For better or worse, this has become an annual Mound Visit.
Back in 2019, I took a stab at Starling Marte’s trade value. Last winter, I did the same with Adam Frazier. Ahead of the trade deadline, it was Richard Rodríguez. The Pirates are in the midst of a rebuild, and part of that is a teardown of the structure in place. None of these trades were guaranteed at the time, but it was clear they weren’t going to be around by the time the rebuild is complete.
The same can be said for Chris Stratton. He’s a good reliever coming off a solid season (3.63 ERA, 0.67 win probability added) with peripherals that support his results (3.73 xERA, 3.76 FIP). All of those results are right in line with what he’s done since the Pirates traded for him in 2019 and transitioned him into the bullpen. There, his super high-spin stuff has played up and given him several different offerings to get hitters out.
He’s also as versatile as they come as a reliever. Need someone to eat two or three innings? He can do that. Need a seventh or eighth innings setup man? He’s done that as well. Every team can use a reliever like him. And a projected arbitration salary of just $2.2 million (per MLB Trade Rumors) makes him that much more desirable for rival clubs.
He has a very simple trade case: He’s a good reliever on a cheap contract nearing its expiration on a team that isn’t expected to be competitive. It makes sense to hear offers, if not actively shop him. After all, with all of the trades the Pirates have made over the last 13 months, Stratton is basically the last trade candidate they have left that wouldn’t make a serious impact on their long-term major-league plans (outside of the players they signed to one-year deals ahead of the lockout – Yoshi Tsutsugo, José Quintana and Roberto Pérez).
Like in the Marte, Frazier and Rodríguez articles, I’ll be calculating surplus value to estimate what Stratton’s trade value is. If you need a quick refresher, surplus value is the amount of production a player provides compared to how much they are paid. (For lack of a better way of phrasing it, it’s profit.) That value is calculated by WAR, which has an open market value of $9 million. So if a player was worth 2 WAR and was paid $10 million, their surplus value would be $8 million.
There’s also future value, which weighs the projected future surplus value of prospects, based on their prospect grades. Stratton isn’t going to bring back a mega prospect, so we’ll work off FanGraphs’ list of prospect values for players not on a 40-man roster.
There’s one lingering question in calculating Stratton’s surplus value, and that is whether he is under team control for one year or two. Service time and when a player is eligible for free agency is a major part of the ongoing negotiations between Major League Baseball and the player’s association for a new collective bargaining agreement. One proposal from the owners had players reaching free agency the year after they turned 29 ½ years old. Stratton is 31 and will easily clear his fifth year of service time in 2022.
There’s a decent chance Stratton will be a free agent at the end of the season. Of course this question will be answered by the time any trade talks because of the lockout, but for this exercise, we’ll look at potential trade returns of if Stratton has one or two years of team control.
Stratton is projected by the forecasting service STEAMER to be worth 0.4 fWAR next year. That’s lower than what he had the last two seasons, where he combined to be worth 1.3 WAR, but unless you’re a high-end closer, relievers don’t tend to bring back as much in trades. We’ll stick with STEAMER’s projection.
That means he’ll provide $3.6 million in value at a $2.2 million salary, giving him a $1.4 million surplus value for year one. The rule of thumb I use for the final year of arbitration is they make 80% of their open market value from the year prior. So in this case, ($3.6 million x 0.8) is about $2.9 million projected salary his final year. If he matches the same amount of WAR in 2023, that gives him another $0.7 million in surplus value in a potential second year.
So that second year doesn’t seem to make a huge difference for Stratton’s potential trade value. In the first scenario, he’d bring back a prospect with a future value of $1-2 million. In the second, it’s more firmly $2 million. In either case, that’s a 40-grade player, which is a fringe prospect who usually has some level of upside but some noticeable flaws.
In the past, I’ve closed these trade value stories with a mock trade. To keep with tradition, I’ll whip up a trade to the Brewers for a pair of minor-league relievers. Taylor Floyd is praised by FanGraphs for his plus slider and has a 40 FV. Victor Castaneda’s best pitch is his slider, and while he’s a 35+ FV right-hander, he’s closer to being major-league ready and could help fill the innings the Pirates lose with Stratton.
The Pirates shouldn’t be in a rush to trade Stratton, who is one of the few relievers on staff with any sort of major-league track record, but he falls in that Frazier/Jacob Stallings camp that this is probably as high as his trade value will ever be. Ben Cherington hasn’t been afraid to flip players once they reach that point. The return of a working CBA will reignite the hot stove, and Stratton is the type of guy who could be poached by a team looking to compete now. The Pirates simply are not there yet.
