MLB’s regular season is right around the corner, and that means plenty of trades could be on the horizon.
For those who enjoy trades and player movement, MLB‘s offseason can generally provide more of both.
More teams feel like they can improve and contend during the next season without a low win-total bogging them down.
There’s blockbuster trades and (usually) marquee free agent signings.
While there generally aren’t many marquee free agent signings in the regular season, there’s usually similar trade activity.
From minor trades involving players recently designated for assignment, to deals involving big names and everything in between, plenty of players change uniforms.
With that in mind, I set out to preview/break down a large number of players who could conceivably be traded during the regular season.
It started out as a blog post as a list of 100, then morphed into an EBook of 132 when the realization was made that it was simply too big of an article.
That way, in an EBook, you’d be able to skip to a specific division to read about your favorite team without scrolling through the other stuff, if you felt so inclined.
Here’s a brief sampling of the EBook (titled 2018 MLB Trade Guide: 132 Players Who Could Be Traded), including two of the 132 MLB players who could be traded in 2018.
Raisel Iglesias
While the likes of Alex Colome and Brad Hand could draw significant returns on the trade market in the near future, the Reds could come out with the best trade return for a closer if they chose to deal Raisel Iglesias.
A former starter, Iglesias transitioned to the bullpen full time in 2017 and was dominant. The 28-year-old registered 76 innings in 63 games, pitching to a 2.49 ERA, a 2.70 FIP, a 3.25 xFIP and a 3.17 SIERA along the way.
He also missed plenty of bats, with 10.89 punch outs per nine frames and a healthy 13.9 swinging strike percentage.
Iglesias may not be on the level of a pitcher like Wade Davis or Kenley Jansen, but he’s one of the better closers in the game.
Over the next three seasons, according to Spotrac, the reliever will make $4.5 million, $5 million and $5 million. Iglesias will also take home signing bonuses of $714,285 in each of the three seasons.
Davis, for example, will have salaries of $16 million, $18 million and $17 million over that span (per Spotrac).
The ex-Cub may be five years older than Iglesias and come with a more prominent track record—especially in the postseason—but a contending team may opt to save money with Iglesias and reinvest the remaining cash they would have paid to a free agent like Davis elsewhere on the team.
With 18 appearances last season that lasted anywhere from 1.1 to 2.0 innings, Iglesias is the perfect fit for the modern bullpen, especially come playoff time.
Even if he’s not functioning as a closer, he could make an impact similar to the one Andrew Miller made in Cleveland during the 2016 stretch run.
Nicholas Castellanos
There’s a lot to like about Nicholas Castellanos’ game at the plate.
In each of the last two seasons he’s topped the .800 OPS and .200 ISO mark, to go along with respective wOBA numbers of .350 and .341.
Castellanos also paced baseball with 10 triples last season, and generally hits the ball hard, like really hard.
Since the start of the 2016 season, just nine players have a higher hard hit-rate than Castellanos (40.4%). He’s also in pretty good company on the leaderboard, with Giancarlo Stanton (40.5%) and Mike Trout (40.3%) just percentage points away.
Like McCann, he could be part of the next contending Tigers squad given the fact that he’s still young at just 25.
However, if he proves to be even an adequate defender in right field, teams could conceivably be interested in Castellanos as a middle-of-the-order solution.
That being said, if the 25-year-old sticks in the outfield, you’d have to think that the Tigers would have a high asking price if they even considering moving the former first-round pick.
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