As Opening Day approaches, the Blue Jays are one of the most intriguing teams in baseball. Their once-up-and-coming core is now set to reach free agency next winter, giving 2025 the distinct feel of a make-or-break season.  Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette still offer plenty of firepower alongside free agent signee Anthony Santander, and a rotation featuring Kevin Gausman, Jose Berrios, Chris Bassitt and new acquisition Max Scherzer could be one of the best in the majors. Meanwhile,...

Want to work for BTV? We have an opening for a part-time data analyst. This is a paid position. We're looking for someone who can help update our model behind the scenes, run updates, and contribute ideas to make the site -- and our data -- even better. If interested, please email us at: baseballtradevalues@gmail.com In your email, let us know about your relevant experience (include a resume if possible), and why you're interested.

Now that we’re at the tail end of the offseason, it’s time to reflect: How closely did our free agent estimates correlate to the market? Let’s find out.   The numbers By our count, there have been 126 free agent signings so far. Sure, there are still a few stragglers out there (David Robertson, Alex Verdugo, et al), but we’re at the point where we’re close enough to an endpoint to start self-evaluating our model. The tricky question is, what’s a good...

In 2023, Brandon Belt put up 2.2 fWAR, a 138 WRC+, and a slash line of .254/.369/.490. He was also known for providing quality defense at 1B. Despite those numbers, not a single team signed him to a deal last year. He remains unsigned now, and is assumed to be retired – albeit not of his own volition. This year, there are still dozens of veteran major leaguers without a deal – as there were last year, and as there are every year around this time. Behind the scenes, in our...

You may have noticed that in recent years, teams seem more and more reluctant to fork over big, long contracts to even the most proven players. Despite speculation about longer-term offers, Alex Bregman signed only a three-year deal with opt-outs. Pete Alonso, Jack Flaherty, and many others got two years or less.  One reason? Front offices hate getting stuck with underwater contracts. The longer the term, and the bigger the contract, the greater the chance you may get stuck with an...

Welcome to the 2024-25 Offseason Roundup. Any additional trades will be added to this article as they are reported. — Los Angeles Dodgers acquire international bonus pool space ($1.5M) from the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for OF Arnaldo Lantigua ($0.5M)Los Angeles Dodgers acquire international bonus pool space ($0.75M) from the Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for OF Dylan Campbell ($0.5M) The Dodgers made a pair of moves to boost their international bonus pool and allow them to hand...

We often view the business of baseball as separate from the product on the field. We find ourselves wondering why all 30 teams aren’t aggressively pursuing upgrades in free agency every offseason in a quest for the title. We wonder why there aren’t more small-market teams behaving like last year’s Royals, who used free agency to go from 56 wins to the playoffs. What’s stopping every team from doing the same? As fans, we measure success in wins. This is true at both the...

We recently updated the values on our site, which is normal for us around this time of year. The purpose is to correlate to the market, using free agent contracts as a kind of going rate for our dollars-per-projected-WAR calculations. If the first batch of free agents is skewing high, it may be an indication that our initial assumptions were low on that basis. Why is that? Most of it is inflation. We assume a 3% inflation rate, which is the long-term average. However, as you probably know,...

On Dec. 30, 2023, the Red Sox traded Chris Sale to the Braves for Vaughn Grissom, and sent $17M to cover Sale’s salary to boot. Here’s what that trade looked like in our model at the time:     So it was accepted by our model, albeit as a major overpay by Atlanta. --------- Fast-forward one year: Sale has won the Cy Young Award, after producing 6.4 fWAR in a remarkable comeback season. Grissom has struggled badly, producing -0.7 fWAR. So from today’s perspective,...

Here’s an interesting twist: The A’s will be players in the trade market, but not the way you might suspect.  After selling off the core of their last competitive team (Chapman, Olson, Murphy et al) for questionable prospects (most of whom didn’t pan out), GM David Forst recently disclosed that the team will be actively looking to augment their major-league club in the trade market. He also mentioned that they’re keeping Brent Rooker, who, after a 5+ fWAR season,...