2026 Top 50 MLB Free Agents

Welcome to the start of another offseason. As is customary, now that the World Series has concluded, FanGraphs is releasing our ranking of the top 50 free agents available on the market this winter. A number of writers have helmed this list over the years: first Dave Cameron, then Kiley McDaniel, Craig Edwards, and most recently me. This is now my fifth year curating these rankings, and as always, my real superpower is collaboration. The FanGraphs staff contributed mightily at every step along the way.

Below, I’ve provided contract estimates and rankings of the offseason’s top free agents, along with market-focused commentary for the top 25 players. That could be a sketch of likely suitors, a discussion of how qualifying offers might affect a player’s thinking, or even just statistical analysis dressed up as market analysis for Halloween – I’m a baseball nerd at heart, what can I say? A collection of FanGraphs writers – Davy Andrews (DA), Michael Baumann (MB), James Fegan (JF), Jay Jaffe (JJ), David Laurila (DL), Eric Longenhagen (EL), Kiri Oler (KO), Esteban Rivera (ER), and Dan Szymborski (DS) – have supplied player-focused breakdowns for the entire top 50, designed to provide some context for each player at this particular point in their career. Huge thanks go to Meg Rowley for acting as a sounding board throughout the process, Eric Longenhagen for his extensive contributions to my evaluation of the international players, Jason Martinez and Jon Becker for their market knowledge, and Sean Dolinar and David Appelman for technical assistance.

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 2026 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.

Teams have until 5 PM ET on November 6 to extend qualifying offers to players. Players then have 10 days from their receipt of those offers to either accept or decline them. As a refresher, if a player receives and declines a qualifying offer, which this year is valued at $22.025 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. I made assumptions about which players will receive qualifying offers and considered how that might affect their specific circumstances; you can read about those in the blurbs below.

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.

The top of this year’s free agent market is going to be a shock after the last three offseasons. Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, and Juan Soto headlined those classes, and each signed what was, at the time, the largest contract in the sport’s history. That trend isn’t going to continue this year. Kyle Tucker, the consensus top hitter on the market, is great and also clearly not in the same neighborhood as that trio. Those deals reset the market. Tucker is going to get a huge deal, and it’ll run for a long time. It’s just not going to be for $700 million.

His market will be fascinating, in fact. There’s no doubt that Tucker has been one of the best hitters in the league for the past half decade. He’s 10th in WAR over that span, sandwiched between Mookie Betts and Corey Seager. He’ll only be 29 next year, still squarely at the peak of his powers. He does everything at the plate, hitting for power and getting on base with equal aplomb. He’s not a great defender, but neither is he DH-only. But he had a disappointing 2025 and an especially bad second half, perhaps partially explained by a hairline fracture in his hand and then a calf strain. He also missed half of the 2024 season with a fractured shin. It’s a little bit scary to hand someone getting hurt at that clip a contract that might last more than a decade. Additionally, his peak might be more “very good All-Star” than MVP; he’s never finished a season among the top 15 position players by WAR, though he was on pace to do so before getting hurt in 2024. If I were running a team, I’d be happy paying Tucker a big fat pile of money, but that pile wouldn’t compare to what’s sitting in Soto’s vault.

Behind Tucker, there are eight players I have above the rest of the fray. Who you rank first in that group depends on what you’re looking for. Want elite production in the immediate future? Alex Bregman, fresh off of an excellent but injury-shortened season and about to turn 32, is your guy. Looking for pure offense? Pete Alonso and Kyle Schwarber fit the bill. Dylan Cease, Framber Valdez, and Ranger Suárez offer high-quality pitching. Cody Bellinger does a little bit of everything. Bo Bichette might not be a shortstop for long, but he’s a middle infielder who hits like a first baseman.

Another change from recent years: I don’t think Tucker will hold up the rest of the market in the same way that Judge, Ohtani, and Soto did. Sure, the teams pursuing Tucker might pivot to one of the second-tier hitters should they miss out on their top prize, but the combination of several similar offensive options and the fact that Tucker isn’t the same kind of generational superstar that we’ve been spoiled with of late means that some of those suitors will be looking to sign multiple free agents, or will be equally happy getting one of a few options, or otherwise just unwilling to wait around and risk missing out on a player they like in the hopes that Tucker will choose them.

One big picture note on this class: There are a lot of pitchers in my top 50 — 15 starters and 14 relievers. That reflects recent trends in free agency and roster construction. The very top of the free agent market has star hitters who are good enough to play for pretty much any team, but as you get into the bottom of the list, where average veterans and good role players reside, teams increasingly prefer internal options to middle-of-the-road free agents. Unless a team is quite bad at player development, there are probably some prospects towards the top of their farm system who could, if things break right, outperform the aforementioned average veteran. Why not save a little money while simultaneously finding out if one of your prospects can be a building block for your future squad? This isn’t new; teams have been pushing in this general direction for years.

On the other hand, you can never have too much pitching. If you sign an average third baseman, the minor league third basemen in your system are now blocked from starting in the majors unless they can learn a new position. If you sign an average pitcher, great! Someone has to start every game, and five starting pitchers is nowhere close to enough given the high rate of attrition modern hurlers experience. Last year, 31 of the 50 largest contracts went to pitchers. I think the money is going to continue flowing in that direction this year – star hitters will get the most, but mid-tier pitchers will outperform their bat-carrying counterparts.

Finally, a few more specific observations. There’s some uncertainty over which KBO and NPB players are headed stateside, but I’ve included Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto, Tatsuya Imai, and Cody Ponce in our top 50. I’d prefer a few other players from those leagues to some of the names at the bottom of this list, but I think it’s unlikely that they’re available for the contracts that I’m projecting in that range.

I’m lower than consensus on pitchers who are returning from catastrophic injury and hitting the market after a short contract, namely Brandon Woodruff and Tyler Mahle. I’m generally in favor of accepting some risk of injury in exchange for the chance at a below-market ace, but I think that both of those guys have meaningful risk factors that push them lower on my preference list. Both stand out relative to the players around them on this list when it comes to my contract estimates. That’s because I think that the market will value them more highly than I would, were I running a team’s free agency process. I think they’ll get solid deals; I just have a lower estimation of how that will turn out than the broad consensus.

On the other hand, I’m higher than consensus on Devin Williams and Ryan Helsley, two fallen-star closers who compiled poor 2025 seasons after being among the best in baseball for years on end before that. Yes, relievers are extremely volatile, but both Williams and Helsley possess ridiculous strikeout stuff and missed a boatload of bats even while they put up poor run prevention numbers. I’d be willing to offer both of them more than a pillow deal, and honestly I’d probably offer them more than what I’ve estimated they’ll receive, because I think that either of the two could be the best reliever in a very good bullpen, and that signing them after a down year is more likely to work out than signing them after a career year.

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
As I mentioned in the introduction, Tucker is the top free agent in the class, but he’s not in the same category as the market-topping stars who have signed record-setting deals in recent years. The teams most interested in him will be those that consider his results from 2024 and the first half of this year to be close to his true talent level. That would mean that the second half of this year, and of course the 110 missed games in the past two years, are just noise. I believe that a few teams will come to that conclusion, and that Tucker will sign an enormous deal, but one that falls meaningfully short of the huge deals of recent years.

If you take our projections for Tucker as gospel, the numbers being bandied about don’t add up. Add a premium for stars, round up because he’s the best player on the market, and I can convince my model that Tucker should break $300 million, but I can’t get anywhere near the $400 million to $500 million range that was a popular hand-wave estimate for Tucker before the start of this season. In the end, I told my model to pound sand and estimated him meaningfully higher, but I’m not at all confident in this number. I’ll be watching his market develop with great interest. It’s a fascinating one; he’s clearly the best free agent available, and yet if I were running a team, even as much as I’m in favor of paying up for stars and figuring things out later, I don’t think my offer would be competitive with the top of the league.

Player Notes
Will the real Kyle Tucker please stand up? Acquired from the Astros in a December 2024 blockbuster, Tucker hit .291/.395/.537 (157 wRC+) with 17 homers through the end of June. He then slipped into a protracted slump at the start of July, and for a 39-game stretch hit .184/.321/.228 with just one homer. On August 21, the Cubs revealed that Tucker had played through a hairline fracture in his right ring finger, suffered during a June 1 slide; the injury didn’t align with his drop in production, but the announcement, which followed a brief benching for a mental and mechanical reset, seemed to provide a jolt. He homered three times in two days and tore the cover off the ball for two weeks, though a left calf strain sidelined him for most of September.

