JotCast | Top 50 Trade Value Chat

Top 50 Trade Value Chat

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Ben Clemens

12:57

and I kind of buy it, my shortcut for that is basically the prospect pedigree and some subjective grade of athleticism

jrf29

12:57

In general, how close are your sources to each other and how do you balance them / decide which ones to lean into when there are large differences in opinion?

Ben Clemens

12:58

I have a mixture of people I'm friendly with and have talked to for years, plus one offs or people I ran into in the last year and want to talk with, and I generally try to get a good mixture of team profiles and what drives them

like, two of the people who I've gotten feedback from for many years in a row tend to have mostly opposite views

that's kinda fun

12:59

I think that I struggled with this more when I started doing the list, when I felt that my job was to reflect the baseball industry's trade value rankings as perfectly as possible

1:00

I'm more comfortable now saying these are MY rankings, and that I tried to keep them in touch with reality based on chatting with some peopel I know on teams. And that lets me take their advice under advisement better and listen to arguments/be persuaded a little bit more by what I think is better rather than what I think is most commonly thought

Mr. Redlegs

1:00

Great list! Seemed somewhat odd to have Hunter Greene completely off due to injury but Hunter Brown on the 50. Is this because the list was made before Greene had a few starts to show he's healthy? 3 vs. 5 starts don't feel like a meaningful difference.

Ben Clemens

1:00

yeah. probably should have just left Brown off too. It's an artifact of when I started doing the list

same deal with Kurtz not being on there last year, that kinda thing

I could just have a harsher injury filter next time maybe. But basically I started looking in early July

Baseball Learner

1:00

I think the 5 year future war for judge is low and iirc you did a piece on this in the off-season?

Ben Clemens

1:01

five years is pretty hard to figure out

but I did write about how it's basically impossible for us to go into next year thikning someone is a better hitter than Judge

warpath

1:01

Do you have any additional insight to share after doing this list for a few years and learning a few things? For example, this year there seemed to be a de-emphasis of catchers, which was interesting to me. It also made me really sad to see Spencer Strider fall completely off, and makes me wary of any of these pre-arb pitching extensions.

Ben Clemens

1:01

oh yeah

1:02

Let's see. One, I think I have a much better handle on the kinds of players who teams would actually be interested in on a big contract, and also the kinds of young role players teams most covet

I've been moving pitchers in general higher on the list even as the attrition rate remains high because that's just how teams behave with pitchers

I also do some back checking to see which archetypes of players that I rank have aged poorly

that has something to do with the catcher de-emphasis, which is actually a few years in a row

Jay

1:03

One thing I find interesting about Walker is that this good version of him just makes way more sense than the 66 wRC+ version, right? Like a 6'6", 250 lb dude with the fastest bat in the majors and elite EVs but somehow he has an ISO under .100? That's way more unique and strange than what we're seeing this year. That's why I find his breakout way easier to buy into than someone like Otto Lopez for example.

Ben Clemens

1:03

oh 100%

I'd rather have Walker than Lopez, even though one of them is a plus shortstop and the other is an indifferent (at best) right fielder)

1:04

I'll be honest with you, one of the past biases that I have tried to actively push against is ranking guys like Lopez

where you kinda add all the little values up and go oh hey, this kinda works in my algorithm

1:05

but then you evaluate him with a fresh eye, and is he really a +hit +field shortstop? It's possible but I don't think it's likely

I think I used to get more caught by that kidn of guy, good-field middle infielder spiking a good hitting year

Andres Gimenez sends his regards

Dave