2025 Top 50 MLB Free Agents

Welcome to the offseason. As is customary, FanGraphs’ annual top 50 free agent rankings come following the World Series. In recent years, we’ve rotated through the writers principally responsible for the list – first Dave Cameron, then Kiley McDaniel, Craig Edwards, and, more recently, me. I’m back this year and I’ve brought help: the FanGraphs staff contributed mightily to this piece.

Below, I’ve provided contract estimates and rankings of the winter’s top free agents, along with market-focused breakdowns for the top 25 players. That could be a quick discussion of where a player might sign, what a team might look for, or even statistical analysis masquerading as market analysis – what can I say, I like analyzing players. Meanwhile, a combination of Davy Andrews, Michael Baumann, Jay Jaffe, David Laurila, Eric Longenhagen, Leo Morgenstern, Kiri Oler, Esteban Rivera, Michael Rosen, and Dan Szymborski supplied player-focused breakdowns, which are designed to provide some context for each player at this moment in his career. Special thanks to David Appelman, Jon Becker, Sean Dolinar, Jason Martinez, and Meg Rowley for their help behind the scenes.

The players are ranked in the order in which I prefer them. That’s often the same as ranking them in contract order, but not always. In some cases, I prefer a player I expect will get less money over one who stands to make more. I’ll generally make note of that in the accompanying comment, but just to reiterate, this list isn’t exclusively sorted by descending average annual value or anything like that.

All of the dollar amounts are estimated guarantees. Plenty of contracts will include team options or player incentives, but those aren’t included here; player opt outs are similarly not included. Unless otherwise noted, the projections below are Steamer 2025 projections, but use our Depth Chart playing time allocations. The listed ages indicate the age-season the player is about to play. Every player’s crowdsourced projection will appear alongside my projection.

On Monday, teams extended qualifying offers to 13 players: Willy Adames, Pete Alonso, Alex Bregman, Corbin Burnes, Max Fried, Teoscar Hernández, Sean Manaea, Nick Martinez, Nick Pivetta, Anthony Santander, Luis Severino, Juan Soto, and Christian Walker. Those players have 10 days from their receipt of that offer to either accept or decline. As a refresher, if a player receives and declines a qualifying offer, which this year is valued at $21.05 million for one year, the team that eventually signs that player forfeits a draft pick, while the team that made the offer gains one. Which draft picks change hands depends on the circumstances of both teams, as well as the total dollar value of the contract signed.

For a comprehensive list of this year’s free agents, which will be updated to include signings as they occur and crowdsource results for players whose future deals we polled on, please consult our Free Agent Tracker.

Last year’s class had Shohei Ohtani as the clear top guy, with a reasonable consolation prize in Yoshinobu Yamamoto and then a bunch of less exciting options after that. The class really thinned out around the 15th-ranked player; I wasn’t enamored with anyone past that point, though of course some of those guys turned out to be much better than anticipated, while some of the top players scuffled this year. The dynamic is pretty similar at the top of this class: Soto is the best player available by a huge margin. The top 10 free agents collectively project for 35 WAR next year, which is almost a dead ringer for last year’s class. There’s only one superstar available here, and the next cut down is more solid than overwhelming.

Soto’s deal is going to loom over the market in the same way that Ohtani’s did, with teams that think they’re in the running likely delaying their other signings while they woo Soto. In particular, hitters like Hernández and Santander are going to be popular backup plans; they fill a similar role, though obviously they aren’t as good. The same thing will likely happen on the pitching side as well. The trio of Burnes, Blake Snell, and Fried are the headliners. I expect the next tier of arms after them to come off the board quickly once the top group finds contracts.

One macro note on this year’s class: There are a ton of pitchers on here — 23 starters and 10 relievers, to be exact. That reflects recent trends in roster construction. The very top of the free agent market has position players who can force their way onto any roster, but increasingly, teams prefer internal options to average veterans. Unless you’re really lousy at player development, there are probably some prospects in Triple-A who could, if things break right, be better than an average veteran. Why not save a little money and give yourself a chance to find a new building block? That strategy is so compelling that the middle class of the hitter market is fighting uphill.

Pitchers on the other hand? You can never have enough pitchers. Great prospects don’t get blocked by the third starter you signed, because there are always more starts to take. Last year, 33 of the 50 largest free agent contracts went to pitchers, and that’s true whether you care about total or average annual value. This is a natural counterweight to the increasing emphasis on hitting prospects: Young boppers and old pitchers is the new trend, and I expect it to continue for the foreseeable future.

A few batters – Justin Turner, Michael Conforto, Danny Jansen (a.k.a, the token catcher), and Joc Pederson – snuck onto the back half of this list. For the most part, though, those guys no longer command top-50 deals, and they shouldn’t. They aren’t providing the value above replacement that they used to. Instead, veteran starters and solid relievers are getting paid, and I get it. Would you rather have Clay Holmes or Pederson if you can only pick one? A few teams can use Joc; every team could use Holmes.

Finally, I’m expecting more long contracts this year than we saw last offseason. Only three players got five or more years, a strikingly low number. The previous offseason had 14 deals of that length. There’s never just one reason for such a change in market behavior, but it seems likely that the uncertain future of local television deals played a part in teams wanting to keep their obligations short-term. The player pool surely factored in as well. In any case, last year’s free agent market was light on lengthy deals, and I’m predicting a rebound there. The future of local broadcasting revenue is still up in the air, but teams have had more time to plan for it now. This year’s crop of players also skews slightly younger, which argues in favor of longer deals on the margins.

I have nine five-year-plus deals penciled in this year, though six of those are at five years exactly. The more pitchers hit the list, the shorter deals go, though; only two of those projected nine long contracts are for hurlers. That, too, feels intentional on the part of teams. Pitchers sometimes break, but you’d pay a lot for them while they’re healthy. The solution? Pay them a lot but without long guarantees. Simple!

A few other notes: I don’t think Roki Sasaki will be posted this year, but he’d be second on the list if he were. His age means he’s subject to international bonus limits, so he’s not quite the same as the other free agents listed here, but obviously every team would love to have the best pitching prospect in the world. The only other international player I think fits on this list is Kyle Hart 하트, a potential Erick Fedde bounce-back type who was excellent in Korea this year and is ranked 48th here. Tomoyuki Sugano is an intriguing name, but I’m not sure he’ll be posted and I don’t know what teams would do about a 35-year-old with no MLB experience, so I left him out.

I’m lower than the seeming market consensus on a few free agents, with Alonso and Paul Goldschmidt the most notable examples. You’ll notice that both of them have larger contract projections than you might expect based on where I have them ranked. Walker fits that mold to a lesser extent as well – perhaps I’m just down on first basemen. That’s intentional: The ordering shows my preference, while the contract estimate reflects how I think the market will value them.

Likewise, I’m higher than the consensus on Adames, Ha-Seong Kim, Gleyber Torres, and Santander, plus a few pitchers lower down the rankings. I also like the formerly broken aces archetype; Shane Bieber and Walker Buehler are both ranked pretty aggressively here. Finally, I like all three old pitchers: Max Scherzer, Charlie Morton, and Justin Verlander. They might be done, but on one-year deals, I’d be interested in seeing if they can recapture the magic. I can’t claim to understand how teams will handle these tricky cases, but if I were in charge, this is how I’d order everyone.

And this class could have been deeper if it weren’t for a number of players remaining with their current teams thanks to club options. Brandon Lowe, Marcell Ozuna, Eugenio Suárez, Merrill Kelly, Luke Weaver, and Freddy Peralta – just to name a few – could technically have become free agents, but their current teams are keeping them for next year instead. You can throw Clayton Kershaw into that mix too, though his situation is slightly different. In any case, those players would have been on this list if they had hit the market.

Despite earlier indications from president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos they would pick it up, the Braves declined a team option on Travis d’Arnaud a few hours after the initial publication of this list; he belongs somewhere between 45th and 55th, for the record. I’d have estimated a one-year, $8 million contract, while the crowdsourced median was one year and $7 million.

That’s a broad, top-level view of the market. If you’re wondering why one player is lower than you’d expect, or why a certain category of player is over- or under-represented, or why someone was left off entirely, it’s probably due to how they fit into that picture. With those themes and caveats in mind, let’s get to the list.

Ben’s Take
In my previous career, I once interviewed for a job and asked about salary. “What do you think we should pay you?” was the response. That’s pretty close to how Soto’s negotiations will go this offseason. The best pure hitter in baseball hitting the free agent market mere weeks after he turned 26? We’ve never seen a bonanza like this before. Soto has the two things that big-market teams drool over: true superstar skills and youth. He’s the unquestioned top player on the market this winter.

The Yankees are the front-runners to land Soto, but every team with a pile of money would love to have him. I think that 10 or so teams would be willing to pay Soto a record amount (in NPV terms at least — Shohei Ohtani’s contract last winter will almost certainly retain the raw dollar record) over a decade or longer. Basing Soto’s deal on precedent isn’t going to work – there just aren’t enough comparables. We’re talking Alex Rodriguez’s Rangers contract and nothing else – Bryce Harper is the only other player who feels particularly close, and Soto’s résumé is far more polished. He already has four five-win seasons, and he was easily on pace for another in the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign. In other words, his free agency is nearly unprecedented, and I think that the bidding will reflect that.

For the record, I didn’t take that job I mentioned, but I think that my salary answer left money on the table. I don’t think that’s going to be a problem for Soto. He’s represented by Scott Boras, and this is the kind of negotiation that highlights Boras’ skills. He has all the leverage. What are teams going to do, sign another similar guy? There isn’t one. You don’t even have to model this contract to know that it’s going to be an outrageous number.

Player Notes
If I were in Scott Boras’ extremely expensive shoes, I’d be making the argument that Soto is the best offensive talent to hit the market in the past decade, with the possible exception of Aaron Judge. This man has never posted a wRC+ below 140 or an OBP below .400. In short, Soto does the most important thing a position player can do — avoid making outs at the plate — better than anyone else in the world. He also just set new career highs in home runs (41), runs scored (128), and WAR (8.1).

In short, Soto — who turned 26 during the World Series — is in the midst of his prime, while most free agents are cresting the wave of their physical gifts. So, the best free agent hitter since Judge, and the youngest free agent superstar since Bryce Harper and Manny Machado in 2018-19. That kind of quality earned Judge $360 million, while Harper’s promise of forever cost $330 million. For Soto? Add those two figures together. Maybe round it up to $700 million.

You laugh, but Boras will probably be asking for something north of half a billion dollars for this unique free agent. Soto has already been the missing piece for three contenders — the Nationals, the Padres, and the Yankees — in his short career, and every team with a rich owner and title ambitions will want to be next in line. – MB

Ben’s Take
Anyone in the next group of five players could end up with the second-biggest contract of the winter. Out of that quintet, I’d be most keen to sign Adames, and I’ve got bad news for enjoyers of parity: This feels like a situation where the rich will get richer. A ton of marquee shortstops have hit the market in the past few years, which means that many contending teams already have their guy. Some of the teams that sat out the recent bonanza did so because they have their own young star prospect. The Cardinals and Yankees, for example, aren’t going to move on from their incumbents this winter.

The Dodgers are an obvious fit for Adames; they’re one of the only top teams with no star incumbent and no high-profile youngster at the position. I think they’re probably going to pursue Adames hard while the rest of the league is giving Soto facility tours and the red-carpet treatment. The only other playoff teams with a clear need are the Braves, the Tigers, and the Brewers, but I don’t really see a fit with any of them. The Braves have already deployed a ton of money elsewhere and tend to spend on extensions rather than free agency. The Tigers like what they have in Trey Sweeney. The Brewers don’t sign guys like Adames on the open market – they trade for them and then collect compensation picks when they leave.

I think that might keep his salary down somewhat, but probably not by much. Adames is really good! He’s a top 10 shortstop for me, and knocking on the door of the top five in good years. He provides steady defense and righty power. He just turned 29; a five-year deal would be heavy on his prime years and light on the mediocre back end. I think that someone’s going to get a bargain on Adames because of all the great shortstops who came before him – and I think it’s likely to be the Dodgers.

