For years, I’ve followed both Jonah Keri’s and Fangraphs’ versions of establishing top-50 MLB Trade Value lists. Both annual rankings seek to provide an idea of how the baseball industry values its players, creating a sort of “absolute value” for what players could fetch on the open market. It’s a delicate balance of friendly contracts, overwhelming talent, and/or promising potential, with both Keri and Fangraphs often polling from front offices themselves to create their rankings.
While I don’t have the same sort of insider access as the other lists, I do have oodles of time to pore over player pages and a decent-to-good understanding of how front offices generally look to behave.