It'd be easy to rattle off names like Jose Fernandez, Bryce Harper and Mike Trout as the biggest trade chips in baseball. It'd be just as easy to include top prospects like Washington's Lucas Giolito, Pittsburgh's Tyler Glasnow and Philadelphia's J.P. Crawford on the pages that follow.
But to do so would be pointless, for there's a better chance of Derek Jeter coming out of retirement than there is of any of those players getting moved anytime soon.
No, we're interested in players that could be traded, those whose current teams might dangle them as trade chips over a ravenous pool of contenders looking to one-up each other and gain an advantage over their competition, both for the stretch run and, hopefully, the playoffs.
Of course, not all trade chips are created equal. While we've identified more than 20 potential trade candidates, we'll dig into the 10 biggest, looking at their performance, contract and what, if anything, the rumor mill has been telling us recently in regard to their short-term futures.
*You'll see FanGraphs' wRC+ metric (Weighted Runs Created Plus) referred to for position players on the pages that follow, which attempts to provide a more accurate representation of a player's productivity than batting average or OPS.
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