Tucker’s final line (.266/.377/.464) thus looks a little disappointing, particularly given his career-low slugging percentage and full-season low 22 homers. Even so, his 136 wRC+ matched his combined mark from 2020–23, and his 4.5 WAR was on par with those seasons’ marks; it’s his .289/.408/.585 (179 wRC+) line and 4.2 WAR in 78 games in 2024 — with three months lost to a fracture in his right shin — that distorted expectations. He’s not in the stratosphere of Judge, Ohtani, or Soto, the free agents who headed our last three Top 50 lists, but Tucker’s all-around abilities will help him get paid handsomely. – JJ

Ben’s Take
Former Astros are going to be a hot commodity this winter. Bregman impressed in his first post-Houston season, at least for as long as he was healthy; he missed nearly two months with a quad strain and lost a meaningful amount of power after returning. Even with the missed time and the slow finish, though, his combination of solid defense at third base, patience at the plate, and extra-base hits fueled by the Green Monster made him one of Boston’s best players on the year. As expected, he opted out of the two years and $80 million remaining on his contract (more like $63 million after accounting for the extreme deferrals in that deal).

I think that the path of least resistance is for the Red Sox to get back into the Bregman business as quickly as possible. His lift-and-pull swing is a great fit for Fenway, and the infield has been the team’s greatest weakness of late. The Sox will have plenty of payroll space available, with only $167 million committed in 2026 with Bregman having opted out, and this class is light on infielders outside of first base. A few more years, at a similar average annual value, should work for both sides – and given the perfect fit between stadium and player, I think they have the inside track on making that happen.

Player Notes
For a while there, it looked like the plan had worked perfectly. Through August 22, despite missing a month-and-a-half with a quad strain, Bregman had played 83 games with a 155 wRC+. He was slashing .309/.393/.540 with 24 home runs. He made the Red Sox forget all about the incumbent All-Star third baseman who’d spent the past seven seasons as the face of the franchise. As planned, Bregman could opt out of his huge, short deal in order to get a huge, long deal. Then the bottom fell out. From August 23 on, he batted .180 with a 48 wRC+ and two homers.

It happens. Bregman ended up with a 125 wRC+ on the year, nearly identical to the 124 he averaged over the previous five seasons. It was a box standard Alex Bregman season, cut down to just 3.5 WAR because of the quad strain and the late swoon. He opted out all the same, and now here he is on the market. He’s the same contact-making, chase-avoiding, strikeout-allergic, lifting-pulling-walking machine he’s always been. He graded out closer to good than great on defense. On a WAR-per-PA basis, he ranked just outside the top 30 among position players. The Red Sox spent the whole season raving about his leadership qualities. ZiPS projected him for a 113 wRC+ before the season, but he refused to slide down the aging curve. He’s Alex Bregman. The same Alex Bregman! Maybe one day that will be enough for a long deal. – DA

Ben’s Take
Cease is one of three pitchers who you could reasonably consider the best available this winter, and he’s the one with the loudest tools. His slider is one of the best in baseball, and he’s worked diligently to reshape his four-seam fastball into a bat-missing option, culminating in a career-high swinging strike rate on the pitch in 2025. He also made a full complement of starts for the sixth straight year, a shocking statistic for a starting pitcher with his combination of velocity and spin.

The downside case with Cease is that his two-pitch approach won’t work if he loses a bit of oomph on his fastball or a bit of bite on his slider as he ages. The upside case is that he hasn’t done any of the things that older pitchers usually do to extend their effectiveness yet; he could add a cutter, or learn a new changeup grip (or two), or start throwing more sinkers, or any number of pitch-mix hacks. I think at least a few teams will look at the combination of durability and results, sprinkle in a little optimism about their in-house pitching development, and give Cease more than any other pitcher this winter. I’ve estimated five years because while I think that teams will continue to prefer shorter deals for pitching, the top few names on the market generally get a year more than would be strictly comfortable for the signing team. Four would feel comfy; thus, I think he’ll get five.

Player Notes
A cursory glance might suggest that Cease had a down year in 2025, going 8-12 with a 4.55 ERA for the Padres and potentially affecting his free agent payout significantly. Fortunately for him, Cease’s free agent case will be assessed by today’s front offices, not those of 1995, and his most recent season looks a lot like his last several. There’s nothing lurking in his Statcast data to indicate that his 3.56 FIP in 2025 or his 3.37 FIP over the last five seasons is misleading; his hard-hit rate is consistent with good performance, and he missed bats as well as he ever has. At .320, his BABIP was on the high side for the second year in the last three, as he continued his pattern of alternating between great and terrible BABIP seasons, but ZiPS doesn’t see anything worrisome in his hit data, and like Steamer (.290 projected 2026 BABIP), sees him settling in the middle.

Cease has never developed a real offspeed pitch to punch out lefties, but he uses his knuckle-curve for a similar purpose — albeit with mixed results — and has always been comfortable throwing his slider with a platoon disadvantage. He also has an excellent health history, and ranks fourth in baseball in innings thrown over the last five years. In this, the year before Tarik Skubal Thunderdome, Cease ought to be able to fight it out with Framber Valdez and Ranger Suárez for the biggest pitching jackpot this winter. – DS

Ben’s Take
If your team has multiple excellent defensive infielders, they’re probably pursuing Valdez this winter. He’s one of the premier groundball pitchers in the league, the rare hurler whose outlier skills will look extremely different based on who’s standing behind him. Conversely, that makes him more or less immune to stadium effects. There’s not much reason to put Valdez in Seattle, for example, because he doesn’t need help suppressing home runs. A natural home would be a team like the Brewers or Cubs; great defense in a neutral ballpark.

Valdez’s market is complicated not only by his unique profile but by several other confounding variables. Almost 32, he’s the oldest pitcher likely to command a top-of-the-market deal. His upside feels more capped than that of his counterparts; it’s hard for me to imagine him finding another gear because he already maxes out his skills so well. Then there was the time it looked like he crossed up his own catcher on purpose (Valdez later said he hit him by mistake), which might give some teams pause. That leads me to expect a slightly smaller deal than Cease will receive; the market for Valdez is just inherently narrower.

Often, good-pitcher-with-question-marks means a high-dollar, short-term deal. I’m skeptical here, though. Valdez debuted relatively late and hasn’t hit a big free agent payday yet; I expect him to prioritize total guarantee given that backdrop. I don’t think any team would offer him more than five years, and I’m not even sure they’ll go that long – but if they do, I bet he’d accept it.

Player Notes
Even the most risk averse teams should be salivating as Valdez enters free agency. He has no meaningful red flags. Maybe his age counts as a yellow flag — next year will be his age-32 season —and all pitchers come with a flag for injury risk, but Valdez has been durable to this point in his career. He missed a few weeks in 2024 with elbow inflammation, but still made 28 starts and pitched to a 2.91 ERA that year. Otherwise, Valdez has been as consistent as they come, throwing at least 175 innings in each of the last four seasons, while maintaining a 24% strikeout rate and an 8% walk rate, with an ERA- and FIP- that place him around 20% better than league average.

He is prone to hard contact, which makes for cynical expected stats on his player page, but Valdez has an established track record of outperforming his expected numbers as long as he can keep that hard contact on the ground. Valdez uses a somewhat distinctive arsenal to induce groundballs. Instead of a slider, he pairs a curveball with his sinker and changeup. It’s an east/west approach, but all three offerings dart downward as they approach the plate, leading to a lot of topped balls. Valdez did fade a bit in the second half of 2025, but absent any other indicators of regression, he and his groundball-heavy approach feel like a safe bet for any team with an infield defense worth a darn. – KO

Ben’s Take
I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating Bellinger in the context of free agency thanks to his up-and-down career and the complicated contract structures that keep granting him more opportunities to hit the market. He just declined his player option, and this time around, I expect him to pursue a longer-term arrangement. Fortunately for Bellinger, 2025 was one of the best years of his post-MVP second act, and his combination of defensive versatility and resurgent offense means that a ton of teams will be interested in giving him what he’s looking for.