Player Notes
Adames has been in pro ball since 2012, when he signed with Detroit as an international amateur for $420,000. He quickly became one of Detroit’s best prospects and was traded by then-GM Dave Dombrowski as part of a massive three-team deal centered around David Price. Adames had an exciting but often frustrating tenure with the Rays, as he appeared unable to see the baseball at Tropicana Field and was generating odd home/road splits. With Wander Franco poised to debut, Tampa Bay traded Adames to Milwaukee for Drew Rasmussen. Adames became Milwaukee’s most consistent and productive player during his three-and-a-half seasons there and leads Brewers position players in WAR since his arrival.

Adames has also been one of the best 10 shortstops in baseball since he debuted in 2018. He is second (behind Francisco Lindor) in home runs by shortstops since 2018 and seventh in WAR output. He is among the best defensive shortstops in baseball, wielding a rocket arm and rare range for an athlete as big and powerful as he is.

We can put two and two together here; the Brewers’ payroll limitations and the presence of other young shortstop-caliber defenders on their roster makes it likely that Adames and Milwaukee will part ways. He has been the team’s emotional leader and the keeper of their competitive identity during his tenure. As the Brewers’ core group of position players has gotten younger around Adames and Christian Yelich, the kids have more often assumed Adames’ zeal than Yelich’s stoicism. He’ll leave behind culture-shifting bravado and draft pick compensation in Milwaukee, and seems likely to bring that plus several more years of impact power production and defense to his next team. – EL

Ben’s Take
Bregman’s MVP-contender days are probably over, but he still looks like a perennial All-Star to me, and he’s somehow only 30 despite playing in the ALCS seven times already. But while his résumé is spectacular – the Hall of Fame isn’t out of the question, depending on how voters feel about the banging scheme – a ton of red flags in his 2024 season have me lower on him than Adames on a going-forward basis.

His walk rate dropped by nearly half this year, and his contact quality also dipped slightly. He’s never had sterling raw batted ball data, and without all the walks juicing his OBP, he’s one-dimensional at the plate; his lift-and-pull approach is great for tucking homers into the Crawford Boxes, but it produces plenty of weak fly outs too. This was his worst offensive season other than two flukes: an injury-shortened 2021 and his abbreviated 2016 debut. He played his normal excellent defense at third, which acts as a nice value buffer, but he looks more like a complementary bat than the guy you build your offense around these days.

Maybe it’s too simplistic of me, but I think Bregman will end up back on the Astros. He’s part of the culture there, one of the few players who’s been on the team for their entire run of excellence. They’re at the tail end of a contention cycle, which fits well with his age. It fits with the team’s goals, too; having your worst season in nearly a decade and then letting one of your best players go is a bad look. That’s not to say there won’t be another team that tries to get Bregman, but the path of least resistance involves a reunion with Houston.

Player Notes
From 2022-24, Bregman was one of the best third basemen in baseball. He might not have been peak juiced-ball Bregman, a player in the upper echelon of the sport at any position, but he was still among the best at the hot corner, delivering three straight four-plus win seasons. Bregman’s appeal comes from being solid on both ends of the ball. His defense is very good (he just won his first Gold Glove and might boast some underappreciated versatility), he strikes out at a very low rate (94th-percentile strikeout rate), and he just posted a 118 wRC+. That mark was fifth among qualified third basemen in 2024 (and first among third base free agents), but it also constitutes a full-season career low. As Bregman enters free agency in advance of his age-31 season, what that offensive dip signals will be front and center. Is it a sign of the aging curve doing its work, or does Bregman’s second half (134 wRC+) show he simply had to overcome some temporary early season struggles?

To answer that, I think you need to zoom in on the skill that has carried Bregman’s offense during his long tenure in Houston: his success pulling the ball. Bregman’s elite bat control has allowed him to take advantage of Houston’s Crawford Boxes, but when you’re heavily reliant on pull-side contact in the air, timing issues can impact your bat path and lead to the batted ball profile Bregman saw in April. Those issues aside, it seems like pulling the ball is still a skill he has in his bag. This season, his .492 wOBACON on pulled batted balls was in line with his 2023 (.486) and a tick behind his 2022 (.516). In the right park, he has a good chance of continuing his offensive prowess and providing top-of-the-position production. – ER

Ben’s Take
This one’s a real eye of the beholder situation. The upsides are obvious: We’re talking about one of the best handful of pitchers in the game. Over the past half-decade, only Zack Wheeler has been better than Burnes by any flavor of WAR. He throws a ton of innings. He has five plus pitches and commands them well. When guys like this hit free agency, someone tends to hand them a bag full of money.

On the flip side, every peripheral indicator you can imagine has been ticking down for years. Burnes doesn’t throw as hard as he used to. He doesn’t miss as many bats as he once did. It’s hard to disentangle what’s ominous and what’s merely player choice – he’s throwing his cutter more often to seek weak contact, which is definitely depressing his strikeout rate. But teams haven’t made a habit of ignoring red flags and giving 30-year-old pitchers lengthy contracts.

I think that Burnes will settle somewhere above Aaron Nola money but below Stephen Strasburg territory. The risk-whisperers of every team’s front offices are surely out in droves, but the ring-counters are too, and Burnes is the best pitcher available this winter. Given the lengths teams have been going to in recent years to acquire premium pitching, I think someone will shove the number-crunching nerds to the side and pay up.

Player Notes
While Burnes has fallen off from his 2021-2022 peak and is unlikely to land a Gerrit Cole-type contract, he does enter free agency as the top starting pitcher available. There are other top tier starters on offer this winter, but Burnes goes deeper in games than Blake Snell, can be more overpowering than Max Fried, and is more dependable than Jack Flaherty. He seemed like a good fit with the Orioles this year, and the team could certainly afford to pay him if they so choose.

Burnes’ game plan remains simple and unchanged: everybody gets cutters and curves, lefties get changeups and sinkers, righties get sliders, and he’s confident enough in his repertoire to throw any of his pitches in any part of an at-bat. That makes Burnes a bit of a matchup nightmare, as you can’t really sit and wait on anything, and his arsenal is deep enough that stacking lefty swingers against him doesn’t really work either. Burnes racked up a solid innings total this season more from consistency than going deep in games, as he only pitched into the eighth once in 2024 but was so rarely actually lousy that he got through the fifth in all but one of his starts.

His cutter doesn’t cut quite as deeply as it did at his peak, but I think that’s already reflected in his strikeout rate, which has dropped steadily since 2020, and is why he doesn’t rank even higher here. With his velocity unchanged and his contact rate still very good, I’m not inclined to worry too much given the variety of tools at his disposal. The difference between peak Burnes and Burnes now is more about the exact size of his nine-figure deal, not his status as an ace on almost any team. – DS

Ben’s Take
I’m still fairly sure that Cole is headed back to the Yankees. Update: Cole and the Yankees have agreed to reinstate his former deal while they continue extension negotiations, per Jeff Passan. It just makes too much sense given their team composition and the structure of his contract: They can tack on a fifth guaranteed year to avoid losing his services immediately. In an offseason where their clear goal is to sign Juan Soto, losing their best pitcher because they aren’t willing to make extra monetary commitments in 2029 feels like it’d be a disaster. They’d need to sign a replacement, for one thing, and none of the replacements are obviously better than Cole – as you can see from these rankings, I only like Burnes more, and that’s largely because he’s younger.

Still, as of publication time, Cole is technically in line to reach free agency. Weirdly, I think he’d actually get less than what was left on the deal he opted out of, though I think his remaining contract is quite close to market value, and thus that he isn’t taking a big risk by doing so. The Yankees are the ones bearing the risk here, which is likely why he made this decision.

Maybe other teams would call Cole’s bluff and see what the rest of the baseball world thinks. But the Yankees? The New York Yankees, the team that considers itself a juggernaut that’s always contending? I think it’d be a grave error to lose sight of the big picture here. They need a star pitcher, they have one, and it’s not clear that they’d be able to make an easy replacement if they let him go. I was so confident in this view, in fact, that we didn’t even crowdsource a projection for Cole. That probably won’t matter. If not, mea culpa.

Player Notes
Cole opted out of the final four years of his record-setting nine-year, $324 million deal, no small risk given his age (34) and the loss of nearly half a season due to nerve inflammation and edema in his right elbow. Both his 3.41 ERA and 3.69 FIP rose by more than half a run relative to his 2023 AL Cy Young-winning season; his peripherals all moved in the wrong directions, with his 25.4% strikeout rate representing his third straight year of decline. Peeking under the hood, Cole’s average four-seam velocity dropped notably (from 96.7 mph to 95.9 mph) for the second straight year. He backed off his fastball and slider usage in favor of the knuckle-curve and cutter; the pitch-modeling metrics suggest that both his overall stuff and command declined. That said, his command and stamina improved as the season progressed; he posted a 2.76 ERA and 3.22 FIP in the second half, trimming his HR/9 from 1.93 per nine to 0.75.

The Yankees love the leadership Cole brings to the organization and can override his opt-out by adding another year at $36 million (effectively a five-year, $180 million deal). That seems more likely than them going longer (and possibly higher) for a younger top-tier alternative. Of those alternatives, only Snell throws as hard or misses as many bats, but his durability, stamina and command are concerns. – JJ

Ben’s Take
It’s every year with this guy! And by that, I mean I had a hard time approximating Snell’s market last year, and this offseason isn’t going to be any easier. Snell was electric in his 104 innings of work this season. That’s kind of the problem. This year, he got a late start and dealt with injury issues. It’s not always that specific combination, but this was Snell’s ninth big league season, and he’s only hit 180 innings twice. He did win Cy Youngs in both of those seasons, though. It’s a tough nut to crack.

A few years ago, teams started using short-term, high-dollar contracts as a way to compensate pitchers with spectacular talent but longevity concerns. Sure, plenty of those deals were for older starters, but Snell somewhat fits the bill; he’ll be 32 next season, and teams will likely hesitate to make a long-term commitment to someone with his injury history. But $100 million-plus over three years could make everyone happy. Snell gets a de facto four-year deal that makes up for last year’s pillow contract. His team gets one of the best pitchers in the game, right this instant. There are no shortage of contenders looking for one more elite starter; Snell is the obvious choice for a team that isn’t interested in the Burnes sweepstakes.

Player Notes
After winning his second Cy Young award and ERA title in 2023, Snell appeared primed for a big payday, but his major league-high 13.3% walk rate and concerns about both his inability to pitch deep into games and his durability cooled his market. Ultimately, he settled for a two-year, $62 million deal with the Giants in mid-March, then had a hard time gaining momentum in the first half due to his late start and separate IL stints for adductor and groin strains. Through June, he’d thrown just 23.2 innings with an unsightly 9.65 ERA.

In July, after tweaking his delivery, Snell cut back on his slider usage in favor of his curve (a switch that’s gone in both directions several times in his career), and found his groove. From July 9 onward, he made 14 starts totaling 80.1 innings, delivering a 1.23 ERA and 1.77 FIP, while striking out 38.1% and walking 10%. He no-hit the Reds on August 2 — his first time lasting at least eight innings in his major league career — and had five other starts of six or more innings with two hits or fewer allowed, including one on July 27 against the Rockies when he struck out a career-high 15. If you had an opt-out clause in your contract, you’d exercise it after that kind of run, too. – JJ

Ben’s Take
Fried doesn’t throw as hard as Snell. He doesn’t record as many strikeouts. He walks fewer batters. He feels like more of a steady, low-volatility option. But similarly, he’s only hit 180 innings pitched once in his career, thanks to a mixture of short starts and minor injuries. In fact, Snell is a fairly good comparison in broad terms: Since Fried’s debut in 2017, he’s thrown 120 fewer innings than Snell and posted similar run prevention numbers.

