Welcome to the third part of this year's Trade Value series. If you haven't already, read the intro and get yourself acquainted with what question this is trying to answer, as well as an incomplete list of guys who missed the cut for one reason or another. You can see all the posts in the series here.

Due to popular demand — or maybe unpopular outrage? — this post and the next two will revert back to the prior year's format of listing each player individually, with a blurb beneath them, rather than the article format that I experimented with in the first two posts. The mob has spoken.

A few quick notes on the columns listed for each player. After the normal biographical information, I've listed Projected WAR, which is essentially a combination of ZIPS and Steamer's current rest-of-season forecasts extrapolated out to a full-season's worth of playing time. For non-catcher position players, this is 600 plate appearances; catchers are extrapolated to 450 PAs. For pitchers, this is extrapolated to 200 innings. It is not their 2014 WAR, or their last calendar year WAR; it is a rough estimate of what we might expect them to do over a full-season, based on the information we have now.

For contract status, we have two pieces of information. "Controlled Through" includes all years before a player accumulates enough time to be eligible for free agency, all guaranteed years of a contract already signed, and any years covered by team options that could be exercised in the future. Player options and mutual options are not included, as the assumption is that players of this caliber will generally opt-out of their current contracts if given the chance.

The "Contract Dollars" column includes the base salaries of each player in the controlled years going forward, starting from 2015 — the 40% of 2014 salary remaining is not included in the calculation — including the value of team options, since we're assuming that they will be picked up. In many cases, players have incentives for various accomplishments that affect the base salaries, but those are not accounted for here, simply because of the tedious work of calculating all those incentive prices and the fact that $100,000 for an All-Star appearance or $500,000 for an MVP-finish there aren't going to change the overall calculations. This column is not an exact representation of their future earnings, but should be close enough for our purposes.

For players who are under team control but not under guaranteed contract, I've listed out which arbitration years they still have remaining. There are a few players who have both guaranteed contracts and arbitration eligibility remaining, but we'll deal with those cases in the article when a simple line in the chart doesn't explain their situation perfectly.

Finally, "Last Year" notes where a player was ranked on this list last year, or if he wasn't on the 2013 Trade Value series, then he is denoted as unranked. As you can imagine, there's a lot more turnover at the end of the list than the beginning.

Now, for the middle section of the list.

Rank Name Age Team Position Projected WAR Controlled Through Contract Dollars Last Year 30 Gregory Polanco 22 PIT OF 1.5 2020 Pre-Arb – Arb3 Unranked

Polanco is the kind of player that every team covets; a useful contributor in the big leagues right now with enough upside to dream on what he could become in a few years. The mix of short-term and long-term value, combined with three and a half years of something close to league minimum salaries, make Polanco the kind of player that would generate trade interest from every single team in baseball.

It has to be noted, though, that Polanco's short-term value was probably overstated in the backlash against the Pirates decision to leave him in the minors in order to avoid Super Two status. His power is still more projection than present day reality, and a 73% contact rate is not a great number for a guy who isn't crushing the ball when he does make contact. History is littered with busted prospects who were supposed to hit for power and never did, and so while Polanco's overall promise is enticing, he does come with a substantial amount of risk.

Of course, Polanco was crushing the ball in Triple-A, and he's young enough that even holding his own at the big league level is an accomplishment. With a few more years of development, he should turn into one of the game's best outfielders. He's just not quite there yet, which is why he's hanging out in the same range as the other prospects on the list, even though he's technically not a prospect anymore.

Rank Name Age Team Position Projected WAR Controlled Through Contract Dollars Last Year 29 Kris Bryant 22 CHC 3B 2.8 TBD Pre-Arb – Arb3 Unranked

Speaking of prospects that belong in the big