I think it’s reasonable to wonder whether his offensive approach, something of a left-handed version of Isaac Paredes, is viable outside of stadiums that favor lefty home run hitters. But even without the homers, he takes his walks and doesn’t strike out very often, which gives him a nice floor. I also love that Bellinger’s an elite defensive first baseman in addition to being great in the outfield (I gave him a second-place vote in this year’s Fielding Bible awards). If he loses a step later in the deal, his off-ramp is perfect; just slide him over to first base and expect the Gold Gloves to flow.

The obvious landing spot is for Bellinger to remain a Yankee. They need several outfielders, and he’s a great fit for the stadium. But I think his market is meaningfully broader than that, and I also think that the Yankees of late have been choosy instead of profligate in their spending. My point: Get ready for some think pieces on the state of Yankees ownership if Bellinger goes elsewhere, because I expect him to find a robust bid away from the Bronx.

Player Notes
Bellinger flourished in the Bronx this season. His solid all-around play, relentless pursuit of contact, and ability to pull the ball in a park that heavily favors it combined for his best season by WAR aside from his 2019 MVP run. It was all very good other than his poor (albeit short) postseason showing. Even so, questions about Bellinger’s ability to perform year in and year out remain, and that’s largely due to peripherals that haven’t changed all that much since he bounced back in 2023, when he remade his offensive profile.

His xwOBACON this season improved relative to 2024, but it was lower than in 2023. Similarly, his bat speed bounced back after a decline in 2024, but it decreased linearly every month of the season. Maintaining those gains will be crucial. Aside from widening his stance a bit and closing his front foot slightly, almost every other piece of his offensive profile is very similar to where it’s been the last couple of seasons. If you read all that and are left scratching your head, it’s a reminder of how good of a fit Bellinger is in Yankee Stadium. Home/road splits aren’t always so straight forward, but Bellinger’s 152 wRC+ at home vs. 97 mark on the road holds weight. He’s a great fit for teams with favorable right field dimensions. If his market mirrors that, don’t be surprised. – ER

Ben’s Take
If you try to approximate Schwarber’s market based on the WAR projections you see above, you’re going to come up short. Teams are no dummies, and that number doesn’t do a good job of capturing Schwarber’s total value. He’s one of the best 15 or so hitters in the majors, and defensive ability matters far less when that’s the case. Someone has to play DH for every team, and Schwarber represents an upgrade for every team save the Dodgers and perhaps the Astros.

When it comes to pure offense, Schwarber is probably the best guy on the market, and if it’s not him, it’s the guy below him. That gives him a strong negotiating position. You can’t replicate Schwarber in the aggregate with two so-so hitters. You can’t fake a 50-homer DH. Teams might be risk-averse in the extreme these days, but there isn’t exactly a lot of risk in “will Kyle Schwarber hit next year?” The bigger risk, in fact, might be missing the best bat on the market when you’re trying to win now.

The only reason I didn’t put Schwarber higher on this list is his age. He’ll be 33 when the 2026 season starts, and that makes a long deal more or less impossible. Older hitters have had a miserable time in the modern majors. In the past decade, hitters aged 35 and over have managed seven seasons of a 140 or higher wRC+. Four of those seven seasons belong to Nelson Cruz. Maybe Schwarber will be the next guy to do it, but if he is, he’ll do so on a series of shorter deals. That’s just how free agency works these days.

Player Notes
Schwarber is coming off the best of his four seasons with the Phillies, as he set career highs in homers (56), wRC+ (152, via a .240/.365/.563 line), slugging percentage, and WAR (4.9). His season was no fluke either, in that he hit the ball harder than ever, setting highs in average exit velocity (94.3 mph), barrel rate (20.8%), hard-hit rate (59.6%), xSLG (.601), and xwOBA (.414), and maximized that impact by trimming his strikeout rate to it its lowest since 2021 (27.2%). For the second season in a row, the Phillies maximized the value they got from Schwarber by keeping him out of the outfield as much as possible, playing him in left just eight times in 2025 after doing so five times in 2024 — a wise decision given that he totaled -37 FRV and -34 DRS in 242 games in left field in 2022–23.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that at his age, it’s tough to envision a repeat of 2025, and parking him at DH costs a team flexibility and limits his market (don’t expect the Dodgers or Yankees to bid on him). Still, the man is a Vibes All-Star, and will likely exceed a straight dollars-to-WAR projection because he’s so highly regarded within clubhouses and by fans. – JJ

Ben’s Take
After accepting a pillow contract last year, Alonso is hitting free agency again with a rosier trajectory. This time, he’s coming off of his best offensive season instead of his worst one, and it’s no small-sample fluke. His contact quality is as good as it’s ever been, and his plate discipline hasn’t slipped at all. Last year, an optimistic projection for Alonso would have been matching his career batting line at age 30. He cleared that bar with ease, and there’s no question that his season has changed the projected arc of his career.

I had Alonso down for $140 million last year, and I expect him to beat that guarantee after taking into account the $30 million he earned in 2025. This isn’t exactly a one-team market, but the Mets will surely be a top suitor; he’s a fan favorite, they need offense, and Steve Cohen has never been afraid to spend. In fact, I bet that both sides are incentivized to come to a quick agreement. Alonso would likely prefer to get his deal done before Schwarber to prevent a repeat of last year’s experience. The Mets, likewise, are trying to win now and can’t afford to get too cute for the sake of saving a few dollars. The disaster scenario for them – Schwarber’s market is robust, Alonso gets a huge offer away, and a bidding war ensues – feels like too big of a risk to me. And while Alonso might ask for seven years, I think that four at a handsome AAV will get it done. The path of least resistance is for everyone to agree to a contract that comes through on the upside Alonso chased last year.

Player Notes
Despite a stellar career at Florida, Alonso was only a second round pick in part because, for the better part of the last two decades, the righty-hitting college first basemen demographic has rarely yielded impactful major leaguers. It wasn’t until his second full pro season, after Alonso exited A-ball, that he truly broke out with a 36-homer campaign split between Double- and Triple-A. That year, he tied Ibandel Isabel for the minor league lead in homers, accepted an award for the feat at the Winter Meetings in Las Vegas, and later that evening, rolled some dice at The Cosmopolitan as the staff of our website strolled past him on our way to dinner. The following season, Alonso had a historic debut as he won NL Rookie of the Year and broke Aaron Judge’s single-season rookie home run record with 53 bombs.

Though he’s never quite had another season like that first one, Alonso has been one of baseball’s most fearsome power hitters for the last seven years. He’s third across all of baseball in homers (264) since his debut, first in RBI (712, 32 more than the next guy), 12th in slugging percentage (.516) and top 30 in doubles. He’s generated just shy of 21 career WAR, which is 40th among hitters since Alsono debuted, and fifth among first basemen.

Alonso first hit free agency after the 2024 season, but he was coming off a career-worst .459 SLG and 34 homers. There was pervasive fear that he could be this generation’s Mo Vaughn or Richie Sexson, that his body type and style of play were the kind that results in a precipitous decline, and that that decline had maybe already begun. Alonso ended up on a short-term contract with the Mets that included a second-year opt out, which he exercised after an impressive 2025 rebound campaign during which he nearly tied his career high wRC+ (141) and was near the very top of the majors in hard-hit rate, barrel rate, and other physical metrics that reinforce his continued prowess. He’ll turn 31 in December and should be primed for a longer deal this time around. – EL

Ben’s Take
I think that Bichette is going to get the second-largest guarantee of anyone this winter. Shortstops his age with excellent career offensive numbers don’t grow on trees. The pitch book practically writes itself. Past market comps include Willy Adames, Dansby Swanson, Carlos Correa, Xander Bogaerts, Marcus Semien, heck, even Javier Báez. All of those guys at least tickled the $200 million threshold. There’s basically no chance that Bichette will fall short of that, at least in my estimation.

Despite that strong pedigree, I’d definitely prefer the seven players listed ahead of him here. For me, Bichette’s lack of impact defense means that he’s one of the players who WAR overvalues most; sure, he’s a shortstop, but he’s one of the worst defensive shortstops in baseball. I think that teams across the majors would prefer to move him to second base, but even there, I think he’d probably be a defensive liability, and that’s before we get into age-related decline. Some of his issues might be due to injury, but that’s even scarier; he’s made six trips to the IL in the past three years, and his footspeed has paid the price.