No surprise, then, that I rank them similarly. Aaron Nola is probably the upside here, but he had shown far more durability than Fried, and similar run prevention skills, before signing a seven-year deal last offseason. I think Fried will get a higher AAV over fewer years as a result. If there’s a risk to my projection here, though, it’s to the high side. Fried is one of only three starters who feel like slam dunk options at the top of the class (four if you count Cole), so you could imagine a team that missed their first-choice ace pivoting to Fried and paying up to secure him.

Player Notes
Fried has been consistently excellent since his first full season in 2019, and he has the traditional stats, the underlying metrics, and the trophy case to prove it. Over the past six seasons, only one other pitcher has thrown more innings with a lower ERA and racked up more wins: Gerrit Cole. Fried’s 18.4 pitching WAR also ranks 12th over that span. He’s a two-time All-Star, a three-time All-MLB selection, and a three-time Gold Glover, to boot.

Forearm issues have plagued him in each of the past two seasons, but Fried came back strong both times. In 2023, he missed several months with a forearm strain but returned to dominate down the stretch. His IL stint was significantly shorter this season; he only missed a few starts with nerve irritation. Overall, it was another first-rate campaign for Fried. His typical pinpoint control wasn’t always there, but more sinkers and a new-look sweepery slider helped boost his groundball rate to a full-season career high. The end result was a 3.25 ERA, a 3.33 FIP and 3.4 WAR over 29 starts.

No one would call Fried a workhorse, but he’s qualified for the ERA title in four of the past six years and has never had a bad season. His over-30-ness, history of forearm injuries, and the qualifying offer he’s all but certain to receive will diminish his earning potential this winter. Still, Fried would make a great no. 2 on any contender and should get paid as such. – LM

Ben’s Take
Flaherty is a tier down from the pitchers above him. His market is going to come down to how much teams are willing to believe his resurgent 2024 and high talent level make up for years of inconsistency. He was downright bad at the end of his tenure in St. Louis, but plenty of that was due to injury. He intermittently looked the part in the playoffs this year, though his overall numbers were lackluster. The main reason I have him this high on the list is that he’s 29 and currently pitching well. That’s a rare combination on the free agency market.

My guess is that a team that thinks they’re good at pitch design will sign Flaherty. He has good feel for spin, but he hasn’t quite harnessed his slider in the years since his dominant 2019. It also looks to me like he’s starting to rediscover his fastball shape; he got more vertical break on it this year and finally missed a few bats after years of it getting tattooed.

There are passable third starters available further down the list, but none of them have Flaherty’s upside. Can you see him as the capable number two starter for a playoff team for the next half decade? I certainly can. I think that potential will convince someone to separate, in years and dollars, from the next group of options. I’d be very interested in making that bet if I were a team that sees something in Flaherty’s pitch-level data.

Player Notes
Flaherty’s career to date mirrors his performance with the Dodgers in the 2024 postseason, where he intermingled a couple of pretty solid starts with a few shakier ones. In the eight seasons he’s pitched in the big leagues, his performance has oscillated back and forth, with the right-hander failing to stack more than two good seasons consecutively before throwing a clunker on the pile. Three teams have chosen to acquire Flaherty in the last two years, each of them hoping to get the version who strikes out 11 batters per 9 IP while walking fewer than three and posting a sub-80 ERA-. They want the Flaherty who gets whiffs both in and out of the zone and avoids hard contact, but too frequently they get the Flaherty who only strikes out eight batters per 9 IP while walking five and letting his ERA- creep up around 110. This version throws a fastball with less bite, experiences a velo dip across the board, picks up fewer chases on pitches out of the zone, and gets knocked around more than you’d like.

More teams might be tempted to get into the see-saw business with Flaherty had he established himself as an innings eater, but he’s only topped 150 IP in a season three times in his career and he’s failed to reach the 100-inning mark in just as many instances. As it stands, Flaherty is a wild card, but not the kind used freely or always to the benefit of the holder. He’s more of a reverse-draw-four-swap-hands-with-the-person-to-your-left type. That’s not without value, but exactly how much can be hard to predict. – KO

Ben’s Take
Yeah yeah, we get it, Ben likes shortstops. Kim is a worthy consolation prize for a contender that misses out on Adames. He’s the same age and plays similarly excellent defense. He gets on base at a similar clip. The sticking points are power and health; he’s missed significant time in two of four seasons in the majors, and he’s never shown even league average power for a full season.

None of those are disqualifying issues. Plus defensive shortstops with league average offensive production don’t grow on trees, and Kim might be a better hitter outside of Petco, a park that severely limits gap-to-gap doubles hitters like him. One wrench in the works is shoulder surgery; he had a small labrum tear repaired last month and won’t be ready to play until the spring. That makes a pillow contract – two years with an opt out after the first – a real possibility. But I think that Kim’s consistent track record and age are good enough reasons to give him a longer deal while the competition for him is less fierce. Twenty million dollars isn’t nothing, but it’s an eminently reasonable rate to fill a premium defensive spot with a solid hitter.

Player Notes
Kim was the 41st pick in the 2014 KBO Draft and it only took him a year to establish himself as one of the better players in Korea’s pro league. From 2015 to 2019, he averaged 20 homers annually and played great shortstop defense for the then-Nexen Heroes. In 2020, Kim hit a new gear and slashed .306/.397/.523 with 30 homers and 21 steals in just 138 games. It became his platform season for a leap to MLB. Despite valid concerns about the way his offense would translate against MLB pitching, Kim was generally viewed as a viable big league shortstop defender with a utilityman’s floor. He and the Padres agreed to a four-year, $28 million deal just before New Year’s Eve.

The deal was a huge boon for the Padres. Though his power didn’t really translate to the MLB game, Kim’s contact ability and feel for the strike zone have been enough to make him a roughly average big league hitter during his four years in San Diego. Kim has made a bigger impact on defense. His versatility and skill were both needed as other Padres dealt with injuries or suspensions during the last several years. On a roster full of shortstops, Kim became the shortstop, and he was deployed there exclusively in 2024 whenever he was healthy.

Kim is a career .242/.326/.380 hitter across four years in San Diego and is a career 78-for-95 in stolen base attempts. He might not be a power-hitting game-changer, but he’s a super stable everyday shortstop who should still be a good utilityman if his offense falls off toward the end of his contract. – EL

Ben’s Take
Some of my colleagues weren’t really into this ranking. Torres has a ton of question marks as he enters free agency. His defense could generously be called middling. He was a league average hitter this year, and his power absolutely collapsed. He might be a corner outfielder or first baseman before too long, and the offensive bar is meaningfully higher at those positions. He doesn’t have any obvious carrying tools, and he’s a liability on the basepaths. You can imagine Torres being a roster clogger, preventing promising prospects from coming up because he’s available but unspectacular.

That’s all true, but let’s pump the brakes a little here. This was a down season, but as recently as 2023, Torres popped 25 homers and put up a batting line that was 20% above average with peripherals to match. He has an excellent sense of the strike zone. He dealt with a series of groin injuries this year that may have sapped his power; he was swinging faster and doing more damage in the second half of the year and particularly in the playoffs.

Oh yeah, and he hasn’t turned 28 yet. An aging slugger dealing with recurring groin injuries would scare me, but I’m a lot less worried about one of the youngest free agents on the market – the youngest other than Soto, in fact. This is an above-average hitter with plenty of good years ahead of him. Both Steamer and ZiPS would put him even higher up the list than I have him. This is just a bet on talent, and on fighting the urge to knock a guy for not living up to his prospect pedigree.

Player Notes
Torres’ overall numbers were unremarkable (.257/.330/.378, 104 wRC+), but he dug himself out of a deep, early slump to nose his way above average. He produced just a 58 wRC+ before hitting his first homer on May 2, and batted .231/.307/.347 (88 wRC+) with eight homers through the first half. Over the All-Star break, he shored up his swing at a Tampa hitting facility that he co-owns; Statcast’s bat tracking data tells us he shortened his swing slightly, added a bit of bat speed and tapped into his fast swing more frequently, improving his quality of contact. He hit .292/.361/.419 (124 wRC+) in the second half while cutting his strikeout rate from 22.6% to 17.5%, and thrived upon being restored to the leadoff role; from August 16 onward, he hit .313/.386/.454. His 142 wRC+ in that span surpassed even teammate Juan Soto, and he carried that momentum into October.

Torres is an above-average producer when he’s hitting 25 homers, but his power comes and goes, and he has a tendency to give back runs on the basepaths (his -4.6 baserunning runs was the majors’ sixth-lowest mark) and in the field (his -11 DRS and -5 FRV both ranked in the bottom three). Given that his annual performances have varied so much, he’s probably played himself out of a bigger contact than he might have netted a few years ago, as suitors just don’t know what to expect. – JJ

Ben’s Take
Hernández took a one-year deal with the Dodgers instead of something longer last year. Then he had perhaps his best offensive season, won the Home Run Derby, and got a World Series ring. Now he’s hitting the market in a position of strength with two of the coolest achievements in baseball checked off of his list. Sounds like a pretty nice year of work to me.

With his down 2023 now in the rear view mirror, I think that bet on himself is going to pan out marvelously. Would I want Hernández on my team on a five-year deal? I would not. Would I want him to be my best player? I would not. But keep him out of Seattle, and it seems pretty clear that he’ll hit a ton. He’s right on the left field/DH border as a defender, and he’s hardly a swashbuckling baserunner, but 30 bombs and a heaping helping of doubles feels like a safe bet.

Plenty of teams have internal options who can give them a little power from the easy defensive positions. Not many teams have options who can give them this kind of power, though. Hernández is unquestionably in an unstable position as a bat-only corner guy. I just think his offense is good enough that he’ll have no shortage of suitors, even if his deal ends up being fairly short thanks to his age.

Player Notes
Hernández complained that he had trouble picking up pitches at T-Mobile Park during his one-year stopover in Seattle, but he didn’t seem to have much trouble with the Dodgers, either in Chavez Ravine or elsewhere. He hit .272/.339/.501 for a 134 wRC+, right on par with his 2020–22 level with the Blue Jays; he set a career high in homers (33), matched his career high in steals (12), and posted his second-highest WAR (3.5). Lending credence to his complaint about sight lines is that Hernandez’s chase rate spiked to a career-high 34.5% in 2023 but fell back to 29.2% last year, again right in that 2020–22 range; meanwhile, both his walk and strikeout rates improved.

Particularly when the likes of Mookie Betts and Max Muncy were down with injuries, Hernández came up big for the Dodgers again and again, and few will forget his postseason contributions, which in the World Series included a perfect throw to nail Giancarlo Stanton at the plate in Game 3 and a game-tying two-run double in the clinching Game 5. On the subject of defense, he had some very bad numbers in left field (-8 DRS and a career-low -11 FRV) but good ones in right (5 DRS, 0 FRV). His real level probably lies somewhere in between, but even if he’s not going to win a Gold Glove, he might well help a team win a World Series. – JJ

Ben’s Take
I’m fairly certain that Santander will get a larger contract than the two guys ahead of him. There’s a lot of smoke around him getting a long-term deal, and teams pay for power in free agency. He’s been excellent offensively three seasons in a row now, and he just had a 44-homer outburst of a walk year. That sounds a lot like a top-tier free agent to me.

That’s not to say there are no red flags. Santander is a below-average corner outfielder, and trending downward. He’s one of the slowest non-catchers in the sport already, and he’s only 30. He’s completely maxed out in terms of lifting and pulling; we’re talking about Isaac Paredes levels of pulled fly balls here. Those homers feel a little fluky, too. He only hit 25 doubles, and posted a wild HR/FB ratio that he’s unlikely to repeat. I’m not saying his offense is a house of cards, but if he’s more of a 30-homer guy next year, we’re down to a 105-110 wRC+ pretty quickly.

Can Santander contribute to a great team? Obviously. I’d want him on my team, too, in plenty of circumstances. But I expect that he’ll get a bigger guarantee than Teoscar Hernández, and I want the other side of that trade every time. I like Santander, but I think that the market likes him more than I do. This ranking and contract estimate reflect that.

