then we agreed he’s far enough away that it’s not really gonna matter if we just wait and put him on next year

Ben Clemens: It’s definitely not an exact science

Pat: To me, the biggest “surprise” name listed anywhere on the list (including Honorable Mentions) is Reese Olson. Can you expound on him a little bit. He’s only had a handful of starts, was only a borderline top 100 prospect, etc

Ben Clemens: Pitch data looks good, results look good, it’s basically as simple as that

wADHD+: Interested to hear your thoughts on Tatis’ ranking. The article said that Tatis was neck and neck with Acuna in projections for the next five years, so wouldn’t that make him a top 3 candidate? Or is that huge contract the set-back?

Ben Clemens: It’s funny, because a lot of people think he’s way too high

Ben Clemens: I think it’s not the contract, so much as the risk of the player combined with the risk of the contract

Ben Clemens: if Acuna had Tatis’s deal I feel like I might move him higher

Ben Clemens: but Tatis carries more risk of ruin, as it were

Twins fan: What trade value does Sonny Gray or Kenta Maeda have?

Ben Clemens: Oh, plenty, Gray would be one of the best rental pitchers on the market for one

Carson K: With how many young defense over offense shortstops made the list was there any thought given to lowering the value given to defensive shortstops that are at best average on offense. Especially while leaving elite defensive catchers who have shown the ability to hit at all star levels(William Contreras and Jonah Heim) off the list

Ben Clemens: Yeah, although I question just calling Contreras’s defense elite and leaving at that, he’s had a massive one year improvement but he was really bad last year, let’s let 2024 happen there

Ben Clemens: But generally speaking I’m trying to learn from my mistakes with this

Ben Clemens: Amusingly the person I moved up the most after my initial version went out for feedback was Zach Neto, who’s the archetype I tend to value highly, for whatever that’s worth

joe: What’s the hang-up with Riley Greene: BABIP merchant who strikes out too much? (I sort of agree, though these have always been true of him, and I thought he might get the pedigree benefit of the doubt.)

Ben Clemens: Honestly if I got to keep making changes for another week, or another few days, maybe he ends up on there. One of my biggest frustrations with the structure of this exercise is that I don’t think it really conveys the tiering of everything

Ben Clemens: Like someone could show me a different, say, 41-60

Ben Clemens: and I’d be like oh yeah okay sure

Ben Clemens: The further from the true outlier plaeyrs/contracts we get, the more things are bunched together

Ben Clemens: I”m not gonna start writing 70 blurbs and calling every slot 41-70 or anything like that

Ben Clemens: Because people love lists!

Ben Clemens: But that’s closer to how it looks in my head

Nelson: The projections still don’t love him, but given how minuscule his contract is, did Orlando Arcia get any consideration? If he puts up 3 WAR a season on that contract, surely that’s pretty valuable.

Ben Clemens: He did not, but no one would argue that he’s pretty valuable right now

Ben Clemens: I think people are rightly concerned about the projections, but I think that he’s better than those give him credit for for sure

Ben Clemens: He’s not really the same player as he was in Milwaukee

Bert: When talking with people for the list, what was the general feeling on Tatis? Super concerned? Young guy that made a mistake?

Ben Clemens: Yes to both?

Johnny5Alive: a couple mets on last year’s list and all fell off this year… is it because of this year?

Ben Clemens: I’m just looking through to see who really quickly. Pete only it looks like

Ben Clemens: I mean, he’s having a down year and running out of time before free agency

Ben Clemens: and Alvarez wasn’t around

GBS42: Ben, I just wanted to thank you and everyone involved in the creation of this series.  Excellent work!!!

Ben Clemens: Thanks very much

Guest?: Who would you rather extend, Rutschman or Gunnar? Even though Adley is projected to provide more value before free agency,ight he provide less afterwards?

Ben Clemens: I think I’d rather extend Adley, I think they’re pretty close on the merits (depending on the deals, of course) so my tiebreaker is that I’d rather give the player who came up first and kinda feels like the leader of his cohort a deal

RTJ: How many Honorable Mention players would you have to stack together to put together a compelling trade for Acuna? Is “Boatload” the correct number?

Ben Clemens: Hmmmmmm, I don’t think you could do it

Ben Clemens: I think there’s just no answer

Ben Clemens: Why would the Braves take 20 players they can’t roster?

Ben Clemens: They already have like six players better than anyone in that group

Justice: First off, how dare you personally insult me by proxy of how you ranked my favorite team’s player’s trade value

Ben Clemens: I had to tweak the model a little but I just dislike them that much

Justice: Second off, which player just drafted shows up first on your trade value chart next year?