That’s the dimmest possible view you could take of Bichette: a faux shortstop who our flagship statistic overrates. But the counterpoint is pretty easy, too: He’s 20% above average offensively, and come on, you don’t think he can learn to play second base if he’s healthy? He would have had a top five batting line at the position this year. Plenty of shortstops have shifted positions and turned into good defenders at their new spot. Bichette’s bat really is a difference maker, even if I think his value sometimes gets overstated as a result. In sum, even though Bichette isn’t my kind of free agent, he’s unquestionably very good, and I’m quite sure that many teams will be interested in continuing the young-star-shortstop-gets-paid trend.

Player Notes
Insight sometimes comes from unexpected sources, and on some days, actor Christoph Waltz saying “there can never be a whole without a contradiction” on an episode of Mythical Kitchen cues that it’s time to deeply discuss Bo Bichette.

Only 50 major leaguers have made their way into more games than Bichette’s 673 over the last five seasons, but his track record is dogged by lower body injuries. Multiple right calf strains limited him to 81 games in a miserable 2024 campaign, while a left knee sprain knocked him out for the last three weeks of this season and sidelined him until a Willis Reed-like return for the World Series. But Bichette’s right leg was the primary culprit up until then, as he suffered a sprain in that knee back in 2020, and dealt with minor patellar tendinitis and a quad strain in 2023. His relevance as a basestealer has evaporated as the incidents have multiplied. Moving to second base while Andrés Giménez manned short against the Dodgers was an injury-based adaptation, but Bichette’s defense was at least 10 runs in the hole per DRS, OAA and FRV in 2025, so making it a permanent relocation should be a priority for his team whether he remains a part of Toronto’s otherwise top flight defense or travels elsewhere.

Bichette has produced an even 20 WAR over his team control years since the Blue Jays popped him in the second round of the 2016 draft. Yet if a dispatch from the future had informed us that Bichette’s explosive, full-body tornado of a swing would produce in-zone contact rates in the 90s, he wouldn’t have fallen even that far and that WAR total would feel like injury played a larger part. He won’t turn 28 until March, has maintained a 47.4% hard-hit rate over the last five seasons, and has such good bat-to-ball skill that reducing his chase rate to a career-best (but still elevated) 33.8% put him in the same strikeout rate territory as Yandy Díaz, Ketel Marte and Ozzie Albies. Despite the dynamism of his swing, Bichette is not a bat speed maven, and his contact-focused orientation fits him more than it might initially appear. So even coming off a 134 wRC+ season, Bichette’s production has become so rooted in line drive trajectories that a repeat of his 29-homer campaign in 2021 is hard to fathom without a significant swing and/or approach tweak. Until then, this is a contact-hitting second baseman going forward, albeit one with an easy chance of being top-three in the league at the position. – JF

Ben’s Take
For the past five years, Suárez has been churning out three-win seasons like clockwork. He’s done it in a way that is going to be very polarizing to potential suitors this winter, though. Modern pitching analysis leans heavily on measuring pitch characteristics to produce an approximation of raw stuff. Suárez doesn’t excel there; instead, he gets the job done by mixing five pitches and locating them with great precision. He’s an archetypical crafty lefty, in other words, a throwback to a previous era. He’s also hit the IL in three straight years, missing a month or so each time; in fact, he’s never hit even 160 innings in his major league career.

That puts Suárez in a strange spot: old school approach, new school innings load. There aren’t a lot of easy comparisons for him. Teammate Aaron Nola seems like a decent first approximation, but Nola boasted more durability and several elite seasons heading into his contract year. Logan Webb’s contract extension would be a model for Suárez, except that Webb leads the league in innings pitched every year. Teams prioritize pure dominance even if it comes with workload concerns, and they also want workhorses who can lighten the burden for the rest of the squad. Suárez is stuck in between those two archetypes, which is going to limit his market somewhat despite his excellent overall results.

Player Notes
I signed up to write this blurb because my heart wants Suárez to be ranked higher on this list. I get that he doesn’t have the velocity, the strikeout rate, or the innings total of a Dylan Cease. I get it. But over his four full seasons as a starter, Suárez has run a 3.59 ERA and a 3.56 FIP with a groundball rate above 50%. His 12.2 WAR ranks 19th among all pitchers.

In 2025, he ran a 3.20 ERA and 3.21 FIP. His 86.5 mph exit velocity ranked fourth lowest among all starters, behind Tarik Skubal, Hunter Brown, and someone else I can’t remember (OK fine, it was Kyle Hendricks). Suárez avoided the longball in a homer-happy park and he set a career high of 157 1/3 innings. He’s got a 1.48 ERA and 3.02 FIP across 11 postseason appearances.

As for the downsides, the inning totals are low in large part because Suárez has dealt with back issues in three of the past four seasons. Those tend not to get better in your 30s. He’s never made 30 starts, and the fastball velocity really is a concern. In 2025, his sinker and four-seamer combined to average 90.5 mph, which put him in just the seventh percentile. Whoever signs Suárez will be getting one of the game’s premier pitchers, but they’ll be betting that he ages as well as Clayton Kershaw, relying on both stuff and guile to perform at a high level through his age-35 season. It’s a tall order. – DA

Ben’s Take
Díaz stands out from the crowd of relievers hitting the market this winter. He’s one of the best closers in the game, and he’s still at his peak; this season was the third time he’s eclipsed 60 innings with an ERA below 2.00. If you want to lock down your bullpen, Díaz is the best option for 2026 – and probably for 2027 and 2028, too, which is going to make him very attractive to every GM who thinks their team’s window is open for the next few years. He’s even been remarkably durable; the only extended absence of his career came courtesy of a fluke injury in the WBC that cost him the entire 2023 season.

The Mets, whose bullpen fell apart down the stretch despite Díaz’s brilliance, give him a strong floor in contract negotiations. They’ll have alternatives, no doubt, but none as good as Díaz, and skimping on bullpen options doesn’t make a lot of sense when you’re sparing no expense on the rest of the team. I’m fairly certain that Díaz will ask for a record average annual value in his deal, and why wouldn’t he? I’m also fairly certain that the Mets will give it to him. I’m calling it three years because he’s opting out of the last two years of his deal; this way, he can get both a raise and another year of job security. Everyone wins.

Player Notes
Since the December 2018 trade that brought him to Queens, and excepting a 2023 season lost to a ruptured right patellar tendon, Díaz has alternated bad-to-mediocre seasons with excellent ones. Fortunately for his free agent prospects, the 2025 season was one of the latter, as he posted a 1.63 ERA and 2.28 FIP in 66 1/3 innings while converting 28 of 31 save opportunities. His 38% strikeout rate ranked second among qualified relievers, and his 28.9% strikeout-to-walk differential third. Both marks were similar to 2024, but he cut his home run rate by more than half (from 1.17 per nine to 0.54), which in turn helped him do the same to his 3.52 ERA.

Digging deeper into his batted ball stats, Díaz threw both his four-seam fastball and slider with similar frequencies and velocities as before, and posted a career-high 48.4% groundball rate; both his average exit velocity and hard-hit rates went up, but a lower barrel rate offset that by enough that he even lowered his xERA (from 2.48 to 2.39).

Díaz’s stellar campaign was well-timed. With an eye towards guaranteeing himself a larger payday, he opted out of the final two years and $38 million of his existing five-year, $102 million contract. It’s possible that he and his Timmy Trumpet soundtrack will remain in Queens on a new deal, as the Mets are interested in retaining him, and only so many teams can afford a high-end closer. – JJ

Ben’s Take
Naylor is pretty clearly a cut below Schwarber and Alonso as the best first base/DH type on the market, but he’s at the top of the second tier in my eyes. His batting line is heavier on on-base and lighter on slug than your average first baseman, but that doesn’t lower my estimation of him at all. It would be one thing if he were a pure singles hitter or in the middle of a career year, but after four straight seasons of solid offense, there’s little reason to doubt the way he gets to his results. Offensive value is offensive value at the end of the day.