Player Notes
When featuring him in our Talks Hitting series back in September, I wrote that Santander might be the most underrated hitter in the American League. That might be true of fans outside of Baltimore, but decision-makers in major league front offices certainly know who he is. In this year’s free agent class, only Pete Alonso has left the yard more times (120) than Santander over the past three seasons. The switch-hitting outfielder launched 105 home runs across that span, including a career-high 44 in the just-completed campaign.

Power is Santander’s calling card, but the 30-year-old (as of mid-October) Margarita, Venezuela native boasts other appealing attributes as well. One of them is reliability. A consistent cog in the Baltimore Orioles lineup, Santander played in 152, 153, and 155 games in the past three seasons respectively, logging a 124 wRC+ and a .340 wOBA along the way. Moreover, he led his team in hits, doubles, runs scored, and RBI. Often overshadowed by the club’s young stars, Santander provided steady punch for the O’s. While not exactly defensively gifted, he has nonetheless been solid enough to be stationed in right field on a near-daily basis.

How much will teams value the 2016 Rule 5 draft acquisition’s skill set when making contract offers this offseason? If they ignore the batting averages and OBPs — this year’s slash line was .235/.308/.506 — and focus on the power and reliability, the answer is quite a lot. In all likelihood, Santander will be far less underrated on the open market than he has been in the public eye. – DL

Ben’s Take
This is the hardest I’ve ever worked on a contract projection, because I had a ton of trouble squaring up Alonso’s purported market with my projection-based forecasting. I don’t quite buy it, but I’ve heard $200 million bandied about as a feasible contract, and I just can’t make the numbers add up to that on my side, no matter how I contort them.

Is Alonso a great hitter? Indubitably. He’s got 40-homer power and enough plate discipline to keep his strikeouts under control while he does it. He’s been 30% above average offensively for his career, and 21% over the past two years. He’ll probably hit a ton of homers for the foreseeable future. I’m just not seeing how you get from that – the Anthony Santander starter package, more or less, only with better plate discipline – to a contract that pays him like one of the very best in the game.

My projection here is meaningfully higher than a model would spit out. I think that the Mets will tack several extra years on the end of the deal to give him a reasonable total while keeping the average annual value down. Alonso just looks like someone who we’ll see in promotional spots shooting the breeze with Mr. Met for the foreseeable future, and the best way to ensure that is with a contract offer that leaves no doubt where he’ll go. But there’s a big clash between public perception and modeled performance here, and I’m very curious to see where it shakes out.

Player Notes
If only this were happening two years earlier. Over his first four seasons with the Mets, Alonso slugged a big league-best 146 home runs and ran a 137 wRC+, 12th-best among qualified hitters. His 12.4 WAR ranked fourth among first basemen. Over the past two years, Alonso has been a solid hitter, but a 121 wRC+ and below-average defense at first translates to just 4.9 WAR. All of sudden, Alonso isn’t the game’s preeminent home run hitter. He’s a slugger with sagging numbers who will soon be on the wrong side of the 30.

Or at least that’s one way of looking at things. Alonso is hands-down the best first baseman on the market. He’s never posted a wRC+ below 120. After a rough start to 2024, he put up a 130 wRC+ in the second half and went ballistic in the playoffs. Alonso still hits the ball plenty hard, takes his walks, and makes enough contact. His step back can mostly be attributed to his groundball and strikeout rates creeping up. The latter is happening largely because he’s been much more passive on pitches in the zone. In 2024, Alonso swung at just 66% of pitches over the heart of the plate, which put him in the sixth percentile of all hitters (minimum 300 such pitches). That sounds fixable. Whoever signs Alonso will be paying for his decline years, but they’ll be getting one of the game’s biggest and most lovable power bats in the meantime. – DA

Ben’s Take
When you’re think of betting on upside, Bieber belongs right up there with Burnes and Snell in terms of best-case outcomes. Unlike those guys, his Cy Young came in the shortened 2020 season, but his performance that year was downright dominant, and his career numbers are just as good as anyone in this class. He also threw 12 innings this year before having Tommy John surgery, so uh, yeah.

I’m not quite sure what to do with Bieber’s contract projection. I think he’ll take an incentive-laden deal with opt outs and escalators that gives him a chance to either dip back into the market next winter or at least get paid a good deal more if he’s good in 2025. That’s not really compatible with the way I do estimates here, since I’m focusing on guaranteed money. You can take the projection here with a giant implied asterisk.

Don’t put that asterisk on my ranking, though. I have Bieber here because I think that giving him a two-year deal is one of the highest expected value deals available in free agency this offseason. You can’t just go get pitchers like this. They aren’t available. Teams go absolutely bananas trading for dominant arms every year, and there are never enough to go around. Bieber’s injury creates a lot of uncertainty, and it probably means he’ll sign a short-term deal. But more and more, the juice in free agency is in two places: bulk pitching and irreplaceable talents. Farm systems increasingly fill in the rest. Bieber has the potential to provide irreplaceable pitching. That’s enough to make me interested even with the injury risk.

Player Notes
Bieber has enjoyed success despite fluctuating fastball velocity and a variety of arm issues. After sitting 93-94 mph from 2019-20, he averaged 92.5 mph in 2021 before suffering a shoulder injury that led to a multi-month absence. Then he came out of the gate in 2022 sitting 90-91. The velo dip led to a sharp decline in the heater’s performance (a .060 increase in opponent xwOBA), but he was still very effective overall due to his excellent arsenal of breaking balls. He threw 200 innings that season, good for 4.8 WAR despite the velocity dip. In 2023, when his average fastball velo worked its way back up to 92 in early July, elbow inflammation led to a prolonged absence.

This season, Bieber came out looking fantastic. He consistently hit 93 in his first start and had his typical pinpoint command, but his elbow failed him right after that, requiring Tommy John. You can only compensate for so long before your body tells you no more. Hopefully the surgery puts his injury troubles behind him, but where his fastball velo lands post-TJ will likely determine whether or not he returns as a bonafide ace. The good news is that his breaking balls have remained consistent even as his fastball has fluctuated – those are his bread and butter. If he can comfortably sit above 92 again, great. But if not, the hope is that Bieber retains the excellent command and breaking ball prowess that powered his success in recent seasons. – ER

Ben’s Take
Another upside bet headlines the top of this group of arms. Manaea changed his delivery mid-season and looked better with a low, Chris Sale-esque release point. He was pretty clearly the Mets’ best pitcher by the time the playoffs rolled around. It’s always felt like this outcome – borderline All-Star starter with nasty stuff and iffy command – was a possibility with Manaea. The question now is how much his long-term trajectory has changed based on the new information we learned this year.

Let’s be reasonable: Even with his new delivery, Manaea wasn’t your typical ace. His FIP actually increased after he changed deliveries, and his strikeout rate didn’t budge overmuch; it’s amazing how much better you look when you allow a .214 BABIP in the second half of the season. True, his stuff graded out better, but while his delivery certainly resembles Sale’s now, his production doesn’t.

I’d still take Manaea over the mid-30s pitchers ranked below him here. It’s part of my approach to this class of free agents – I want the guys who have at least a decent shot at being rotation mainstays in the playoffs. Manaea fits the bill, and I think that three years is about right for a contract. There are definitely other options for teams looking for this archetype, but my estimate reflects the fact that I’d pay up a hair to get Manaea over the rest.

Player Notes
Manaea was on this list last season, but he was way lower, and the reason for his rise gives him the chance to have the most interesting free agency of any player ranked here. He’s a fierce competitor and a veteran with playoff experience, but it all comes down to a simple question: How much do you believe in 12 starts?

You know the story: On July 25, Chris Sale shut down the Mets to the tune of two hits over 7.1 innings. On July 30, Manaea decided to become Chris Sale. He dropped his arm angle, moved all the way over to the first base side of the rubber, and turned himself into a sinker/sweeper guy. For all we know, he even cut up some jerseys, just to really immerse himself in the role. Oh, and he pitched way better, too. His walk and hard-hit rates fell. His strikeout and groundball rates rose. His ERA dropped to 3.09, his FIP to 3.35. Of course, the market might wonder how much this new version of Manaea was the result of a BABIP that fell from .270 to .207. And that’s the thing: Although he’s spent nine years in the big leagues and made nearly 200 starts, whichever team signs Manaea is, in some sense, landing a 32-year-old pitcher without much track record to go on. – DA

Ben’s Take
Kikuchi has always had a ton of promise. Lefties with fastballs this explosive don’t grow on trees, and most of the ones who do exist are relievers. He’s been a pitch modeling darling for years, and the shape of his four-seamer just keeps improving. His bullet slider is a worthy running mate, and both of those pitches looked as good as ever in 2024. The only difference? The results showed up.

If you’ve always been a believer, the story makes too much sense. This guy has always looked the part. Now he’s getting the results he deserves. But realistically, you have to look at Kikuchi’s 2024 similar to how you view Manaea’s. The results were awesome – to be fair, he still had an ERA above 4.00, but the peripherals were uniformly great and he was dominant after being traded to Houston — but the future is still in question. Do three months of spectacular results change the calculus for a guy with a career 4.57 ERA?

They do for me, and I think they will for a lot of teams. Kikuchi isn’t going to sign a long-term deal, and he doesn’t have the results to merit one of those high-AAV deals that I think Snell will receive. But I’ve thought Kikuchi was better than his results for a while now, and I think he’ll command a deal that reflects his recent form rather than his career numbers.

Player Notes
Kikuchi is a literal shapeshifter. In 2020, his primary pitch was the cutter; by 2023, he’d stopped throwing it entirely. As his cutter usage decreased and then disappeared, the shape of his slider changed; originally more of a death ball, it now looks more like a gyro slider with some baby sweep. From year to year and even from month to month, Kikuchi adjusts which pitches he favors and how those pitches move.

Kikuchi’s latest evolution might be his best yet. As a Blue Jay in 2024, his curveball was his second-most used pitch; after he was traded to the Astros, his curveball nearly disappeared, and he threw his slider, previously a tertiary offering, nearly as often as the heater. It is hard to argue with the results: Kikuchi logged a 4.75 ERA in Toronto and a 2.70 ERA in Houston, with his strikeout rate increasing by five percentage points in the process. Because the slider shape is relatively gyro-y, it works as a weapon against lefties and righties alike; the lack of significant horizontal or vertical movement on the pitch also helps with Kikuchi’s command, which, like Kikuchi’s arsenal, has varied wildly across his career.

Will Kikuchi strike out 31.8% of hitters with a sub-3.00 FIP in 2025, as he did as an Astro? That seems unlikely. It figures that either hitters will acclimate to Kikuchi’s heavy fastball/slider approach, or that Kikuchi, ever the tinkerer, will move on to a new plan. But even if the level lowers a bit, the baseline is high quality. Kikuchi throws one of the best four-seam fastballs in the sport, generating above-average velocity and carry from a low release height with seven feet of extension. Heading into his age-34 season, a three year deal with a Chris Bassitt-esque AAV (credit to Jon Becker for the comparison) feels appropriate. – MR

Ben’s Take
I’m sure that you’re about as tired of reading this copy as I am of writing it, but Eovaldi is in his mid-30s, and he’s a credible playoff starter with some intriguing qualities. His splitter is delightfully baffling. He barely walks anyone. He isn’t the most durable pitcher in the world, but he’s been mostly healthy for the past half decade. No one’s going to feel despair in the pit of their stomach when Eovaldi takes the ball in October.

Is it all gravy? Definitely not. He’ll turn 35 next February, and it’s not like he has a recent string of dominance you can hope will carry over. Our projection systems are inherently pessimistic about starters at this point in their career, because one injury might be all she wrote. That’s a lot scarier when you don’t have some offsetting reason to believe the pitcher can improve, which is why I have Eovaldi at the bottom of this group.

That said, he’s still going to get a similar deal to the rest of this cluster, and he should. Hopefuls and juggernauts alike are going to look at their rosters, count up the starts and innings, and start making calls to starters. There just aren’t enough of either to go around, and paying Eovaldi like a mid-level starter makes a lot of sense given that all he’s done for years is produce exactly like one.