Ben Clemens: Oh man, I guess the most likely outcome is Skenes just because he’s the most advanced, but I’m gonna bet none

Will: Would you consider the framework of a Pfaadt, Perdomo, and prospects not named Lawler or Jones for Ohtani a fair deal?

Ben Clemens: If you’re an Effectively Wild listener, today should be a treat given this question

Ben Clemens: That aside, ‘fairness’ isn’t really the word I’d use. I don’t think Perdomo would interest the Angels since I would not be interested in moving Neto off of shortstop, so I think it’s probably not to their taste

emh1969: Was the lack of love for Steven Kwan because teams don’t value his type (speed, OBP, and defense) even if WAR shows he’s an above average player?

Ben Clemens: I probably should have thrown him on the honorable mentions list

Ben Clemens: At some point though, the whole exercise becomes kinda silly, like there are a lot of pretty good players, no one I talked to was like ‘how dare you leave Kwan off the top 50’ for whatever that’s worth

Bert: Joe Musgrove and Luis Castillo seem broadly similar in terms of recent performance and contracts, yet Castillo ranks and Musgrove doesn’t. They’re also within 3 career WAR. I think it’s obvious that Castillo has been better and has more margin for error, ZIPs likes him more too, but was there any thought of ranking Musgrove?

Ben Clemens: Honestly, another guy who should’ve been an honorable mention probably, I agree that Castillo is better but it’s not a terrible comp, Musgrove is like Castillo-

shortstop: How do you reconcile the fact that teams are often biased towards overvaluing their players? In other words, how do you explain cases in which BOTH teams would turn down a hypothetical 1:1 trade idea?

Ben Clemens: It seems fine to me

Ben Clemens: This is barely a ‘trade value’ list despite the name because these guys rarely get traded

Ben Clemens: I think of the top 10 or 20 as a ‘who would I want on my team if I were a GM’ list

Ben Clemens: that’s more helpful in my head

Moose: Any thought on Lamonte Wade Jr or Thairo Estrada being HMs?

Ben Clemens: Thairo, yeah, I suppose I could see that, him currently being injured and the time it takes to recover from hand issues definitely cooled me on him.

Ben Clemens: Wade, nah, I like him but he’s 29 and 2022 wasn’t great. His plate discipline is on another level this year no doubt, but I think you have to bet on that continuing to avoid the whole first base dead zone thing, and he doesn’t have the most years of control remaining either

Ben Clemens: Wade is a great guy to have on your team though

Ben Clemens: I’m a semi Giants fan I’d say, or like I root for them when I go to their games, and I’m always very happy when he’s batting

Sneed: Who is ranked highest on the top 50 that you reasonably think will be moving before the trade deadline?

Ben Clemens: Ohtani

Todd: Can you recall a one year strikeout rate improvement like Acuna’s? He just cut it in half seemingly without affecting power output or walk rate.

Ben Clemens: I feel like I had one on the tip of my tongue

Ben Clemens: Gimme like 30 seconds

Ben Clemens: Bellinger when he went off

Ben Clemens: That’s the one that was right there

Ben Clemens: it’s pretty rare though

Mike Elias: It’s a bit of a crazy question I know…. but do you think Mike Elias would trade Adley or Gunnar for Corbin Carroll? I would say no.

Ben Clemens: No, but I don’t think Mike Hazen would trade Carroll for either of them either

Travis: Statistically in their careers, Michael Harris and J-Rod are extremely comparable, while Harris is also a better defender. Harris has a significantly more team friendly contract, albeit on less years. What makes Harris 15 and J-Rod 3? Is it just the physical tools?

Ben Clemens: Yeah more or less, and I think that the batted ball data bears out Julio’s tool grades power wise, which gives me more comfort there

FlockO: Was there any consideration for Grayson making the list? rough start to his career but imagine a lot of teams are still extremely high on him

Ben Clemens: I”m sure they are, and not really no

Ben Clemens: There’s a lot of room to have value in trade and not be one of the top 50 trade values in baseball

Ben Clemens: Particularly when the top 35 or so are guys who are just great and never getting dealt

Ben Clemens: There are like 15 slots for mid-tier dudes and if you think my process for which mid-tier dudes I rank is anything other than educated guessing, sad news

Ben Clemens: I think I’m decent at guessing no doubt, but I also like to represent some of a few different types of player, and I’m sure you could rearrange big chunks of the list however you like and I’d struggle to argue with you

ScottW: Ben, thank you for your work on the list this year.  Question on relievers: is there some baseline performance that one would need to make it into even the HM category?  Someone like Bautista (18 K/9 !)or Alexis Diaz with 4+ years of control seems like they would fetch a pretty penny, no?