The real sticking point in Naylor’s negotiation is going to be how many years he signs for. Teams just don’t offer long deals to role players anymore, and when you get down to it, that’s what Naylor is. I do think that he’ll beat everyone outside of the top 10 other than the guy immediately following him on this list (more on him later), because his combination of age and proven performance stands out relative to his cohort. I’m unsure of whether he’ll have to wait until the top of the hitter market clears to find a home, but I think that he’s the clear choice out of the rest of the pack, and if I were running a team and wasn’t interested in the top prizes, I’d consider trying to jump the queue by signing Naylor while everyone else focuses on Schwaber.

Player Notes
Recently, I heard someone say that Naylor looks like a bouncer at a Tampa strip club (complimentary), and when a professional athlete can be accurately described in such a manner, it highlights the contradicting factors teams need to untangle before inking him to a free agent deal. On the one hand, Naylor has posted above-average offensive numbers over the last four seasons. He’s consistently hit the ball hard and minimized strikeouts. His bat speed slowed in 2025, but a higher percentage of those slower, more controlled swings led to squared up balls. And he swung a whole lot. Naylor’s best offensive seasons correlate with higher swing rates, and this year, his swing rate ranked 13th among qualified hitters.

But any concerns about Naylor are less about who he’s been and more about who he might become. Some teams will look at his physique and assume it doesn’t have too many defensive innings left in it, and their bias against Wario-shaped athletes might lead them to believe his aging curve is more of a cliff. But a more evolved team might see a player who controls the barrel through the zone and makes good swing decisions, one who, in his seventh year in the majors, used his ability to dissect the game to start stealing bases despite lacking foot speed. Those teams will see a player who thinks deeply about the game and realize that even though his body might not age well, the skills that make him great don’t depend on a body in peak physical form. – KO

Ben’s Take
Murakami is the latest NPB superstar to head across the Pacific, and bidding frenzies have accompanied his compatriots each time. He’s not subject to the international amateur bonus limits that capped the paydays for Shohei Ohtani and Roki Sasaki, which means the sky is the limit. As a decorated home run hitter who hasn’t yet turned 26, he’s the kind of star teams dream about locking down. As a result, Murakami’s deal is going to extend far into the future. I’ve pegged seven years here, but a longer deal with a player option or even a shorter one with some kind of complicated extension-esque kicker wouldn’t surprise me either.

That said, I think that recent experience in the NPB market is making people overestimate Murakami’s prospects. Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed a record deal and won World Series MVP two years later. Ohtani is Ohtani. Sasaki had a terrible first year, and yet he’s talented enough that the Dodgers used him as their closer in the playoffs. Signing these famous NPB stars has paid off handsomely, at least so far. Murakami is a great hitter, but I think he’s meaningfully short of those three in terms of expected impact in the majors. I’m terrified of his strikeout rate, quite frankly; NPB is a low-strikeout environment, and yet he’s approached a 30% strikeout rate in each of his last three seasons. He’s probably headed for first base, though many teams will at least nod towards giving him a shot at third. I’m skeptical that he has the skills to play a good major league third base, but plenty of defenders I didn’t think could hack it have proven me wrong before.

I think that the most likely outcome of a Murakami bidding war involves teams stretching on years rather than average annual value. I’m expecting the contract to offset risk for both sides, likely by giving Murakami a player option and teams some kind of cheap back-end in case he disappoints in the majors. There’s no way to represent that in this particular type of contract prediction setup, though, so just imagine a few bells and whistles on the projection I’ve listed here.

Player Notes
Murakami’s coronation as a central figure in Japanese baseball occurred very quickly; he was on a bullet train to national fame in his late teens and early 20s. He spent just one season in the minors before he had an immense 2019 breakout and won Rookie of the Year. After that, Murakami cut his strikeout rate across the next three seasons and had some of the best single-year performances in the history of NPB. He won an MVP award and an Olympic gold medal in 2021, then had a Pantheon-level 10-WAR, 56-homer, Triple Crown campaign in 2022. At the time, it looked like he might become one of the best all-around power hitters on the planet.

After that, Murakami’s strikeout rate spiked back into the 28% range for each of the next three seasons, and he’s never been quite as dominant as he was in 2022. He still has profile-carrying left-handed power, easily a 70 or 80 on the scouting scale, and he’s never hit fewer than 30 homers in any season during which he’s been totally healthy. But there are scary underlying indicators surrounding Murakami’s contact ability that are something of a red flag when projecting his MLB future. His contact rate tanks against fastballs 93 mph and above (just 63% since 2022) and, more recently, Murakami’s contact rates versus secondary pitches have also plummeted to near 50%.

MLB scouts and execs think Murakami might need to change his swing if he’s going to hit over here. His enthusiasts think he can do so. They also think Murakami’s health track record of late has impacted his performance. His 2024 season ended with a broken toe, then he had offseason elbow surgery, and then he tweaked an oblique early in 2025 and had a setback later on; altogether, he missed roughly two thirds of the 2025 season. Some combination of health and mechanical adjustment might allow him to make more contact, but either or both of those things needs to happen for him to be a successful big league hitter; he won’t succeed if he’s only making the rate of contact he was in 2025. Raw power like this doesn’t exactly grow on trees, and teams with deep pockets are likely to be on Murakami as a high-ceiling project that they can more easily take a risk on. – EL

Ben’s Take
Here’s a great way to learn about the going rate for dingers. Suárez doesn’t offer a broad range of skills. He strikes out a lot and doesn’t get on base at a high clip as a result. Defensively, he’s well past his peak; a trip down the defensive spectrum seems imminent. He’s 34, the third-oldest hitter on this list and the only one ranked remotely this high. That’s all true – but he also hit 79 home runs combined in the last two years. Yeah, that’ll play.

Would I sign Suárez to a long-term deal? Definitely not. It constantly feels like he’s a year away from decline; heck, Seattle salary dumped him before the 2024 season and then re-acquired him at the deadline this year. This kind of boom/bust game feels like it could end very messily; you can hit with a 30% strikeout rate, but probably not with a 35% rate, and he’s swinging and missing more than ever before in pursuit of those sweet, sweet homers. I think that will keep his eventual contract short. But on that short deal, I’d be happy to pay him like a star. No one will want to get caught holding the bag, but everyone will want 50 homers in 2026. High dollars over fewer years is the obvious compromise.

Player Notes
Some hitters like to maintain their swing year to year, making only minor adjustments. Others, like Suárez, are keen to make big changes and let their bodies figure out the rest. In 2023, his stance was essentially squared off to the pitcher, at four degrees. Then he opened up to 12 degrees in 2024, before opening up all the way to 24 degrees this past season. Suárez also narrowed his feet and moved up in the batter’s box, and began using a Trajekt machine more regularly. It all helped him hit 49 home runs in 2025, nearly matching his total from the previous two seasons combined (52), although his first half was far superior to his second (140 wRC+ vs. 103 wRC+).

When Suárez is on, he’s dangerous. The game-breaking upside that we saw at times in the postseason is exactly why you want him. The only issue is that he’s not always on, and it’s hard to know when it might all come crashing down. The slugger operates with a profile that doesn’t leave much room for error. He has bottom decile whiff and strikeout rates, which is okay when you’re slapping more than 40 homers, but the Mariners got a glimpse of the ugly after they acquired him at the trade deadline. Suárez struck out over a third of the time and had the ninth-worst xwOBA among qualified hitters. And there is a tradeoff to having as high an attack angle as he does. You can and will launch, but you’re left vulnerable at the top of the zone. Suárez will have to continue toeing the line and making adjustments – it’s who he is. His profile makes the most sense as a luxury on a team with a good offense, rather than relying on him to be a centerpiece. – ER

Ben’s Take
Get ready for some whiplash as teams contemplate Grisham. Two years ago, the Padres traded him in the Juan Soto deal, more or less to get out of his contract. He was a fourth outfielder in 2024, and not a particularly good one. But he put his patience-and-power combination to much better use in 2025 by occasionally attacking early in the count, correcting a long-standing weakness against pitchers who flooded the zone early. The result was a career-best batting line, but also one that looked very sustainable; he hits the snot out of the ball, doesn’t chase much, and makes good contact in the strike zone.

The toughest part of projecting Grisham is his defense, which has fallen from elite to iffy in center field in the past few years. I think a move to a corner is warranted; he has spectacular instincts and a nose for the ball, but he’s just not fast enough at full speed to handle center anymore. A move to right or left could turn him back into a plus defender, and he’s definitely still capable of filling in for a while if the starting center fielder goes down.