Player Notes
The guy whose elbow wouldn’t stay attached for most of his 20s has turned into (by modern standards) a fairly durable mid-rotation starter. Eovaldi has made at least 20 starts in nine of his 11 non-pandemic-shortened full seasons. Over two seasons in Texas, Eovaldi hasn’t gone back to his fourth-place Cy Young form of 2021, but he’s averaged 2.6 WAR in 27 starts a year, with an ERA of 3.72 and a strikeout rate of 23.4%. In a world where no. 4 starters with a track record of 150-inning seasons can get close to $20 million a year, that’s a valuable skill.

All the more so because Eovaldi can also hack it in the playoffs, where he was a key part of championship teams in both Texas and Boston. The 34-year-old righty is now eighth among active pitchers with 79.2 career postseason innings, and the only active starters with a better ERA in 50 or more playoff innings are Gerrit Cole and Zack Wheeler (both of whom are considerably better-compensated).

Most of the time, descriptors like “playoff experience,” “veteran presence,” and “durability” are backhanded compliments for a starter. If a team wants those things without the subtext being, “but he kinda stinks,” Eovaldi is a great option. – MB

Ben’s Take
The market for Walker intrigues me. Every time I think I have it pinned, I discover another angle. He probably shouldn’t get that much as a 33-year-old first baseman, right? Well, he’s been basically Pete Alonso with the bat for the past three years, and he plays Gold Glove defense. Like, actual difference-making first base defense: We have him 40 runs better than Alonso over that stretch. Okay, so maybe he should get a giant sack of money.

Only, not so fast! Walker missed a month with an oblique injury this year, and he hit the ball with less authority upon returning. Time isn’t kind to late-career sluggers with injuries, and Walker is hardly a guy who can afford a downturn; even in the best offensive season of his career, he was only 22% above average. He gets a ton of value out of consistency and defense, but lower his offensive output from a 120 wRC+ to a 110, and everything looks a lot worse.

I’ve projected a three-year deal here, but I think an equally likely solution is that Walker receives and accepts a qualifying offer, as Jon Becker mentioned in his QO preview. I think that’s a win-win outcome, because he does feel like a great fit for Arizona, and his market is going to be very dependent on team context. Not everyone needs a guy who has to play first base to maximize his value; in some ways, it’s even more limiting than being DH-only. That makes a QO very tempting; it’s a lot of money, and an uncertain market out there if he declines it.

Player Notes
Walker had posted a 116 wRC+ at Norfolk across the previous two full seasons when the Orioles designated him for assignment in the spring of 2017, just before he turned 26. Over the course of the next month, he changed organizations four times before finally settling in Arizona. A fractured jaw kept him from establishing himself in the early post-Goldschmidt era and it wasn’t until 2019 that Walker finally broke out, with the pandemic and recurring oblique injuries in 2021 obscuring his step forward. In 2022, Walker finally got to have a healthy, full-season sequel, and he responded by clubbing a career-high 36 home runs while he and the Diamondbacks improved as a group throughout the year.

Since 2022, the 33-year-old Walker has been a consistent heart-of-the-order force in Arizona, providing 30-homer power and perhaps the best first base defense in baseball (an aspect of Walker’s game that took a leap around age 30). He’s sixth among first basemen in WAR since 2022 and third in home runs. He likely would have had a third consecutive 30-homer season in 2024 if not for yet another oblique strain, which kept him out for all of August. He enters free agency as a .250/.330/.463 career hitter and will turn 34 just before the start of the 2024 season. – EL

Ben’s Take
The first reliever on the list, but certainly not the last. Scott won’t approach the Josh Hader deal from last year, but he’s the best closer available, and crucially for him, he’s relatively young. I think he’s going to get a lengthy deal as a result. Only three relievers have signed deals of four or more years at $10 million or more per year over the past four years, so this is rarefied air.

The combination of age and potential should push teams to that fourth year, though. Scott was one of the best relievers in the game this season, and he was even better in 2023. There’s never been any question about his stuff, but he used to walk 15-20% of opposing batters. In the 8-12% range, his game works much better. His fastball is downright preposterous, and I’m not even sure it’s his best pitch.

I don’t feel even a little bit confident in projecting a landing spot for Scott. Everyone needs a guy like this. The only question is salary space, and I suppose there’s some chance that teams with established closers don’t want to mess up their current situation by adding another lights-out arm. But those aren’t meaningful problems for Scott; teams that can’t spend $15 million a year for a great reliever and teams that think they only want one elite bullpen arm aren’t his target market anyway. He’s going to get the most money of any reliever this year and richly deserve it.

Player Notes
After a second straight productive season, I think it’s now fair to say that Scott’s transition from hard-throwing project to dominant lefty reliever is officially complete. Scott’s walks did tick up a bit this year, but a pitcher’s first-strike percentage is one of the leading indicators of his future walk rate, and Scott’s 67.7% in 2024 was well above the 61.5% league average — this after it being a real problem for him through 2022.

Scott is a fairly straightforward fastball/slider reliever who hits the high 90s, velocity that lands him in the top five for both pitches among southpaw relievers. Despite not having a lot of experience as a closer — with the Marlins waiting until the end of 2023 to use him in that role and the Padres not seeing a need to demote Robert Suarez — he’s our highest-ranked reliever and probably the one with the highest upside. He’s likely to be the closer on his next team from day one. – DS

Ben’s Take
Treinen hasn’t pitched much in the last few years. He missed most of 2022 and all of 2023. He’ll turn 37 during the season next year. His velocity and stuff are both way down, which seems reasonable enough given the above. If you sign Treinen, you’re chasing his past greatness rather than betting on something new developing.

Still, that feels like a pretty wise bet to me. No one’s suggesting an eight-figure deal here. He’s not going to be the face of the franchise for a decade. If a team gives Treinen a contract and he isn’t very good, the season is hardly ruined. So why not pay top-of-market reliever rates on a short deal for a guy who still looks absolutely unhittable, and who got better as the season went on?

How could it go wrong? So many ways. But it could also go right in a lot of ways. Treinen was just the best reliever on a team that won the World Series thanks in large part to its bullpen. Even Treinen’s diminished stuff is filthy. If you’re looking for a reliever to be great in 2025 – and that’s how you should be thinking about relievers, because their career trajectories are too volatile to think long-term – Treinen is who you want.

Player Notes
Treinen was dominant by just about every measure in 2024, producing a 1.93 ERA, a 30.4% strikeout rate, and 1.0 WAR. Injuries limited him to just 46.2 innings, but that’s a whole lot better than the previous two years, which saw shoulder injuries keep him off the field almost entirely. Fragility and aging concerns will still hurt his market to some degree, but his sheer dominance this season (and in the playoffs) should help to alleviate those apprehensions.

While just as effective, the 2024 version of Treinen looked slightly different than before. Not only was his velocity down two to three ticks, but he gave up considerably more fly balls and considerably fewer grounders, especially early in the season. Despite the change in his batted ball distribution, he was still a potent sinker-sweeper righty, using his sinker to generate plenty of weak contact and his sweeper to induce plenty of whiffs. His cutter remains his primary pitch against opposite-handed hitters, but he threw fewer cutters and more sinkers to lefties in 2024. It proved to be a wise adjustment. Take this with the customary small sample size grain of salt, but according to both FIP and xFIP, Treinen was more effective against lefties than righties for the first time in his career.

Considering his age, he may have to settle for a one-year deal. But given how well he pitched in 2024, the AAV on that deal should be one of the highest for a reliever in this year’s free agent class. – LM

Ben’s Take
The more things change, the more they stay the same. O’Neill flashed the potential to be an absolute star this year with a torrid April. When he’s on, he has it all: light tower power, feel for the strike zone, and an approach that converts those two things into homers and line drive doubles in spades.

Of course, O’Neill’s game leads to hellacious slumps too. He had 82 plate appearances in May and struck out 36 times. He missed time due to a leg infection, finger inflammation, a head-to-head collision, and a disappointingly normal knee injury. That’s how O’Neill’s career has gone; breathtaking highs and bizarre lows in alternating waves. He’s a Gold Glove winner and was also one of the worst outfielders in baseball this year. He has a keen sense of the strike zone and a career 30% strikeout rate. The only constant is change.

I don’t think O’Neill is going to break the bank, but even with all that up and down, he put together a solid season this year. His power is Stantonian. He walks a lot. There’s a lot to like here. Sure, he’s a corner outfielder, but I’m not expecting a bank-breaking deal. For three years and some reasonable annual value, O’Neill represents a huge upgrade from your average Quad-A corner outfielder. I see him as a near-everyday starter on a team with a few solid backups but no real mashers out there.

Player Notes
Two aspects of O’Neill’s first foray into free agency seem especially pertinent. One is his durability, or lack thereof; not only did the 29-year-old outfielder play in just 113 games this season, it was his highest total since 2021. The other is the current roster composition of the club he played for in 2024. Given a relative dearth of right-handed bats — particularly those with power — the Red Sox arguably have a greater need for O’Neill than any of his other potential suitors.

Acquired by Boston from the St. Louis Cardinals last December in exchange for Nick Robertson and Victor Santos, O’Neill hit a team-best 31 home runs while logging a healthy 131 wRC+, so he was certainly productive when fit and able (albeit in a streaky manner). But again, staying on the field has been an issue for the Burnaby, British Columbia native. This past season’s maladies included right knee inflammation, a left leg infection, and a concussion following an outfield collision. His toughness isn’t in question — O’Neill has a bodybuilder’s physique and a hard-nosed demeanor that suggests he can eat nails — but for whatever reason, trips to the injured list have been an annual occurrence.

Wherever O’Neill ends up landing this offseason, he promises to provide plus power — his résumé also includes a 34-home run campaign with the Cardinals, that in his lone season with 500 or more plate appearances — as well as generally good defense in an outfield corner. Be it Boston or elsewhere, he will simply need to stay healthy. – DL

Ben’s Take
Profar had a career year in 2024, only a season after he was one of the worst players in the majors. His season came out of nowhere, and his improvement was consistent; name an offensive statistic, and he got better at it. He chased less, made contact more frequently, and pulled off the enviable one-two punch of posting his lowest swinging strike rate since 2016 and the highest barrel rate of his career. He even kept it going; after a brief August swoon, he was back to his usual tricks in September before a brief and disappointing playoff trip.

Trying to figure out what Profar will do next feels more or less impossible. “Just be better at everything” isn’t something you see everyday, and the analysis here is simultaneously simple and baffling. If he continues to set new career standards across the board, in nearly every aspect of the game, he’s an All-Star. If he reverts to career norms, he’s a role player. The projection systems we use are united: They think he’s going to be league average going forward.

That’s an understandable prediction, and to that I say, yeah, fair enough. I also say that AJ Preller is going to give Profar a three-year deal anyway, and I probably would too. I’m not expecting a repeat, but I’m also willing to bet on volatility with a deal like this. If Profar falls off, eh, the price was right. If he’s even close to his 2024 production, this contract will feel like a steal. Giving a guy $15 million a year just isn’t an exorbitant contract these days.

Player Notes
Profar is an odd case in that betting on him to have an All-Star season this year would have seemed like a very odd prediction in 2023, but not at all weird a decade ago. Scouted as both a shortstop and a pitcher, Profar was one of the top prospects in baseball in the early 2010s, but shoulder problems cost him two key developmental years, and by the time he got back on track, he was more of a fourth outfielder/fringe starter type. Things got so low for Profar that he was released by the Rockies in August of 2023 after posting -1.7 WAR. He finished that season with the Padres and re-signed for one year at $1 million.

To get more bang out of a million bucks, you’d need to abuse either a time machine or a sports almanac pilfered by Biff Tannen. Starting for the Padres mainly because they didn’t have a better option, Profar finished April with a .917 OPS, a mark that was still hovering around .900 by the time the All-Star game rolled around (he made the team for the first time). His numbers dropped off a bit in the second half, but even a .243/.360/.434 line was quite playable with league-wide offense so low.