Ben Clemens: So, maybe some GM’s would disagree, but I’ll tell you why I didn’t put any relievers on the list

Ben Clemens: I don’t really care as much about team control for them

Ben Clemens: Their half-life as effective players is just lower. Look at the best relievers from five years ago, and it’s less consistent with the best hitters and starters for them

Ben Clemens: There’s kinda effectiveness decay

Ben Clemens: So being around for longer doesn’t move the needle for me as much

J: I do really enjoy this exercise, but given that it’s a “trade value” series just before the deadline, why not do the top 50 players by trade value who could realistically be dealt? It doesn’t tell me much for this trade deadline when the vast majority of these players are available. Feels like this makes more sense in the off-season.

Ben Clemens: Blame the historical time we’ve done this and the fact that more eyes are on baseball in-season

Ben Clemens: This is one of the big-ticket series we do every year (free agent rankings, top 100 prospects, and this in some order I think) so putting it at a time when people are thinking about baseball is good

Ben Clemens: I do always think it’s funny that it’s called trade value and no one is trading for Acuna, though

RTJ: When making this list, which player ended up surprising you the most in terms of where they ended up? Either a player that ended up higher than you would have assumed or the opposite

Ben Clemens: I left Vlad off the top 50 on my first cut

Ben Clemens: I”m not sure if that answers your question exactly

Bert: I’m a little surprised Gore didn’t sneak onto the backend of the list. Are you concerned about his ability to stay consistent?

Ben Clemens: Hey, his two seasons look extremely consistent!

Ben Clemens: 4.50 ERA in ’22, 4.59 in ’23

Ben Clemens: Uh, no, I think he’s a solid pitcher and I’m sure the Nats have big plans for him but he did not come close

Guest: If Ezequiel Duran and Leody Taveras keep hitting like they have been all year do they move into the top 50 next year? Duran played some really good SS earlier this year during Seagers injury, but has now been relegated to DH which seems to have effected his hitting. Taveras seems to have finally put it all together, and has improved across the board and finally showing he has some power.

Ben Clemens: yeah, if Duran keeps up this pace for another year he’ll look liek a totally different player. I don’t particularly think he will, it kinda feels like a hot streak to me, but performing really well is a godo way to raise your stock

Ben Clemens: I’m very interested in Taveras, I always thought his underlying perfomrnace suggested there was more in his bat and I love his defense

Theo be Praised: What is the closest to release of the Top Trade Value series that someone on their was actually traded?  And did the return match the value?  Maybe, Soto last year?

Ben Clemens: Yeah Soto last year, and I’d say his return suggested I pushed him a bit too high but not by much

Ben Clemens: The Padres basically blew up a good farm system to get him, a bunch of top prospects including some ready right away guys, biggest trade in recent memory

Ben Clemens: But I think that’s more of a 10-20 kind of return, like if someone offered that to the O’s for Gunnar they’d say no

Ben Clemens: Suggests that the process is right but that there’s fine-tuning to do on the merits

Ben Clemens: or sorry, on the exact inputs

PJR: Alvarez’s projections sure look a lot more like those inside the top 10 than those in the 20s. You cite the positional risk, but is the state of catcher defensive metrics not more trustworthy than infielders? And is the positional risk really larger than the risk of simply “being a pitcher”

Ben Clemens: If this were a projections-only thing, it’d be a lot less interesting. His projections are great, when I fed ZiPS into my spreadsheet and came up with a rough list he was higher. I think the risk that he’s an average or below average catcher in the long run is more real than ZiPS suggests, and its positional values are pretty binary and weird at time

Ben Clemens: at times

Ben Clemens: Like it had Buxton much higher, but if he’s a DH it’s totally different

ScottW: Gunnar v. Elly: Does potential for Gunnar’s draft pick comp for top 2 ROY voting come into play?

Ben Clemens: Eh, small potatoes but sure

J: I’m surprised Nico Hoerner did not get any consideration. He is very cheap for the next 3 years and while the ceiling is low, the floor is a solidly above average 2nd baseman who can play an above average short too.

Ben Clemens: Had someone external mention him, again, if there were more HM slots

GY: Andres Gimenez coming off 6 win season and elite defense gives him high floor…Under contract for a very reasonable amount and already turned it around offensively after slow start this year.