Out of the pocket of five hitters around here on the list, Grisham offers the most defensive versatility but one of the worst bats of the group. Given that teams have increasingly been paying for offense in free agency and finding defensive value in their farm systems, I think that puts him towards the bottom of this cluster, though just ahead of the guy with the most confusing projection of the bunch…

Player Notes
Two thoughts about Grisham: First, it’s cool to have a few legitimate center fielders in the free agent mix this year. Second, I don’t think this is the same guy from San Diego. I think he’s been body-snatched.

Grisham looked like a future star in the shortened 2020 season, when he posted a 122 wRC+ with terrific center field defense and counting stats that would’ve put him close to 30-30 over a full schedule. Then he forgot to hit, surviving three straight seasons of sub-.200 batting averages through the aforementioned defense and double-digit walk rates.

This year’s Grisham walked more than ever (14.1% walk rate, with a .348 OBP) with a career-high 34 home runs. And there are obvious approach changes to point to here, including a career-high pull air percentage of 23.5%, which compounded nicely with the advantage of batting lefty in Yankee Stadium. But the best-in-baseball outfield range has evaporated over Grisham’s two seasons in New York, leaving him to grade out as a below-average defender in 2025, for the first time in his career.

Grisham has, at one point or another, displayed all five tools in the majors, but it’s been five years since he had them all at once. If he can ever run and hit at the same time, he could be the steal of this free agent class — especially as he’s only just turning 29. But his career path has been so weird and unpredictable that it’d be irresponsible to rank him higher. – MB

Ben’s Take
I badly misjudged Torres’ market last year. I thought that his age and production would merit a multi-year pact somewhere, but he signed a pillow contract with the Tigers, and quite frankly, I’m wondering if he’ll end up with another this year. He’s not enough of an offensive force to ignore his defensive value; guys like Torres, who are 10% or so above league average with the bat, are great if they can pick it and uninteresting otherwise. He’s been bad on the middle infield for years, though, which makes me think that he’ll end up confined to a corner position before long, putting more pressure on his bat.

To be fair, he does a lot of stuff well offensively. His sense of the strike zone is immaculate, and he makes plenty of contact when he swings. I actually think he’s gone too far in that direction; his bat speed has declined as his contact rate has improved, and he’s in danger of entering the sort of death spiral my colleague Dan Szymborski discussed earlier this year. The overall tools are there, Torres just hasn’t put them together consistently. Given the dearth of offensive difference makers available this winter, I think that potential will get Torres a deal similar to Grisham’s, even if it requires teams doing a little wishcasting on his offensive upside.

Player Notes
Torres first hit the free agent market last offseason and there he stayed until signing a one-year, $15 million contract with Detroit in late December. The deal came in well below the three to five years and $18 million AAV many expected. Not much has changed about Torres or his market over the last year. He remains the only second baseman among the Top 50 (depending on how you feel about Bo Bichette’s long-term position), and though his offense did bounce back somewhat after a down 2024, his power remains depleted. Instead, Torres made gains by improving upon his already exceptional plate discipline. He cut his swing rate, leading to more quality contact and fewer whiffs. However, his production fell off significantly in August and September. He particularly struggled against fastballs and his bat tracking data suggests a timing issue, though a sports hernia probably played a part.

With another year of similar production in the books, teams will need to decide how they feel about the evolving shape of that production. Do they trust in the first half numbers and a first-rate understanding of the strike zone, or do they point to a rough second half as evidence of what’s to come? Torres has proven himself capable of getting right following sustained slumps, but since he offers little value on defense or the basepaths, he’s working within thin margins that make it unlikely he’ll ever get the big, multiyear deal players dream of when they make the majors. – KO

Ben’s Take
I would have had King a lot higher if he hit free agency last year, but a down season, twice interrupted by injury, has introduced uncertainty into a previously slam dunk free agency case. He’s now hurt basically every part of his arm – finger injury in 2021, elbow injury in 2022, shoulder injury in 2025 – and only has one full season of starting to his name. He was awesome in that season, and he’s been incredible as a multi-inning reliever, but I don’t know how you can look at King’s profile and not worry about durability.

One option is for King to accept a qualifying offer, bank more than $20 million, and try free agency again next winter. I think that’s the most likely outcome, in fact. King is in a strange middle ground where the qualifying offer meaningfully impacts his prospects; no one minds the draft pick cost all that much when they’re signing a superstar, and deals below $50 million in total value carry lower penalties, but signing King would cost most teams a pretty good draft pick. Thus, a short deal that clears the QO hurdle and hopefully sets him up to reach free agency after a healthy 2026 could work for everyone.

Player Notes
In 2024, a 29-year-old King finally spent a full season starting and was impressive enough to garner down-ballot Cy Young support. His follow-up season didn’t go as well, as he made just 15 starts due to bouts of shoulder and left knee inflammation. When he did pitch, he was kept on such a short leash that he averaged fewer than five innings per start; aside from a two-hit, 110-pitch shutout against the Rockies on April 13, he reached the six-inning and 100-pitch thresholds just once apiece.

King did post a 3.44 ERA, but both his FIP (4.42) and xERA (4.26) indicate trouble below the surface. His strikeout rate slipped three percentage points relative to 2024, to 24.7%, while he served up full season career highs in homers per nine (1.47) and barrel rate (11.4%). Both of those have a lot to do with batters (especially lefties) giving his four-seam fastball the piñata treatment; they hit .349 and slugged .814 against it — with a 32.3% barrel rate! — though it did generate a 30% whiff rate, remaining an effective weapon when King threw it in the upper third of the zone or higher.

While King’s season was a less-than-ideal platform for free agency, he declined his end of a $15 million mutual option. The Padres will likely issue him a $22.05 million qualifying offer, but he figures to decline that as well and search for a blockbuster deal, particularly given a market where most of the best starters come with major concerns. – JJ

Ben’s Take
If you’re looking for bulk innings at a reasonable rate in 2026, Kelly is your guy. Aside from a shoulder strain that cost him half the 2024 season, he’s been quite durable since returning to the US from a stint in Korea, and while his run prevention numbers aren’t otherworldly, they’re solidly above average. You might think that I’m damning him with faint praise, but I’d argue that I’m praising him with faint damnation. If “not otherworldly” is the biggest knock on a pitcher, there will be teams lined up around the block to sign that guy.

The big question isn’t whether Kelly can be a part of your rotation in 2026 – at least, unless you’re the Dodgers. The question is what 2027 and later will look like. He’s 37 and throws 92 mph; it’s not exactly a stable profile. It’s pretty easy to imagine how this could go wrong. A tiny bit of velocity decline, three bad starts in a row in June, and suddenly the future could start to feel pretty rickety. That’s a fear, at least to some extent, with every pitcher, but it’s especially so when it comes to older guys without ridiculous stuff. If the way they succeed is mostly on guile, the decline phase can get hairy quickly. Thus, I have Kelly down for a QO-like one year deal that will give him a chance to hit free agency again if he’s good, but won’t cost the signing team in the future if he’s cooked.

Player Notes
Kelly has been sneaky good since returning stateside. Signed by the Arizona Diamondbacks in December 2018 following four seasons playing with the SK Wyverns of the KBO, Kelly has gone on to craft a 3.77 ERA over 172 starts comprising 1,008 1/3 innings. His 10 most recent outings came with the Texas Rangers, who acquired the veteran right-hander from the Snakes at this summer’s trade deadline for a trio of prospects.

Kelly is getting up there in years — the one time Tampa Bay Rays prospect celebrated his 37th birthday last month — but there’s little evidence to suggest that he’s over the hill. His 32 starts in 2025 were tied for ninth most in the majors, while his 3.52 ERA ranked 19th among qualified pitchers. Those aren’t break-the-bank numbers in terms of what he’ll receive in offers this winter, but they’re more than enough to make him an attractive option for clubs in want of a middle-of-the-rotation addition, of which there are many.