The big question is whether Profar can do it again, and it’s hard to find something obvious that says he can’t. There was neither a suspiciously high BABIP fueling his numbers, nor a strange one-year blip in his defensive metrics. He legitimately hit the ball a good deal harder than he previously had in the majors, and he didn’t sacrifice contact to do it; his contact numbers were actually the best of his career! Profar’s long-term track record and age will limit his payday, but I don’t see any reason to be especially pessimistic about him for the next few years. – DS

Ben’s Take
Martinez was quietly one of the best starters in baseball after the Reds moved him (back) into the starting rotation. He accumulated the fifth-most WAR, and his ERA beat his FIP by nearly a run over that stretch. He’s due a raise from last year’s contract, which valued him like a reliever. The question isn’t whether he’ll get more money, it’s how many years he’ll get it for.

I’m expecting a high-ish salary over two years, which feels like a fair deal to me. There’s no guarantee Martinez will stick as a starter, but he’s a pretty good reliever too. You can’t bet on a ton of longevity for a 34-year-old who just hit a career-high workload, but on a two-year deal, you don’t have to. Is it worrisome that Martinez throws six pitches and our stuff models dislike five of them? Sure, but he’s got great command; he can live with more balls in play and fewer strikeouts so long as he’s barely walking anyone.

I’d be really interested in Martinez if I were a contender. He’s not far below the cluster of mid-rotation starters (Manaea to Eovaldi) who all figure to get bigger paydays. We already know he’s good in relief, just in case he doesn’t work out as a starter. And on a two-year window, I’m less worried about the bottom falling out. When these kitchen-sink starters run out of steam, it can get ugly quickly, but on a deal this short, that’s an acceptable risk to take.

Player Notes
Martinez could easily be this year’s Seth Lugo, a veteran with a deep arsenal transitioning back to starting after logging some mid-career bullpen time. A command artist with a true six-pitch mix, Martinez low-key dominated hitters in 2024, ranking above the 95th percentile in terms of chase rate, walk rate, and limiting hard contact, all while handling 142.1 innings in a swingman role. (A high chase rate and low whiff rate seems like a good combination for inducing weak contact.)

Martinez doesn’t blow hitters away — his four-seam fastball sits around 93 mph — but he deceives them with a collection of pitches that all look roughly the same out of the hand. In other words, good luck telling Martinez’s fastball apart from his cutter… or his sinker or changeup or slider or curveball, especially when he throws each of those pitches with roughly equal frequency.

The changeup is Martinez’s best pitch. Because a hitter must be prepared for each of his three fastballs, Martinez’s string-pulling works incredibly well. Of the pitchers who threw at least 300 changeups in 2024, Martinez ranked sixth in swinging strike rate.

The big question: Will Martinez’s command gains persist? His George Kirby-esque walk rate of 3.2% was by far the lowest of his career. But there has been research that suggests command could actually improve as a pitcher gets older. If Martinez is a pitcher who can truly throw six pitches for a strike in any count, hitters are going to have a bad time. – MR

Ben’s Take
Buehler just authored the most iconic moment of his career with a title-clinching save in Game 5 of the World Series. Now he’s free to go wherever he wants, but I think that experience will push him back towards Los Angeles. Regardless of where he signs, however, the big question on the Buehler front is how he’ll look in 2025, not what jersey he’ll wear.

Let’s not sugarcoat it: Buehler was not good this year. He was returning from his second Tommy John surgery, and he looked rusty pretty much all season long. Even in the playoffs, he was hardly dominant. He posted a 3.60 ERA with a below-average strikeout rate in October, and it could have been worse; opponents only BABIP’ed .256 against him, and a paltry 6% of opposing fly balls left the park, a number he’s never come close to in a full season.

That’s not why you’d sign Buehler. You sign him because you think this year deserves a mulligan, coming as it did right after a major injury. Sure, his fastball looks flat right now, but it used to be one of the best in the game. The knuckle curve he leaned on all postseason looks much better than it did earlier this year. He could probably evolve into a breaking ball-heavy starter without too much trouble; his sweeping slider is also excellent.

Our projection systems want no part of Buehler. Pitchers who miss this much time and look worse when they return generally don’t pan out. I might be getting fooled by the eye test here and reading too much into the moment. But I think Buehler is a good pitcher, and I liked what I saw in October. You’ve read a lot of versions of my views on volatility in these writeups, but he might be the best embodiment of it. If you want to sign a starter with some chance of being an every-year All-Star, you probably can’t go any cheaper than Buehler. Could he flame out? Sure, but that’s baked into the price.

Player Notes
This October, Buehler looked much more like the best version of himself than he had during the regular season. His four-seamer had about 18.5 inches of induced vertical break, in line with his peak numbers, while during the regular season, that number was 16.7 inches. That difference helps to explain why hitters only managed a .305 wOBA against the pitch during the playoffs, as opposed to the .446 wOBA (!) they posted during the regular season. Yes, it was a small sample, but it’s hard to fake that kind of improvement in stuff. His entire arsenal hinges upon his fastball shape and command. His ability to get whiffs at the top of the zone and freeze hitters at the bottom unlocks his breaking ball success, especially with the vertically oriented knuckle-curve.

As Buehler continues to progress post-TJ, it’ll be interesting to see which of the changes he has made end up sticking. For the first time since 2017, he threw his sinker more than 10% of the time. That may be a tool for him to get in on the hands of right-handed hitters and induce weaker contact, while he mixes in his sweeper away and his curve under the zone. Of course, that may all depend on which organization he ends up signing with. He’s the perfect candidate for a one-year pillow contract to prove he can be effective and healthy over a full season before re-entering the market next winter in pursuit of a long-term deal. Given his postseason improvements, the line of suitors for a one-year deal may be long. – ER

Ben’s Take
I’m a little lower on Pivetta than the consensus, and I’m struggling a little to reconcile how to feel about it. He’s long been a favorite of pitching models, and he has the strikeout and walk numbers to back it up. He’s also pitched eight seasons in the majors without once putting up an ERA below 4.00. The reason? He’s wildly homer-prone, and he’s a fly ball pitcher, so the combination leads to some unavoidable blowups. Some of that is surely exacerbated by playing in Boston, but this isn’t some intermittent issue. Pivetta’s HR/FB ratio has been higher than league average in every season of his career, and he’s annually among the pitchers with the lowest groundball rates.

Combine that with a five-and-dive workload (his career high in innings pitched is 179.2 in a 33-start season), and I feel like you’re getting a slightly worse version of the pitchers ahead of him on this list. My guess is that he’ll end up with an analytically inclined team that thinks they can work with his enviable talent and limit the damage-on-contact downsides. I think that’s going to limit his market, but more in terms of the teams involved than the money. I have him getting a perfectly respectable deal, better than you’d expect for someone with his résumé. Having great stuff is really a difference-maker in a sea of similar pitching options.

Player Notes
Pivetta’s back-of-the-baseball-card numbers aren’t totally indicative of his 2024 performance. The 31-year-old right-hander had a 4.14 ERA to go with a 6-12 record, but his xERA was a meaningfully lower 3.59. Moreover, his 3.50 xFIP was lower than his 4.07 FIP, while his 28.9% strikeout rate was tops among among Red Sox pitchers who tossed at least 40 frames, and on eight occasions he got either a loss or a no-decision while allowing two or fewer runs in six or more innings.

Those things said, the Victoria, British Columbia native has never put together the type of season his pitch quality suggests he’s capable of. Pivetta sat atop the Stuff+ leaderboard this year, which was no fluke. His riding four-seamer, downer curveball, and sweeping slider — he also throws a cutter — are all formidable. At his best, he can be as challenging to hit as any hurler in the game.

Will the club that inks Pivetta to a deal this winter get the breakout pitcher he’s more than capable of becoming, or the one whose average season (excluding the truncated 2020 campaign) since coming to Boston from Philadelphia via trade has been a middling 9-10 with a 4.33 ERA and a 4.20 FIP? Eight years into a big-league career during which he’s flashed both brilliance and frustrating inconsistency, 2025 could very well be potential realized. At worst, his team will get a starter with a reputation for being both a good clubhouse presence and a student of his craft. – DL

Player Notes
Last winter, Severino was five seasons removed from his last 20-start campaign. Memories of his time as the Yankees’ ace had been dimmed by elbow, shoulder, and core muscle injuries — not what you want from a pitcher entering his 30s. So he moved across New York City on a one-year prove-it deal, and things went about as well as he could reasonably have hoped.

Severino isn’t the pitcher he was in 2017 and 2018. He’s lost a couple ticks of velocity, and has compensated by adding a sinker, a cutter, and a sweeper to his repertoire. His strikeout rate, which hit a full-season peak of 29.4% in 2017, dropped to 21.2% in 2024. So while this isn’t the pure power ace we thought he might be, Severino did make 31 starts and throw 182 innings, with an ERA- of 99, in the regular season. And he held his own in three playoff starts as well, though he might be better served as a twice-through-the-lineup-and-out guy in future postseason runs.

Severino will turn 31 early in spring training, which makes him one of the younger pitchers available in free agency. If he’s looking for a longer deal, that could carry more weight than the fact that he’s thrown one and a half effective seasons since The Big Bang Theory went off the air. But it’s a seller’s market; almost every team could use a pitcher like Severino. – MB

Player Notes
Hoffman struggled to really establish himself in the majors until he got to Philadelphia, where he added three ticks to his fastball and five to his slider. Turns out that’s a pretty solid formula for missing bats. Now he has two solid seasons as a late-inning reliever in the books, though 2023 was admittedly better than 2024. His Stuff+ scores took a step back across the board this season, but they remained above average, and he did improve his command. However, his barrel rate went from 2.5% in 2023 to 7.6% in 2024, and his slider in particular was more prone to getting knocked around. The spin and movement of the pitch itself have remained largely the same, so a mechanical adjustment in how Hoffman releases the ball is likely what robbed his breaker of its deception.

With a track record of just two strong seasons, and fluctuating consistency even within those two, Hoffman hasn’t quite established himself as a relief ace yet and probably won’t command a relief ace contract, despite an elite ability to miss bats and rack up strikeouts. He still needs a pitching coach who can help him continue to refine his mechanics and maintain the delicate balance between stuff and command. Or maybe the Rockies will seek a reunion with Hoffman and do that thing they do where they sign an upper (but not top) tier reliever to a large, multiyear deal even though their odds of contending lay beneath the rockpile in center field. – KO

Player Notes
Rewarding relievers — even those of the more established ilk — with lucrative contracts is inherently risky. As important as they’ve become in recent years, bullpen arms are anything but a sure bet in any given season. Moreover, teams have become increasingly good at discovering hidden gems who can provide shutdown innings at relatively low cost. What better example than Luke Weaver, whom the New York Yankees signed off the scrap heap and employed as their closer in the postseason.

Which brings us to the pitcher whose job Weaver wrested away in September. Clay Holmes is entering free agency for the second time — he re-upped with the Pittsburgh Pirates four years ago, then was dealt to the Yankees during the ensuing season — and he is doing so as a bit of an enigma. Will the team that signs him get the closer who logged 74 saves and a 2.85 ERA over the past three seasons, or the one who lost his job following one too many tumultuous outings? And what about this postseason? Holmes surrendered a walk-off home run in the ALCS, but then was stellar serving in a support role during the World Series.

Given his track record and high-velocity sinker, the 31-year-old right-hander could reasonably be expected to play the role of Jekyll rather than Hyde going forward. As for the dollars and years — ditto the uniform — just what kind of contract does a Clay Holmes get in today’s free agency environment? It will be interesting to find out. – DL

Player Notes
Pederson just had the best offensive season of his career. His .449 xwOBACON and .381 xwOBA were both career highs. After struggling against fastballs in 2023 (relative to his career norm), he rebounded and slugged .636 against all heaters, another career high.