Ben Clemens: Mmmmm, I think I need a little more

Ben Clemens: If he’s closer to who he is this year, the deal is not that much of a bargain

Ben Clemens: like if he’s a 3-3.5 WAR player, nice

Ben Clemens: but he’s making a lot of money to do that and for a while

Ben Clemens: for people who aren’t GREAT

Ben Clemens: the money matters more

Ben Clemens: imo

Ben Clemens: just b/c the extra wins that great players are great by outstrip their extra salary

Theo be Praised: Fangraphs used to do a Negative Trade Value series, basically a review of the worst contracts in baseball.  Can we bring that back?

Ben Clemens: Nah, I just don’t see the point

section 34: How many players on the list would their teams trade straight up for Jackson Holliday?

Ben Clemens: I’ll give just a general answer to Jackson Holliday questeions, which is that this list has never been about not-yet-debuted players with the rare exception of Wander when he was just in the minors obliterating things. I threw a prospect name on there to point out that hey top prospects are obviously trade chips too but I don’t want to spend this list of major league players writing about minor leaguers

Ben Clemens: You can swap Holliday for Wood if you want and I wouldn’t really care

Ben Clemens: but there’s a reason there was exatly one, at 50, and that I wrote that it was a marker for the fact that top prospects are good and also not very interesting to read about in something like this

Lacking Creativity: Correct me if I am wrong, but I do not think I saw Aaron Judge’s name listed anywhere (including in the honorable mention section). Not that I necessarily disagree at all, but I am curious to hear your thought process with that one. I figured he could have possibly graced the “Great Players With Big Contracts” portion.

Ben Clemens: Just injury risk basically

Ben Clemens: like, his deal is obviously not a huge bargain

Ben Clemens: or someone would have offered him a lot more money

Ben Clemens: Not that that excludes him, players can out-earn big deals

Ben Clemens: but between how recently it was signed and the injury risk, eh, I didn’t feel like I needed to throw him on there

Ben Clemens: my chatting is gonna slow down while I get ready to head to the airport, but i’ll keep up a reasonable clip

Atlynkhtr: can you provide any context for the Braves having 5 top 15 values (six of the top 31), I mean other than yeah it’s really good to be the Braves?

Ben Clemens: The Braves’ strategy of offering good young players a ton of money early in their career is great

Ben Clemens: Also, their ability to draft and develop great young players, and give them the opportunity in the majors if they deserve it, is the best in baseball

Theo be Praised: Explain Justin Steele.  Why can’t anyone square up his fastball?

Ben Clemens: I truly cannot, and I feel like that gives me more pause than it should

Ben Clemens: Cutter-primary guys who can command it often end up great. But the road to effectiveness seems narrow for whatever reason

Guest: Not to double up on Yankees omitted from the list, but Gerrit Cole also not being mentioned anywhere in the list despite being in the middle of another top 3 CY year.

Ben Clemens: Yeah he’s great. Honestly these chats make me want to not have an HM section because there are plenty of good players and coming up with an exact ranking and deciding where to cut it off sounds exhausting

Ben Clemens: One thing that I think is under appreciated is that there are just so many baseball players

chone: This isnt meant as a dig but do you find something… rote about it at this point? Oh here’s a list of the players who are cost controlled do to MLB”s dumb salary structure. News at 11

Ben Clemens: Oh 100%

Ben Clemens: I try to bring a slightly different perspective to it, like I treat it as who I’d be trying to acquire if I were a gm, but yeah, shocker, it’s the great 22 year olds

Ben Clemens: I do think the blurbs on Elly and Tatis reflect my viewpoint on this well

Ben Clemens: Ellys median projection is lower than the players around him but I think he has right-way volatility

Ben Clemens: I’m trying to move away from ‘here’s an unbiased and perfectly accurate list of what gms like’ and more towards it being my preference

Ben Clemens: But I understand that’s a nuanced difference

Johnny5Alive: Given your position for murphy on your list and what he was actually traded for… what are the A’s doing?

Ben Clemens: I hate to say it, but I was already asking that before the Murphy trade

Ben Clemens: It’s particularly baffling how little they wanted Contreras

Guest: It would be interesting to see how the list has changed over the years (positions, hitters vs pitchers, contract value, etc.) Any thoughts on a recap article like that?

Ben Clemens: Um… Honestly maybe in the offseason but for now I don’t want to think about valuing players ever again

Ben Clemens: I have dreams about whether I should swap Logan Webb and Sandy Alcantara

Ben Clemens: It’s probably not healthy

Alan: Thanks much for the list! No real question, but man, what a bummer to see so many former Cardinals that STL basically traded away for peanuts, all listed higher than any current Cardinal.