Much like fellow free agent Chris Bassitt, Kelly is your consummate craftsman. Velocity-challenged by today’s standards (his 92-mph heater ranked in the 16th percentile) and employing a diverse arsenal (six pitches), he is cerebral in terms of approach. When I talked to him earlier this year, Kelly told me that he “needs to be smart with what [he is] doing out there on the mound.” Given his recent track record of success, Kelly profiles as a prudent free agent acquisition. – DL

Ben’s Take
A late entrant into this list, Imanaga hit free agency after the Cubs declined a three-year club option and Imanaga declined a player option. He’ll surely receive a qualifying offer, and I actually think he’s a decent bet to go back to the Cubs. The dual sticking points around his deal, in my opinion, were its length and the fact that the Cubs would have also owed 15% of the club option to the Yokohama BayStars, the NPB team that posted Imanaga two years ago.

With that contract now over and the specter of a QO hanging, a two-year deal seems right for Imanaga. I think he’ll get $20 million or so per year, the going rate for a good but not overpowering starter. Imanaga’s 2025 doesn’t really hit that mark. He lost a few ticks on his fastball, his secondaries couldn’t pick up the slack, and the result was a sharp decline in his strikeout rate and its various constituent bat-missing indicators. But his 2024 was really good, and given that he missed nearly two months of the 2025 season with a hamstring injury, a bounce back feels entirely reasonable. His velo dipped considerably in the second half of the year, for one thing, and his timing looked off too.

That uncertainty actually helps me peg Imanaga’s market. He’s too risky for a long-term deal to make sense. He’s also too good for a low-AAV deal to make sense. The qualifying offer adds a further cap at $50 million in total value. As Sherlock Holmes said, once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains has to be the answer. For me, that’s a two-year deal, probably with some kind of protection for both sides on the second year.

Ben’s Take
After looking at Gallen’s résumé for about an hour, I came to an obvious conclusion: I’m glad I’m not a major league GM. I mean, what in the world are you supposed to do here? He looked like a down-ballot Cy Young type for three straight seasons, but then turned into a pumpkin in his walk year. And we’re talking really bad: Every ERA estimator was in the mid-4.00s, Gallen’s strikeout rate plummeted, he barely missed any bats, and our Stuff models think he soundly deserved his poor results. Even scarier, they think he actually fell off a cliff in 2024, with the results following a year later.

Passing on Gallen might feel even more foolish in a year’s time, though. He’s never needed nasty stuff to get results; he’s a command and deception guy, and it’s entirely feasible that a change of scenery and an offseason to regroup vaults him right back up to spectacular. He throws as hard as ever, and having just turned 30, it’s not like he’s going to crumble to dust tomorrow. I think the most likely contract is one that gives everyone a small victory. Gallen gets a two-year deal, probably with some kind of innings-based opt out, while the team signing him stays below $50 million in total guaranteed money to avoid triggering harsher draft pick penalties. If he’s great in 2026, he can hit the market again with no qualifying offer holding him back.

Player Notes
Gallen was healthy but generally underwhelming in 2025, finishing with a career-worst ERA and FIP, not to mention his lowest strikeout rate to date. His second half was better than his first, but there were some negatives there as well; shedding a walk per nine is a good thing, but losing a strikeout per nine is most definitely not. The drop in BABIP he experienced from the first half to the second (.292 versus .242) can’t really be attributed to anything Gallen did, either; if I put the batters against data into the ZiPS BABIP estimator and use Arizona’s defense, the computer expected a .288 BABIP in the first half and a .282 in the second.

Missing bats has never been among Gallen’s best attributes as a pitcher, but he’s lost 20% of his strikeout rate from his peak, and he’s not one of those hurlers who appears to have a meaningful pitch-to-contact skill. All this being said, there’s still upside here. Gallen’s knuckle-curve is still good enough that he probably won’t allow another nine home runs with it, and his repertoire gives him a lot of tools to work with. He started using his changeup a lot more against righties in the second half, which I think is a good approach, as it’s gotten a whiff rate against righties that’s almost as high as that of his slider.

While there are definitely concerns about Gallen dropping from marginal ace status, I don’t think the questions are so significant that he’ll be shunned in free agency. That said, his situation is further complicated by the fact that Arizona hung on to him at the deadline, meaning he’s eligible for a qualifying offer. He’s definitely still worth a QO, but there are enough issues here that draft compensation may sour some of his potential suitors. I think it’s quite possible that Gallen signs something like a two year, $48 million with an opt-out clause. There ought to be teams, such as the Orioles, that will be happy to go in on something like that. – DS

Ben’s Take
Imai is the best pitcher heading stateside this year, and it’s at least arguable that his 2025 was more impressive than anyone else outside of the top trio of arms. He posted a 1.92 ERA with peripherals to match for the Seibu Lions, and while offense is down in NPB, it’s not that down. He has strikeout stuff, he doesn’t walk a ton of guys, and he keeps the ball in the ballpark incredibly well given how much he’s already limiting everything else. He has a weird pitch mix – splitter/changeup combos don’t grow on trees – but he might have four plus offerings, and I think he might have room to improve on several of them. He’s still 27, and it’s pretty easy to imagine him getting better from here given his career trajectory.

I have Imai ranked here because NPB’s offense has gotten so weird that I’m skeptical of how things will translate. The very best players are clearly awesome, but you can’t just take a great ERA and port it over directly. Anthony Kay, who didn’t make my top 50, posted a 1.76 ERA this year, for example. Essentially, I think that Imai is going to get a bigger deal than I’d give him: I can’t imagine the bidding ending at fewer than five years given his age and results, and it doesn’t hurt that the last few elite NPB starters have been spectacular in the majors. Put everything together, and I expect some team to pay an amount that makes them uncomfortable to secure his services for the next half-decade.

Player Notes
Imai was the Lions’ 2016 first round pick out of a high school in Utsunomiya City, a metro roughly the size of Tucson that’s about 80 miles north of Tokyo. He spent a year in the minors and then hopped right into the Lions rotation as a 20-year-old in 2018. Throughout his early- and mid-20s, Imai was a walk-prone (but effective) starter, and then took a step forward as a strike-thrower and innings-eater in each of the next three seasons, becoming one of NPB’s best arms. Across the 2022-25 seasons, Imai halved his walk rate (from the 14% area to 7%), expanded his repertoire, and improved his fastball velocity even as his innings count grew north of 160 frames. He’s had four consecutive seasons with an ERA under 2.50 (even while he was wild), and in 2025, he posted a 1.92 ERA and 2.01 FIP.

And Imai might not be done improving. He has a loose, whippy sort of athleticism that helps him generate big, deceptive arm speed. He may be a tweak away from having better stuff than his already solid five-pitch mix. A nasty mid-80s slider with sharp two-planed movement performed like a plus pitch in 2025 and is the best of those offerings.

You can quibble with Imai’s relative lack of size (he’s listed at 5-foot-11) or aspects of his delivery, but he certainly looks like a big league starter from a raw stuff and athleticism standpoint. He’s demonstrated MLB starter-quality stamina and strike-throwing for the last several seasons, and he could conceivably take another step forward if even one aspect of his delivery can be polished in his late 20s. The chaotic ingredients of an NPB-to-MLB transition (different baseball, routine changes, etc.) create more risk and variability in Imai’s forecast than that of the other tier-two free agent starting pitchers in this class, but Imai has a roughly similar ceiling as the Zac Gallen/Michael King group. – EL

Ben’s Take
Okamoto isn’t the same kind of shooting star talent as Munetaka Murakami, but he’s been the better hitter of the two corner infielders over the last three years. He hits for power and average, rarely strikes out, and consistently posts double-digit walk rates to boot. If you enjoyed the Blue Jays this October, he’s their kind of hitter; he puts the ball in the air plenty and with authority, but his true standout skill is doing that without piling up strikeouts. As Eric noted in his scouting report, Okamoto has also improved against high velocity fastballs in the past few years, which is a key point of failure for NPB hitters.

Still, let’s not get too crazy here. We’re not necessarily talking about Alejandro Kirk as a third baseman; I expect that Okamoto will strike out far more in the majors than he did in Japan, and he’s up there looking to do damage, not slap one the other way. His game is doubles over dingers, but it’s a ton of both. It might also be more first base than third, which I baked into my estimation. I have him down as a solid hitter (though not an overwhelmingly good one) who’s without an obvious defensive home. I think that will land him a four-year deal with some fancy bells and whistles for both him and the club that signs him. I have legitimately no clue which bells and whistles – but luckily, that’s outside of the scope of this exercise.