Crushing fastballs has been his M.O. for a while now, so it didn’t come as a big surprise. The difference between 2024 and Pederson’s other recent seasons was the success he had against breaking balls. From the beginning of his career through 2023, Pederson had a .288 xwOBA against breakers. This past season, he completely flipped the script and posted a .354 xwOBA, driven entirely by power. From 2019-23, Pederson’s vertical bat angle (VBA) hovered between 27 to 29 degrees, which is flat relative to the rest of the league. This season, it came in above 30 degrees. That difference may be small, but a slightly steeper barrel puts hitters in a better spot to get under breaking balls lower in the zone. For a left-handed batter facing a right-handed pitcher, that’s crucial for combating the effectiveness of low sliders.

As some players age, they make improvements around the margins that mitigate holes in their profile. If that is the case for Pederson, he’ll continue getting jobs and crushing righties. – ER

Player Notes
Even before turning 40 last July 27, Scherzer had entered the breaking-down phase of his career. Traded from the Mets to the Rangers at the 2023 deadline, he missed time that September due to a teres major strain, then left his World Series Game 3 start with back spasms after three scoreless innings, and had surgery to repair a herniated disc in December. He made his 2024 season debut on June 23, but lasted just eight starts before being sidelined by shoulder fatigue; between that and a left hamstring strain, he made just nine starts, lasting more than four innings in just five of them.

Within that context, Scherzer was basically league-average, with a 3.95 ERA and 4.18 FIP. He struggled to control the longball (1.45 HR/9), and his 22.6% strikeout rate was down over five points from 2023. His average four-seam fastball velocity dropped by 1.2 mph relative to 2023 (from 93.7 to 92.5), and both of our pitch-modeling systems saw his stuff dip to below-average, with the declines in his Stuff+ scores for his fastball (from 104 to 78), changeup (from 94 to 59) and curve (from 96 to 84) all particularly severe. Given a healthy offseason, he may very well restore some luster to his arsenal, and even at his 2023 level of run prevention, he’d be useful at the back of a contender’s rotation, but his days as a frontliner commanding top dollar are probably behind him. – JJ

Player Notes
At age 40, Morton turned in a solid year at the back of the Braves’ rotation, but it was nonetheless a step down from 2023, as both his 4.19 ERA and 4.46 FIP represented increases of at least half a run per nine. While he shaved his walk rate from 11.6% to 9.3%, his strikeout rate fell (from 25.6% to 23.8%) and his homer rate soared (from 0.77 per nine to 1.25). Both his four-seamer and sinker lost nearly a full tick and were hit hard, as was his changeup. Even his curveball, his meal ticket, took a step back; though batters slugged just .308 against it, and though his .256 xwOBA on the pitch was in line with the year before, his whiff rate on it dropped from 42% to 34%. Still, he delivered 165.1 innings of more or less average work for a contender.

While Morton has hinted at the possibility of retiring to spend more time with his family, he had not made up his mind at the time the Braves exited the Wild Card Series. At this writing, the soon-to-be-41-year-old is reportedly leaning towards continuing. If he does, chances are he’ll want to be near his family in Bradenton, Florida, so returning to the Braves (for whom he’s pitched since 2021) or the Rays (with whom he spent 2019–20) might be the most likely options. – JJ

Player Notes
Verlander’s free agency will be defined by comfort level, both for Verlander and the team that’s thinking about signing him. For Verlander’s part, his age and career earnings are such that he doesn’t have to keep doing this if he doesn’t want to, meaning he’s likely to go to a team where he’s comfortable in the environment or with his shot at winning another ring — preferably both. Meanwhile, his age and injury history are such that a team considering Verlander needs the comfort that comes with a deep familiarity with his medical and training history or from having enough starting pitching elsewhere on the roster to minimize their reliance on the former ace.

Throughout his 30s, Verlander has adapted who he is as a pitcher to compensate for the physical limitations of aging. Relying less on raw stuff and athleticism, and more on strategically deploying finite resources, Verlander the evolved pitcher has at times been just as dominant as Verlander the raw thrower. When on the field, he remains highly productive, with nothing in his underlying numbers to suggest a downswing is on the way, except maybe his DOB. And despite finishing last year’s injury muddled season with an ERA- over 100 for the first time since 2014, his expected stats suggest he may have fallen victim to some bad batted ball luck. The primary challenge for Verlander as he enters his age-42 season is health. He’s missed parts of the last five seasons with various injuries to his elbow, shoulder, neck, and calf. Again it’s all about the search for comfort: mind, body, and team. – KO

Player Notes
Heaney’s 2024 was an oddly delightful throwback to an era of starting pitching we don’t see that often: He had a slightly below-average season on a slightly below-average team, but he was healthy and effective enough to remain firmly ensconced in the rotation all year. A 5-14 record with a 4.28 ERA? That’s a Kevin Gross or a Masato Yoshii season if ever I saw one.

There’s not much bat-missing or power in Heaney’s game anymore, and a 33-year-old lefty with a low arm slot and a fringy fastball might seem bound for specialist reliever duty. However, Heaney’s best pitch last year was his changeup, which enabled him to post a reverse platoon split when other soft-tossing lefties might have gotten knocked around. Still, this profile might not be for everyone. Heaney is one of the most fly ball-prone starters in the league, and bad clustering caused him to post a second-half ERA more than a run higher than he managed before the break.

At worst, Heaney is a worthy sacrifice to the God of Innings; in two seasons in Texas, he’s made 59 starts and averaged 154 innings per year. Stick him in a big ballpark with fast outfielders and he might even be a mid-rotation starter if you squint hard enough. – MB

Player Notes
Have you got a big pile of innings to eat? Does league-average production sound just about right to you? Chomp, chomp, chomp. Here comes Frankie Montas. After shoulder surgery limited him to just a single relief appearance in 2023, Montas made a whole season’s worth of starts in 2024, just like he had in 2022, 2021, and even the short 2020 season.

He ate 150 2/3 innings for the Reds and the Brewers, and while they weren’t necessarily memorable, that’s not always a bad thing. Montas pitched a bit better once he joined the Brewers. Maybe that’s because they tweaked a few things – he threw fewer four-seamers and switched to a harder, tighter slider – or maybe it’s because he moved out of Great American Ballpark and in front of one of the game’s best defenses. Montas enters free agency three years removed from a 2021 season in which he ran a 3.37 ERA and FIP and put up 4.0 WAR, but at 31, he’s still got enough zip on his fastball. Plus, he’s got a five-pitch mix that at least one pitching coordinator will be sure that they can optimize. Besides, those innings aren’t going to eat themselves, now are they? – DA

Player Notes
Pick your preferred command metric: Location+, miss distance, the Kirby Index. In every one, Williams is elite. The right-hander, who will turn 33 in April, can throw the ball where he wants with the best in the game. The stuff is roughly what you’d expect out of a low-slot soft-tosser type: He’s got a five-pitch mix with lots of slow horizontal movement and almost no depth or ride on any of his pitches. But even at 89 mph, Williams’ four-seam fastball can inflict damage; it ranked in the 93rd percentile in Savant run value in 2024. There is a strong theory for why it works, even at low velocities — he throws from a super-low five foot release to the top of the zone with a steep vertical approach angle, a bizarre look for a fastball.

The flaws are self-evident. It’s going to be hard to trust any starter who throws 89-mph fastballs, no matter the quality of their aim. But command is a skill that is stubbornly difficult to predict year-to-year, and Williams, barring the onset of an injury or something, clearly has it. He at least deserves Kyle Gibson money. – MR

Player Notes
After a lousy run in Baltimore sandwiched by Tommy John and hip surgeries, Cobb got his splitter working again, and was quietly effective for the Angels and Giants from 2021 to 2023. Recovery from surgery to correct a left hip impingement cost him most of his 2024 season, but as he was nearing a return to the majors in July, the Guardians acquired him for the stretch run. He was bedeviled by finger issues — first a torn nail and then a bout with blisters — and only managed to get into three games for Cleveland during the regular season. Cobb managed two short starts in the playoffs, but he was pulled from the second game due to back and hip pain and was dropped from the ALCS roster.

Cobb turned 37 last month, and given his long injury history, he’s probably looking at a one- or two-year deal at best this winter. He may even slip under the radar a bit, because with Justin Verlander, Max Scherzer, and Charlie Morton out there, there are enough Old Guys Going on One Last Mission to film an odd baseball-themed version of The Expendables. Cobb’s best fit is likely with a team that isn’t relying on him to be one of its top two or three starters, and that has an infield defense good enough to take advantage of his worm-burning ways. A return to Cleveland might not be the worst idea. – DS

Player Notes
This past summer, Chapman threw a sinker that was clocked at 105.1 mph. It was the hardest pitch anyone had thrown in the majors in more than eight years. In other words, it was the hardest pitch anyone had thrown since Chapman last hit 105.1 mph in 2016.

Of course, Ben Joyce would go on to sling a 105.5 mph pitch less than a month later, making Chapman’s pitch only the second-fastest of the 2024 season. But that shouldn’t diminish the point I’m trying to make. In 2021 and 2022, Chapman seemed to be slowing down. Over the past two seasons, however, he’s shown that he still has positively elite stuff. His velocity was down this April and May but climbed back up later in the year. He also added more extension to his delivery. As a result, a 36-year-old Chapman had the fastest sinker by average perceived velocity in the sport.

Chapman’s 3.79 ERA in 2024 marked a new career high for a qualified season, but his 3.04 FIP, 2.96 xERA, and 37% strikeout rate demonstrate why he’ll get paid again this winter. Control problems might keep him from ever returning to the heights seen in his prime – his 99th-percentile strikeout rate and first-percentile walk rate paint a pretty good picture of his greatest strength and greatest weakness – but a slightly diminished version of Chapman is still one of the best lefty relievers in the business. – LM

Player Notes
Jansen may no longer be the peak version of himself, but he’s remained roughly the same pitcher since landing on the wrong side of 30. With an ERA- holding steady around 80, his production places him firmly in the “better than average” bucket, even as he enters his age-37 season. In 2024, Jansen’s HR/FB ratio matched his previous career-low mark of 5.6% posted in 2016, and his velocity hasn’t gone anywhere. His cutter may not be quite as formidable as it once was in terms of raw stuff, but a pitch that’s that gnarly to start with can lose a little of its edge and still be an above-average weapon.

In the “reasons for concern” column, Jansen is issuing more walks and doling out fewer Ks. His hard-hit rate has climbed to 37% after sitting around 25% prior to 2022, and his barrel rate jumped to 11.1% in 2024 compared to his career mark of 6.6%. Though the free passes and hard contact have yet to meaningfully impact Jansen’s overall effectiveness, they could be omens of darker days ahead.

While there’s plenty to suggest that Jansen still has what it takes to be a productive late-inning reliever, and he has remained relatively healthy into the back half of his career, there’s also enough to suggest teams shouldn’t rely on this version of Jansen hanging around too much longer, and he did end 2024 on the IL with shoulder inflammation. But given the volatility of relievers and Jansen’s relative consistency despite his age, he feels no riskier than any other free agent bullpen arm. – KO

Player Notes
The distinction merits the lede. As Michael Baumann brought to readers’ attention in August, and I followed up on twice in September, Yates chased (and ultimately attained) what my colleague called “highly specific history.” When all was said and done, the 37-year-old right-hander joined Wade Davis and Craig Kimbrel as the only relievers in major league history with multiple seasons of 40 or more saves and an ERA of 1.25 or lower. Pitching in his 10th big league season, and his first with the Texas Rangers, Yates had a 1.17 ERA to go with a 35.9% strikeout rate and 33 saves.

Elbow woes had hampered the Lihue, Hawaii native following the first of his history-worthy seasons. Yates had 41 saves and a 1.19 ERA with the San Diego Padres in 2019, but then underwent Tommy John surgery in March 2021 on the heels of the shortened 2020 COVID campaign. Finally back to full health in 2023, he made 61 appearances for the Atlanta Braves, logging a 3.28 ERA and five saves. The Rangers thought they were getting a good reliever when they signed Yates as a free agent last December. What they got instead was a history-making one.