Ben Clemens: Concur

Ben Clemens: I’ve been an Arozarena fan for forever bc he was the trendy underrated prospect when I started farm watching

Ben Clemens: And I’m always happy to see him succeed at the same time that I’m annoyed it’s not with birds on his jersey

Tacoby Bellsbury: When you finally filed the final capsules, what did you do to celebrate?

Ben Clemens: Recorded a bunch of audio blurbs for today’s EW episode

Ben Clemens: (and then went out to a really nice dinner)

Ben Clemens: Upscale ish pan southeast Asian. Good Good Culture Club for any bay area people here

Pinstripe Perry: In the series, you mentioned that scouts and models are still in on Volpe. Can you expand a bit on any of those conversations you may have had that led to his ranking? Maybe I’m too caught up in the day to day of watching him, but I was pleasantly surprised that he was even on the list. Feels like he’s been overmatched and is more of a 2B than SS long term.

Ben Clemens: Well the model part, I’ll just point to zips

Ben Clemens: Scout wise, people think hell stick at short and love his ability to adapt at the plate, and they think his contact deserves a better outcome than it’s gotten

Ben Clemens: I’m sure the similar trajectories between last year and this year unconsciously bias them upwards too

Wrights Back: Which leads me to a question:  your “Trade Value” series (as far as I can tell) assumes an ‘(excess) value for money.  Hence all those absurdly talented Braves in the top 10.  
If money is not a factor, how does one begin to approach assessing strategy for the trade deadline?   Without an ‘arbitrage free’ framework, how does one assess good vs bad trades?  

EG, Steve Cohen has demonstrated he will not let money get in the way of achieving his objectives – whatever they may be this year.

Ben Clemens: I lost the beginning of this one but great question

Ben Clemens: I think that player value is non fungible, which makes things trickier.

Ben Clemens: But I started by creating a formula that weights ‘surplus value’ adjusted to make wins more valuable as you get above average, total controllable wins, and peak projected wins

Ben Clemens: Basically the things that make teams want to trade for someone

Ben Clemens: You can’t be a great value without all three in concert, naturally

Ben Clemens: The weights are hardly set in stone, I tinker with those every year, but I would say there’s not quite an arb free framework to be had here

Adam: Thoughts on Bailey Ober and Edouard Julien jumping on this list a year from now ???

Ben Clemens: I’ll say that I’m skeptical of Ober. Also maybe it’s because of the twins ms series but Julien (Eddie Julian to the M’s announcers) looks like a beast to me

Ben Clemens: I am definitely biased in favor of his skillset

Sven: Was Detmers given any consideration as an HM? Seems comparable to some of the arms in the 31-50 range

Ben Clemens: I think he’d fit in the range with some of the younger buzzier guys, I’m kinda worried about lack of volume with him given that the rate isn’t crazy, but maybe he’s the Lars Nootbaar of pitchers

Ben Clemens: Nice cheap solid rate statistics, less volume than you’d hope, probably not a huge ceiling

Ricky Hart: How worried should Yankees & Red Sox fans be with the teams struggling this year and getting one (1) player between them on the list?

Ben Clemens: I think they should be worried about the struggling and not care too much about what one writer said about them on the internet. Now, worried about the process that isn’t developing as many stars as hoped? Sure

Ben Clemens: But I do think there’s a reasonable chance Duran and Bello are on here next year

Bert: If Tatis stays healthy and gets back to a 150 WRC+ guy with his defense, does he climb back to top 5?

Ben Clemens: Into my personal top 5? Yes

Ben Clemens: It’s all theoretical, he’s never getting traded

Ben Clemens: But if you think of it as a start a franchise draft, how would I order my board? Absolutely

Ben Clemens: Alright I’ve answered most of the questions here, and big reveal, I’m in an uber most of the way to the airport now, so I’ll hit one or two last ones and then I have to go

RTJ: over under 1.5 players in the top 50 get traded before this year’s deadline?

Ben Clemens: I’ll go under, because I think it’s close if Ohtani gets moved and a clear under if he doesnt

Ben Clemens: So just playing the percentages

Bert: If Kim had more than 1.5 years of control, say 4, whereabouts would he potentially rank?

Ben Clemens: Yeah, higher! Offensive breakout looks pretty real to me

Insert Witty Name Here: A ten am chat? I got work to do Ben!

Ben Clemens: Get back to it!

RTJ: Of the players in the top 50 series – which 3 would you choose to play a standard Friday Night board game with

Ben Clemens: Strider, Soto, Adley

Ben Clemens: Wow that was easier than I thought

Ben Clemens: Alright, have a great day everyone. Until next year… And also, until next week, I’m back on Thursday