The rumors continue to fly about the Cincinnati Reds and New York Yankees working on a trade to bring Sonny Gray to Cincinnati. Jon Heyman has this as the latest news:

#Reds want to hold catching prospect Tyler Stephenson out of a potential Sonny Gray deal. Now discussions center around 2B prospect Shed Long, a draft choice (sandwich pick) and a 2nd minor leaguer. There’s some optimism but no word it’s done yet. — Jon Heyman (@JonHeyman) January 19, 2019

The good news: The Reds don’t seem to be willing to give up Tyler Stephenson in this deal. The bad news: Shed Long is still on the table. Why is that bad news? Well, let’s assume that since no one else on the Yankees side of the deal has been discussed, that the deal would only bring back Sonny Gray. He is making $7.5M in salary for the 2019 season. That’s cheap. And he’s worth more than that. Any value he provides beyond that is surplus value.

But what is the projected surplus value for Sonny Gray? All of the projection systems aren’t out yet. The Marcels system pegs him at 137.0 innings with a 4.40 ERA. That would give him, roughly 1.0 WAR in the Baseball-Reference version. That means his surplus value would be about $1-1.5M for 2019.

Fangraphs released a new valuation tool for prospects this winter based on how players who were rated as certain types of prospects wound up turning out. We’ll use that here and look at Shed Long. He was given a 50-grade prospect after the 2018 season by Fangraphs. That would give him a surplus value of $28M.

Using this method, Shed Long straight up for Sonny Gray would be an absolute steal for the Yankees and one that would take the Reds to the cleaners in terms of value for value. Shed Long caliber prospects are far more valuable than the version of Sonny Gray that is expected by the projection systems.

But what if the projection systems are wrong? That happens frequently enough. How good would Sonny Gray need to be in order to match the roughly $28M in surplus value for his one season? He’d basically need to be one of the 20 best pitchers in baseball, maybe a little bit close to top 15.

Now, if you want to argue that surplus value in one year versus over the next 6 years isn’t a 1-for-1 thing, I’ll listen to that argument. It certainly holds some logical water. But even splitting it in half on Long, he’s still far more valuable than Sonny Gray is at that. When you then toss in your competitive balance draft pick, it starts to skew the math even more.

The Reds can trade their 2019 competitive balance pick. Until free agency is over we don’t know exactly which pick it will be. But it will be the 3rd pick following the 1st round, falling somewhere in the 36-38th spot in the draft. The player selected there will probably be a grade 40 or 45 caliber prospect next year. The value of that can be anywhere from $1M-$8M in surplus value depending on the position or grade of the prospect. And then there’s also the part of the rumor that says the Reds would also possibly be adding another minor leaguer to the deal. We don’t know the caliber of that player, but it’s not someone of no value at all. Though it is probably minimal.

It’s tough to look at a Shed Long, draft pick, and another prospect trade straight up for Sonny Gray as one that makes sense from a value standpoint. It’s a massive overpay based on everything that we know about player values. The Reds shouldn’t be trading value for someone they hope will improve. And that’s especially the case when to make the values even, the improvement has to be massive.

If the prospect that the Reds trade in the deal isn’t in the Top 10, and they move another guy and the draft pick, things start to make a lot more sense. But that’s not what we are hearing at this point.