2019 Trade Value: #11 to #20

As is the annual tradition at FanGraphs, we’re using a week around the All-Star Game — when the industry pauses to take a metaphorical breather — to take stock of the top-50 trade chips in the sport. For more context on exactly what we’re trying to do here, see the Honorable Mentions post linked at the top of the page.

For this post and the four to follow, I’ll present a graphic (by way of the wizard Sean Dolinar) breaking down each player’s objective skill level (represented, in this case, by a five-year WAR projection from ZiPS), contract/team-control details, rank in last year’s series, and then year-by-year details of age, WAR, and contract through the end of 2023, although a couple players have control beyond those five years, and some, you’ll notice, show projections for fewer years to reflect when those players reach free agency. For those readers who are partial to spreadsheets rather than blocks of text, I’ll also include all of the players we’ve ranked so far in grid format at the bottom of the post.

It should be noted that the ZiPS WAR forecasts influenced the rankings a bit. For players who were bunched together, it acted as an impartial tiebreaker of sorts, but the industry opinions I solicited drove the rankings.

With that said, let’s get to the next 10 spots on this year’s Trade Value list.

Snell signed an extension this winter that locks him up through his age-30 season, which would’ve been his first year of free agency. He really belongs as the last guy in the previous article, so you can see him on the tier with fellow possible/current aces German Marquez, Shane Bieber, Jacob deGrom, Jose Berrios, Chris Paddack, Aaron Nola and (given the late revelations I’ve since added to his blurb about the details of his contract) Max Scherzer. All of these guys rank from 20th to the low-30s, and could be put in almost any order. Most sources I spoke with moved them as a group and generally kept the same names at the top/bottom as I have, shuffling the order in the middle a bit. Once you take Scherzer off the table as the best pitcher in baseball, ZiPS essentially has Snell, Jacob deGrom, Marquez, Bieber, and Nola tied for second among those pitchers over the 2020-2024 term. Snell is the only lefty in the group, he’s on pace for his fourth straight year of 31 regular season starts, his velo has been stable year-to-year at an average of 95.7 mph, his 3.12 FIP over his last 58 starts is a sustained run of elite performance, and his extension is for reasonable money, for exactly as long as I’d be predicting No. 2 or 3 starter performance from him.

Bogaerts was lower in earlier iterations of this list because I just assumed that a bunch of guaranteed money, even at a reasonable rate, would move him to the back half of the top 50. He slowly worked his way up as I got advice from industry folks, and I realized his contract is still an asset. He’s making $12 million this year in his final year of arbitration, then $20 million per year from 2020-2025 with a 2026 vesting option for $20 million if he reaches 535 plate appearances in 2025. And, because Bogaerts’ agent is Scott Boras and this was an extension (i.e. a rare concession to the team), Bogaerts got an opt out after 2022.

Bogaerts would be choosing between hitting the open market for his age-30 season (coming off of a five-year run with WAR of 4.9, 6.6, 4.5, 4.2, and 3.7) or sticking with the three years and $60 million remaining on his deal, with a vesting option if he can play what amounts to 125 of 162 games in 2025. He could probably beat that contract by a bit, but the market is hard to peg when we’re in it, so we’ll call the opt-out a 50/50 at this point. Interestingly, UZR has Bogaerts as essentially average defensively for his career, at a pretty steady rate since 2013, while DRS has him between -10 and -19 runs annually from 2016-2019. If Bogaerts has to move off of shortstop, it could make a contract in his 30s a little trickier, so having $120 million guaranteed is nice security given the 24 WAR he’s going to put up in his first six seasons. All of that to say, Bogaerts is really valuable for the next 3.5 years or so. It’s a bit of an open question what his value will be after that, but the salary won’t be high enough to make this contract a problem.

Moncada was another tough placement because his first 900 PA or so were just okay, but he was so hyped and has such good tools and we’ve sadly been conditioned to expect every elite prospect to ball out from day one. He didn’t even make the Honorable Mentions last year because even a .344 BABIP and bonkers tools couldn’t get him to a league average offensive performance, so it seemed like a wait-and-see-and-maybe-lower-your-expectations-a-bit sort of situation. This year, Moncada looks different, in a way similar to the change we’ve seen in Joey Gallo: he got a little better at everything. Suddenly he’s 24 years old and performing, and making me feel silly and reactionary for ever questioning that smile.

Moncada’s StatCast figures show that while his strikeouts are down, his exit velo and rate of barrels are way up, which puts his expected batting average (.283) and slugging (.512) right about where we would’ve pegged them to be when we had him as baseball’s top prospect. ZiPS incorporates StatCast data for the BABIP projection (Dan reports the StatCast data gives Moncada eight extra points of projected BABIP), but it may be a little slower to recognize the power spike (which StatCast’s quicker-stabilizing data thinks is real). This whole package likely costs under $40 million for 4.5 years of a tools monster with prospect pedigree who’s about to post a not-that-lucky 4.7 WAR season at age 24. There’s still some uncertainty here, but I feel a little better about this than the back end of the Bogaerts deal.

Speaking of one-year breakouts changing a guy’s trade value, it was tough to separate Moncada and Marte given all the similarities. Marte is a year and a half older and has a background in the infield, but is having his breakout season playing both second base and center field for Arizona. Given his elite athleticism, it’s not surprising that defensive metrics show him as plus in center field (in a small sample) and average at second base. This year’s performance looks to be a little on the lucky side, and a few sources questioned how real the power spike was. StatCast expected outcomes have his wRC+ closer to 120 this year, rather than the 135 he’s currently sitting at. I think ZiPS has this one about right: a peak between 3 and 4 WAR in true talent. The salary and WAR are pretty similar to Moncada, but Marte has an extra year of control by virtue of an extension he signed before the 2018 season, so he gets the slight edge here. But this is one matchup where I may flip the winner every other day.

