How is our model doing vs. real-life trades? As of January 31: Total trades: 39 Total trades accepted by our model: 33 Acceptance rate: 84.6% Variance: +/- 4.0 While we think that’s pretty good, we actually think the model is doing even better. That’s because the publicly available sources we rely on for data -- both for projections and prospect ratings -- release their updates sporadically throughout the offseason. Sometimes real-life trades occur before our model has been...

Recently, on an episode of MLB Tonight, John Smoltz was asked to compare the difference between signing Josh Donaldson or trading for [baseball-trade-values-player-link player="7589"]. His response was, to paraphrase: Donaldson doesn’t cost anything in prospects, but if Arenado was available? You’d have to “back up the truck.” In other words, he thinks trading for Arenado would cost a huge prospect haul. With all due respect to Smoltz, he is not a GM. He assumes...

If you’re a GM, this is the list you don’t want to have your players on. According to our calculations, the following 50 players have the least amount of trade value right now – or, put another way, the most amount of negative value. These are not necessarily bad players; they’re players whose contracts are bigger than their projected field value. Not surprisingly, the common thread here is that most of them are older and past their prime. Only eight of these 50...