With over 40 games behind us in the MLB season, the pre-season trading floor prices that date back as far as March 1st are a distant memory for most of us. However, I think there is a lot to be learned form looking at those numbers.

I was part of the 3-man team that created the IPO prices for baseball this year and it was an awesome experience. It was a lot like how I always picture the NCAA selection committee meetings to be. The 3 of us set up shop in the conference room and basically stayed there for 3 full work days. We spent time reviewing career stats, last year’s stats, peripheral stats, team and park changes, and more to come up with a value for each player. Of course we also had to try to avoid creating too much or too little demand for any given player, so each price was a combination of our analysis and the perceived mainstream opinion. Still, for the most part the IPO prices were in line with what I’d be willing to pay for any given player.

As I’ve said before a common mistake at this point is to overreact to early results. Sometimes the first 40 games can tell us a lot. Aging hitters, pitchers who have lost velocity, and break out rookies with solid peripheral stats are examples of guys who can say a lot in 40 games. The typical player though is still probably better judged at this point by his preseason expectations than by his small sample of year-to-date results.

In light of that, I’d like to show you the 10 players who have dropped the most in price since the beginning of the year.

Looking through this list you can see that none of these guys are particularly old (Lee is the eldest at 32), in fact several of them are rising stars. Several of these guys are still stuck in slumps, but a couple of them (example, Ryan Bran) have already started to bust out of them. The reality is that, for the most part, this is an extremely talented group of players who can be expected to perform at a very high level going forward. This group would’ve set you back $354 at the start of the season. Now they will run you just $221.

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