Fantasy baseball trade values: Overall rankings for Week 7

As we get deeper into May, we’re getting to the point where the men separate themselves from the boys, where “it’s still early!” becomes an increasingly unconvincing excuse for your first-round pick’s underperformance (yes I drafted Trea Turner, why do you ask?) and everyone’s trade value meters start to go haywire. But it can be hard to separate the signal from the noise, to sift through the weirdness of a new season with new rules and know who you should target and who you might want to cut bait with. Which is where our weekly trade value rankings come in, with a top 200 for fantasy baseball to give you the tools you need to evaluate that most recent proposal from your arch rival.

Risers

• Bryce Harper might actually be the Bionic Man or something. The former MVP is back like he never left, and he should be treated like an elite fantasy asset moving forward.
• The Yandy Diaz Launch Angle Revolution looks like it’s here to stay, as one of MLB’s hard-contact kings has finally figured out how to translate that into home runs. He’ll be atop the best lineup in baseball most nights and is an easy top-100 asset moving forward.
• Eduardo Rodriguez, AL Cy Young dark horse? It’s getting harder to ignore the lefty as a fluke with each dominant outing, as his command of that cutter has been absolutely ridiculous so far this year. The Detroit Tigers won’t offer a ton of chances for wins (although they’re flirting with second place in the AL Central right now!) but especially in quality start leagues he should be a valued commodity.
• Josh Jung needs to get more love — he was an elite hitting prospect before a shoulder injury waylaid his 2022 season, with a combination of legit 30-homer power and a .270 average if he can keep the Ks under control. Batting in the middle of a high-powered Texas Rangers lineup will keep his counting stats up, too.

Fallers

• I’m not saying that you should be dropping Max Scherzer, or selling him for pennies on the dollar. But I am saying that, for all of his consistency over the years, the righty is 38 years old with a balky shoulder (and now, apparently, a balky neck). His velocity is down, his whiff rate is down, and it doesn’t seem like his body is going to right itself anytime soon — especially if he refuses to take a rest on the IL. He’s too good and too smart not to figure it out, but I think we need to readjust what the ceiling here looks like.
• I’m even more concerned about Alek Manoah, as we don’t have nearly as long of a track record of elite performance and he doesn’t have anything like an injury to explain away how bad he’s been so far this year. (There are rumblings that he’s having trouble adjusting to the pitch clock, which actually does pass the smell test.) Manoah was always an odd fit as a top-tier SP given his lack of premium velocity, and unless and until he finds his command again he’s awfully hard to trust given that his value was always predicated on volume that simply isn’t there right now.
• Kodai Senga came over to MLB with all kinds of hype attached, but at this point we’re going to need more evidence that he’s a viable big league pitcher beyond all the cool ghost fork GIFs. The righty was tagged for five runs in five innings against the Cincinnati Reds on Thursday, seemingly overcompensating for his command issues by leaving too many balls over the heart of the plate. You can probably move on in shallow leagues.

Fantasy baseball trade value rankings: Week 7