Is Yates likely to match his 2024 season and further etch his name in baseball’s annals? That might be a stretch, but there is little reason to expect anything less than another year of quality performances. Blessed with a diving splitter and a riding heater, Yates is a quality closer. – DL

Player Notes
Last seen surrendering Francisco Lindor’s NLDS-winning grand slam, Estévez presents an interesting challenge from an evaluation perspective. In 2024, he was one of the most sought-after bullpen arms at the trade deadline, but he’s not your typical relief ace. Out of the 22 pitchers with at least 20 saves in 2024, Estévez was 17th in strikeout rate, and both his FIP and xERA ended up nearly eight-tenths of a run above his impressive 2.45 ERA.

Estévez’s repertoire didn’t change much from 2023 to 2024, but he worked in the zone much more frequently and cut his walk rate from 11.0% to 5.7%. Even the old, wilder Estévez was about a 1-WAR pitcher in 2023, when he saved 31 games for the Angels. But there’s a seven-figure difference, maybe even eight, between a decent reliever and a genuine capital-C closer in this market.

So is Estévez that rare strike-throwing, barrel-avoiding relief ace who’s immune from the high-leverage command breakdowns that plague so many of his colleagues? Or is he an OK leverage guy whose .229 BABIP allowed him to get away with working the zone too much? – MB

Player Notes
Watching the 2024 version of Goldschmidt, it’s almost hard to believe he was the NL MVP just two years ago. At 36, the Cardinals almost certainly weren’t expecting him to get back to an MVP-level of play, but maintaining his .268/.363/.447 line from 2023 would have constituted a win. Instead, Goldschmidt had an absolutely brutal first half, hitting .230/.291/.373 for an even 0.0 WAR. If he hadn’t been an aging star (or if the Cardinals had had an obviously superior option), he likely would have seen his playing time start to evaporate.

First-half Goldy probably wouldn’t have made our Top 50 list. But with expectations greatly reduced, his bat came around a bit, and an .799 OPS in the second half at least partially salvaged his season-long numbers, getting his WAR back over 1.0 and his wRC+ to an even 100. Time always wins in the end, and the days of Goldschmidt being a plug-and-play, middle-of-the-order mainstay are probably gone, but a team with a hole at first base that wants to see if there’s one last miracle left in his bat will almost certainly come calling this winter. – DS

Player Notes
The 38-year-old Santana is approaching 20 years in pro ball. He began his career with the Dodgers in 2005, was traded to Cleveland for Casey Blake in 2008, then debuted in the bigs in 2010. Since then, no other hitter in baseball has put up as many walks as Santana’s 1,278 career free passes; he and Joey Votto are in their own stratosphere during that window, with 200 more walks than the next highest cluster of players.

A career .242/.354/.431 hitter, Santana began his big league journey as a bad catcher and sometimes third baseman before transitioning full-time to first base, where he became a pickin’ machine with terrific hands and footwork around the bag. Santana spent 10 seasons with Cleveland (across two separate stints) and somehow only made one All-Star team, during his age-33 season back in 2019. As Santana began taking short-term deals with a bunch of different teams from 2020-22, it looked like Father Time had caught up with him, as he failed to slug over .376 during that span. But over the last two seasons he has had a resurgence while with Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Minnesota, with an OPS just shy of .750 during that span. Santana still has rare power for a switch-hitter. He has tended to be better from the right side, and the gap in his splits have grown as he has aged; they were enormous in 2024 as he slayed to the tune of a 161 wRC+ against lefties. A team looking for a one-year 1B/DH stopgap, especially a club in need of a righty bat, would be a great fit for Santana. – EL

Player Notes
Despite what might be inferred by the Red Sox’s desire to acquire Jansen at the trade deadline, he did not have a particularly attractive platform season. Instead, he posted career worsts nearly across the board. Aside from a modest increase in walks and a corresponding decrease in strikeouts, Jansen’s offense was otherwise diminished relative to prior seasons, all of which seems at least partially attributable to his newfound passivity as a hitter. His swing rate dropped from 46.8% to 40.6%, which unfortunately wasn’t a product of smarter swing decisions. While Jansen’s chase rate fell from 24.3% to 19.1%, his in-zone swing rate dropped from 69.7% to 60.9%. When he did swing, his contact quality suffered as well. He barreled up absolutely nothing, posting a barrel rate of just 6.3% compared to 10.7% in 2023.

Given that Jansen has recently been a more productive hitter, a team may feel good about its ability to iron out the kinks in his swing path and reawaken some of his aggressiveness. But he currently profiles as a restoration project, and not just in terms of offense. Typically a catcher struggling at the plate makes up for it behind the dish, but Jansen’s defense experienced its own downturn in 2024. After hovering around average with respect to framing, he slid into the red this season; he also caught just 10 of 74 would-be base stealers owing to a weak arm and well below-average pop times. Jansen’s saving grace on defense was his top-shelf blocking. Again, he has posted stronger defensive showings in recent seasons, so it’s not naive to think a better defender is still in there, and as the only catching option in the Top 50, he’ll have the attention of any team shopping in that market. – KO

Player Notes
Well that didn’t work out how it was supposed to. Conforto served as the big part of San Francisco’s left field platoon in 2024, but in opposition to a whole career’s worth of platoon splits, he hit much better against lefties than righties. Conforto ran a 145 wRC+ over 95 PA against lefties, compared to 102 in his 382 PA against righties. We shouldn’t confuse one year of platoon splits for, well, much of anything, but it does put a slight wrinkle in Conforto’s sales pitch as a righty-mashing corner outfielder either in a platoon or off the bench.

Regardless of how he got there, Conforto put up a 112 wRC+ overall, his best mark since 2020. He crushed fastballs for the first time in years. His 90th-percentile exit velocity ticked up, he ran his best hard-hit rate in 10 seasons, and he reached the 20-homer mark for the first time since 2019. Conforto is entering his age-32 season and we shouldn’t expect him to be the player he was before the shoulder injury that cost him all of 2022, but put him in a park that isn’t designed for the express purpose of giving left-handed hitters night terrors, and he’s got some good baseball left in him. Somewhere in Newport Beach, Scott Boras is repeatedly scratching the phrase, Get Conforto-able with Conforto in the Corfort-rner into his desk with a pen knife. – DA

Player Notes
As a Mariners fan, I’ve got a soft spot for the role Sewald played on the “greatest” Seattle team of the last 20 years, and for embodying (and perhaps influencing) the Mariners’ recent obsession with guys who throw fastballs super accurately and/or from flat vertical approach angles. But Sewald’s 2024 season was a real rollercoaster. He didn’t get started until May due to an oblique strain, but when he did, he strung together 17 straight scoreless appearances. Then the wheels came off. He allowed seven runs in less than a week, got removed from the closer’s role, and never really found it after that. His strikeout rate dropped six percentage points relative to 2023; his ERA was 4.31.

Sewald still throws that flat fastball with a ton of accuracy at the top of the zone, but his velocity dropped three ticks from 2023 to 2024. He dealt with neck issues down the stretch, but as he enters his age-35 season, the neck problems aren’t necessarily likely to improve from here. – MR

Player Notes
Over the past three seasons, Robertson has a 2.82 ERA and a 3.24 FIP. Over 188 appearances and 201 innings, he’s accrued 3.8 WAR, 12th-most among all relievers. As he enters his age-40 season, Robertson is coming off his best FIP since 2017. His cutter averaged 93.3 mph in both 2023 and 2024, the fastest it’s been since Obama’s first term. According to Statcast’s run values, that cutter was worth 19 runs this season, making it the sixth-most valuable pitch in all of baseball. Knowing what it knows about aging curves and the volatility of relief arms, ZiPS projects Robertson for 0.5 WAR, but we humans should at the very least be open to the possibility that he’ll live forever. Until we see him fall apart with our own eyes, there’s no reason in particular to believe that he won’t just keep serving as an effective bullpen arm until sometime in the middle of the next decade. Robertson’s fourth straight one-year contract with a playoff hopeful would do quite nicely. – DA

Player Notes
At this late stage of his career, Turner doesn’t swing hard; his bat speed is in the first percentile, and he will hop into your Twitter mentions and argue with you about how there is too much emphasis on bat speed these days. But who can blame him: Turner remains an above-average hitter, year after year, because he knows the strike zone so well and can make contact with any pitch he wishes.

His at-bats often take on the tenor of a hitting clinic as Turner effortlessly flicks his bat at a nasty slider to stay alive with two strikes. So far, his bat-to-ball skill and strike zone awareness have served him well; the last time Turner finished a season as a below-average hitter was 2013. Will the streak continue in his age-40 season? The Mariners, for one, feel likely to make a small bet it will. – MR

Player Notes
Hart was drafted by the Red Sox as a fifth-year senior out of Indiana and spent six years in their system (with a brief big league debut thrown in) before electing minor league free agency and signing with the Phillies before the 2023 season. He pitched in just one game with the Phillies’ Triple-A affiliate before he was granted his release, and he didn’t latch on with another team (Seattle) for a couple of months. He pitched as a starter at Triple-A Tacoma for the rest of 2023 and then signed with the KBO’s NC Dinos and had a tremendous 2024, during which he led the KBO in strikeouts despite working 40 fewer innings than the league’s innings leaders.

Across 157 innings with the Dinos, Hart posted a 2.69 ERA and 1.03 WHIP, while striking out 182 and walking just 38. The low-slot lefty made some changes to how he deploys his arsenal compared to when he was last in affiliated ball. Hart was taking a slider-first approach while he was with Seattle but pitched more off his 90-mph fastball in Korea. It allowed his well-commanded slider, his best offering, to be used more often as a chase pitch. Hart’s changeup generated plus chase and miss rates in 2024, but that pitch lives off his command of it rather than the pitch’s movement. Hart can vary the speed and shape of his breaking stuff by working in a cutter and a rarely thrown slow curveball. Hart looks like a fifth or sixth starter type, though there’s a risk his fastball-oriented approach won’t be viable against big league hitters due to his lack of velocity. – EL

Player Notes
Quintana was a constant on the mound from 2013-19, making at least 31 starts every year. A handful of injuries have prevented him from qualifying for the ERA title in three of the past five seasons, but dependability remains his chief asset nonetheless. In 2024, the southpaw threw 170.1 innings over 31 outings. While he only made 13 starts the year prior, the injury that kept him out, a benign lesion on his rib cage, was far more an act of god than a worrisome sign of a veteran showing his age. Thus even as he enters his age-36 campaign, there is little reason to worry about Quintana’s ability to throw five or six innings every five days (aside from all the he’s-a-pitcher reasons to worry).

There might be cause for concern when it comes to the quality of those innings, however. Quintana was worth 4.0 WAR in 2022 and pitched at a 3.7 WAR pace in 2023. In 2024, he finished with just 1.0 WAR, his lowest in a full season; his 113 FIP-, 109 xFIP-, and 25th-percentile xERA were also full-season career worsts. All the same, there’s a good chance his 3.75 ERA, dominant September, and strong track record will help Quintana land a bigger contract than his peripherals suggest he deserves. After all, there are far worse mistakes a team can make than slightly overpaying for durability. Just ask the Mets — they’d surely say they were pleased with how Quintana’s last deal worked out. – LM

Player Notes
The red flags in Gibson’s profile are glaringly obvious. He doesn’t strike anyone out. His velocity has declined to junkballer territory. His walk rate spiked in 2024, not because he couldn’t command the ball but because his breaking stuff just wasn’t getting chases the way it used to. He turned 37 last month, so more velocity decline is probably in the cards. I don’t think there’s any team that sees Gibson as an ideal member of their playoff rotation; the teams where he’d be one of the top four starters aren’t playoff contenders.

Still, someone’s going to pay Gibson a bunch of money – millions of dollars! – to pitch for them next year. He answers the bell. He eats up innings that would go to minor league journeymen or unproven prospects. You can pencil Gibson in for a pile of starts, and at run prevention levels that are hardly embarrassing. He’s reportedly a great teammate, too, and I’d want young pitchers to learn from his ability to survive in the majors for nearly 2,000 innings over more than a decade with consistently underwhelming raw tools. This might be his last campaign, but right now, he still has something to offer. – BC