JotCast | 2025 Trade Value Series Chat

2025 Trade Value Series Chat

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Sam

10:47

Since you've had your nose in them, what's your favorite wacky contract? Is it Merrill's, like you mention?

Ben Clemens

10:47

Merrill's is pretty good, yeah. I love Julio's. Raleigh's has a vesting option that's kind of fun

it vests with 4 100 G seasons at catcher

10:48

but if it does vest, I kind of think he'd wish it wouldn't?

$20 million for 2031. If he's hit 100G in 4 of the 6 seasons, I think that's probably slightly negative EV for him

Oaktown Blues

10:48

Feels like every year there's a bubble guy who goes nuclear right as you're constructing the list, and Kurtz was that guy this year

Ben Clemens

10:49

Yeah, totally. I kept shading him up as I would redo the list b/c I'd be like 'man I saw Nick Kurtz hit two doubles tonight, let's round up'

10:50

Truth be told, leaving Wilson off the list was tempting, and I actually spent more time talking about Wilson than most of the guys in the 31-50 range

I got some feedback to the general tune of "god, could you imagine how mad the batting average crowd would get if you left Wilson off?'

it's true! also I mean, ZiPS loves him

one thing that I need to figure out every year is how to devalue some of the position/defense/floor guys

10:51

there are always a few

one thing I'm fairly certain I did this year, as I look back, was anchor a little bit too much to the 2024 ZiPS for Westburg

like, I had to discount Westburg a lot from his ZiPS in 2024 just to get him to 29th or wherever I had him. 27th? model loved him, surplus value types I talked to did too

so he was carrying this big discount weight in my actual rankings relative to the raw projections

10:52

then this year, his projections are way down, but I don't apply the discount weighting. why? I guess most likely b/c my head anchored too much on the 2024 ZiPS

to be clear I really like Westburg, but there's no reason to have specifically him in the top 50 aside from the tier-anchoring (which I talked about earlier) and my own 2024 anchoring

I do think he's a really good and underrated player though

Guest

10:53

I think it being *your* ranking is part of what makes it fun. I imagine every individual who works in/analyzes baseball has types of players they like more or less than consensus, and it's interesting to hear your personal thought processes. A more "objective" version even if possible would be less appealing to me.

Ben Clemens

10:53

I mean, everyone wants different things

But thank you!

10:54

I'd basically say that I want to be right more than anything else, and so I think that makes me a good person to try to do these rankings. But yeah, they're definitely my opinion, and while I'm trying to make that opinion better every year, I'm surely quite fallible

boy, look at where I've ranked Michael Harris before

Ke'Bryan Hayes too

Jeff

10:54

Any feedback you’ve gotten after publishing that has you really second guessing yourself?

Ben Clemens

10:54

Yeah, my wife said "why do you write so much in one week? you look tired"

Um, no, I'll sit down and do more evaluating later

10:55

it's pretty hard to do a robust read-through of feedback while you're also writing

i do a little self-evaluation but I won't get down to really crunching on how to improve until probably the offseason when I'm bored

you commenters are just too good. there are like 200 comments every day

and most of my feedback from my industry contacts comes before the list comes out, so that was already incorporated

Guest

10:56

Aren’t there only about three or four teams that would be willing to take on that Ohtani deal? And doesn’t that hurt his trade value? I think basically 80% of the league would happily acquire Judge on his contract, the bidding would be super competitive, while Ohtani might be in an A-Rod situation where there just aren’t enough teams who want to commit that much $$$ to one guy

Ben Clemens

10:56

Oh yeah. Definitely could be. I've decided, philosophically, to only treat that kind of analysis as a deal-breaker if it's going to result in less than, say, 3 bidders

10:57

for generally Vickrey Auction kind of logic, that winning prices are often the second-highest-bidder's valuation

i don't exactly know how trades work, but I assume there's enough leaking and semi-comparing of offers that it roughly approximates Vickrey

in other words, if 15 teams value Ohtani at 1 dollar, 1 values him at 15, and one values him at 30, and he has to get traded, he'll probably fetch 15

10:58

on the other hand, if 10 teams valued him at 10 dollars, 4 at 12, 2 at 15, and 1 at 30.... he'd probably fetch 15-ish

Oddball Herrera

10:58

Have we ever had a guy on the trade values list actually get traded that deadline?

Ben Clemens

10:58

Juan Soto

he got traded the year he was #6 on trade value

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