So I’m sure you’re aware that Ohtani is really good and exciting, and both hits and pitches and next year he’s gonna pitch again. He’s a really good pitcher, which is what we expected and look forward to seeing again. I’d like to see more than 10 starts before I say he would’ve made the top 50 just as a pitcher, but I think he would’ve. The surprising part is the bat — we thought he’d be a solid, useful hitter, but with big power and contact issues. After 607 plate appearances, Ohtani has posted 4.1 WAR and that’s while not playing the field at all; we have good reason to believe he’d be around average in right field with an 80 arm. By rate stats, Ohtani has been the second-best DH in baseball and has been better thanGiancarlo Stanton over 2018 and 2019, and Stanton got a $325 million contract for doing just that. And he doesn’t pitch at all.

Even if we assume some regression and a conservative usage case (20 starts and 400 plate appearances), Ohtani’s still a 4 WAR player. ZiPS is undershooting that figure because of the gaps in his pitching and hitting record, which make playing time is tough to project. He’ll be going into his traditional prime years next year and while we’ve seen the downside in terms of injuries, the upside is still a 10-win season where he’s a durable ace (5-6 WAR) and a top-three DH (4-5 WAR). You could easily argue he should be ranked higher within this list, but there are enough unknowns — and concern that trying to contribute both ways will impact his durability/performance — that we’ll be conservative. Ohtani has a better chance than most guys in the teens to be in the top five on this list next year, as a hot 15 starts in 2020 and more uninterrupted hitting performance could led to his ZiPS projections jumping close to 5 WAR per year.

Judge, 27, has seen some fairly minor injuries stack up (wrist, oblique) and affect his playing time. Meanwhile, execs have always wondered how he would age given his frame. This could be confirmation bias given that there is such a small sample of MVP-level giants to compare Judge to, but his teammate Giancarlo Stanton, noted for not being a pitcher, is 29 with what appears to be a better-aging physique, and is now in his third season of a meaningful injury eating into his playing time. Judge is in his prime and still has 8 WAR upside, but ZiPS’ expectation of 4 to 5 WAR in what should be some very pricey arbitration years seems about right. I’ll set the over/under for the tab on Judge’s three arb years at $49 million.

Devers is another young player enjoying a breakout season that was predicted when he was an amateur but took a little bit of time to materialize, even though he’s somehow still just 22. These things happen when every scout who sees you at age 15 thinks you’re the best hitter they’ve seen in years, making not being an All-Star in the next six years seems like a letdown. He leads all of baseball by a good margin in hard-hit balls, his strikeouts are down, his power is up, and his defensive metrics have even improved a bit. He’s been a bit hit-lucky this year, so I have him in the 3-4 WAR true talent range right now, but he’s also 22 and could still take another step forward. Devers also has another year at the league minimum, so his could be another precedent-setting trip through arbitration if he opts to pass on an extension.

After barely missing any games for three seasons, Lindor missed the beginning of this season with leg injuries, but he has picked up where he left off performance-wise. A popular topic of discussion with Indians fans following our All-Star Weekend event in Cleveland was whether the team could re-sign Lindor. Signs point both to Lindor wanting to hit the open market after 2021 and the Indians not having the money or inclination to pay him, but Lindor’s agent also negotiated the Ozzie Albies deal and has been Craig Kimbrel’s agent, so it’s pretty hard to triangulate that signal. There aren’t a lot of guys projected by the mid-season ZiPS update to post 6.5 WAR seasons in 2020 and 2021 (*whispers* it’s only Mike Trout), so getting 2.5 years of a now-healthy second-best player in baseball for what I’ll guess is $39 million in his final two years of arbitration is pretty, pretty good.

Devers was thought of as a slam dunk guy in his July 2nd class. Some other playters in that humble 2013 J2 class include Victor Robles, Eloy Jimenez, Ozzie Albies, and Gleyber Torres. I saw four of those five at an MLB showcase the winter before they signed, and Torres stood out to me as the best talent (Devers was the best hitter) because he could play shortstop, and while he didn’t have the flashy tools you look for at these events, he did everything well and slowed the game down in all phases. If you look in the top right of his Baseball Savant page, you’ll see that his tools as measured by StatCast are all about average, though our tools grades on him are a little stronger than that. Torres is still just 22, and his defense and feel for the game bring a lot to the table where his raw tools aren’t plus like you’d prefer to see. He’ll likely be grouped with Devers for awhile, and you could still flip those guys, but Torres can play the middle infield and has an extra year of control, so he gets the nod.

Putting Buehler at No. 40 last year got some pushback from readers, but industry folks were pretty sure that even as a slight-framed righty with a TJ, they were looking at a potential ace who was about to prove it, and do so in the way it needs to be done in today’s game. In the 32 regular season starts since last year’s list, Buehler has thrown 195 innings with a 3.22 FIP, didn’t miss a single time through the rotation, and mixed in four sterling playoff starts with even better stats. The same risk factors apply as they did last summer (pitcher, TJ, slight frame, throws hard) but the superlative last 12 months, along with the postseason multiplicative ace properties, means that Buehler has to go to the front of the list ahead of these hitters, who each have one or two issues you could nitpick over. Spoiler alert: Buehler is the highest-ranked pitcher on this year’s list.

Source: Fangraphs.com

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