Player Notes
Okamoto has been one of NPB’s most productive power hitters since 2018, and until 2024, he had had six straight seasons of clubbing 30 or more home runs, including a 2023 campaign in which he hit 41 of them. It was at that point that public reports surfaced of MLB teams scouting Okamoto, reports that have continued throughout the last two seasons, culminating in a looming posting this winter. Though he’s missed some time with injury (a sprained left elbow suffered during a collision cost him half of 2025), Okamoto has generated the two lowest strikeout rates of his career in 2024 (15.9%) and 2025 (11.3%), and slashed an incredible .327/.416/.598 (thanks in part to a career-high BABIP) in his platform season.

Okamoto’s most resonant skills are his feel for contact and his ability to time and pull the baseball, including fastballs. This is especially impressive considering Okamoto loads his hands very deep, practically barring his front arm as he sets up. But his wrists and hands are quick and strong enough for him to get around on most pitch types and locations, and pepper the left field line with hard contact. For all NPB hitters, exposure to premium velocity comes in a small sample on a year-to-year basis. That’s especially true for Okamoto, who performed dramatically better than before against 94-plus mph in 2025, but in only half a season’s playing time. Okamoto’s splits against hard fastballs are favorable. He has an 84% contact rate against all pitches 94 mph and above combined the last three seasons, compared to a 78% contact rate overall.

Because Okamoto is so geared to pull, he does make some concessions against well-located secondary pitches away from him, though none of his splits against any particular pitch type are especially scary, and his steady chug of improved contact over the last few years makes him less bust-prone. He tracks pitches well, moves the barrel around the zone (especially the upper half), and is a pretty stable bat-to-ball “prospect” for an NPB player. He lacks the light tower power of a superstar corner infielder, but he should hit enough to profile as a regular despite below-average defense at third base. – EL

Ben’s Take
The Mets seem like the clear favorites to land Edwin Díaz, which means that Suarez is going to be fielding a lot of calls from teams that badly need a great reliever. He just opted out of his deal with the Padres, and he’s coming off of two straight years of elite results. As you’ll see shortly, there aren’t any other proven relievers currently pitching well, which means if you want a new closer in 2026 and you can’t afford to have your new hire take a while getting up to speed, it’s Suarez or a clearly inferior option. As a result, I think that he’s going to get a deal that is well ahead of every player below him on this list. In other words, this is the big break point in these rankings. I only have one player below him getting three or more years, and I also have him down for $14 million more than anyone after him.

Now, are there red flags? Absolutely. Suarez is going to turn 35 just after Opening Day, he relies heavily on velocity, and he’s so fastball-dominant that any loss of shape could make him shockingly hittable overnight. But closers with no red flags basically don’t exist, and certainly not in free agency. Teams trying to sign Suarez aren’t comparing him to Mariano Rivera or anything; they’re comparing him to what they have on hand, and for probably 20 teams in baseball, their best current option was worse than Suarez this year. I’m expecting someone to give him a deal where the final year feels painful and borderline irresponsible, because good relievers are phenomenally important in the playoffs, and Suarez absolutely fits the bill.

Player Notes
Suarez enters free agency with a three-season track record as a high-leverage reliever and results about as consistent as they come. He had a down year in 2023, but only pitched in the second half of the season after missing the first half due to elbow inflammation. Since then, Suarez has logged two seasons with at least 65 innings pitched and a sub-75 ERA-. He falls short of the Elite Closer status, but he’s been very good, nonetheless.

As with any free agent reliever, volatility is a concern, especially since Suarez will be entering his age-35 season. But Suarez is a bit of a throwback in terms of approach, which makes troubleshooting any potential issues in the future a simpler task. He throws two high-spin fastballs — a four-seamer and a sinker — at 98 mph and complements them with a changeup at 90 mph. He’s not doing anything fancy, like tunneling a breaking ball off his heater or manipulating seam-shifted wake. He’s varying location and messing with timing while throwing gas. What’s more, the hitter’s perception of that top-end velocity is amped up even further by his 81st-percentile extension. And despite reaching his mid-30s, his velocity is holding steady, as is his ability to locate his pitches. He allowed more solid contact in 2025 relative to prior seasons and his expected stats suggest he may have enjoyed some batted ball luck, so Suarez is no sure thing, but for teams looking to the free agent market for bullpen help, he’s no riskier than any other late-inning reliever. – KO

Ben’s Take
Yeah, like I said, the relievers behind Suarez all have some warts. For Williams, the wart is his bizarre 2025 season. He got traded to the Yankees before the year and for whatever reason, he never really got going. His stuff? Still outrageous. PitchingBot, our in-house pitch modeling system, has given his “airbender” changeup an 80 out of 80 in each of the last six years. It’s an outlier, one of one. He struck out 35% of opposing batters and posted his lowest walk rate since 2020. This guy is one of the least solvable relievers in the entire world.

Somehow, though, he also posted a 4.79 ERA and lost the closer job. I’m honestly at a loss as to why. He didn’t give up a ridiculous number of homers. He didn’t get wrecked by contact; his .296 BABIP allowed is worse than his career average, but it’s not bad. He just seemed to either throw a perfect inning or get shelled. Maybe he was tipping pitches; he was far worse with runners on base. Maybe he just couldn’t handle playing in New York, though I’m skeptical of that argument in general. Either way, he was flat out bad this year despite incredible peripherals, and I think he’s going to get a deal that reflects the fact that he’s no lock to be a closer out of the gate in 2026. I think he’ll snap out of it, and I would be happy to give him a multi-year deal speculatively, but I can’t imagine preferring him to Suarez if I were trying to make the playoffs next season.

Player Notes
I’m fairly confident that Williams is still one of the best relievers in baseball. That said, there’s no question that he is prone to command issues, and those issues led to his unicorn changeup getting hit way more than it ever has before for a solid chunk of the season. The .291 xwOBA hitters notched against it was the highest of his career. He may be flappable, but he’s still got the juice. The gap between his 2.68 FIP and 4.79 ERA is the easiest defense of that, but to support the notion further, hitters chased more when facing him this season than they had during any other in his career. His zone contact rate was identical to the previous two seasons. He’s still a very good, very effective reliever with the kind of stuff that makes hitters look like baby deer, even if he is different than he was before.

Williams’ arm angle has fallen every year since his rookie season, and it reached a career low of 18.8 degrees by the end of 2025. The drop hasn’t coincided with any big changes in his movement profile, but it’s very possible that it impacted his deception, his feel for location, and/or the way his pitches tunnel with each other. By late summer, he seemed to have adjusted to his new reality. His locations shifted further to his arm side, and he settled into being his dominant self again, an improvement that carried into the playoffs. It’s great to see that he was able to figure it out mid-season and be adaptable, even if there is a layer of volatility to his profile that wasn’t there before 2025. – ER

Ben’s Take
Like Williams, Helsley went to New York in 2025 and fell apart. Unlike Williams, his peripheral numbers pretty much tell the story. His strikeout rate dipped, his walk rate ballooned, and he surrendered louder contact. It doesn’t explain a 7.20 ERA in his two months with the Mets, but sprinkle in some pitch tipping and some bad sequencing, and ERA can get ugly pretty quickly. The question for acquiring teams isn’t what happened in 2025; it’s whether he’ll repeat it in 2026.

That’s unknowable, but my read is that he’ll end up in the same category as Williams, a great reliever and potential back-of-the-bullpen option, but one whose recent form rules out a long-term deal. Relievers are maddeningly difficult to predict, with the elite ones of today the mop-up men of tomorrow, which limits the length of their contracts at the best of times. I don’t see how anything else could transpire here. The contours of that second year – vesting, guaranteed, player option, buyout, etc. – will depend on how teams parse Helsley’s 2025 campaign, but I don’t think a third year is likely in any case.

Player Notes
Helsley was selected in the fifth round of the 2015 draft out of Division II Northeastern State (they’re the Riverhawks) and developed as a starter (paralleling fellow 2015 draftee Jordan Hicks) until 2019, when he debuted in the majors as a reliever. He has remained one ever since. He became the Cardinals’ closer, and at his best has been one of the nastier relievers in baseball, sitting 99 mph and bending in one of the game’s best sliders en route to a couple of years with a K% north of 35%.

Helsley truly broke out in 2022, when he experienced a two-tick velo bump and his slider began playing like a truly elite pitch. Since that season, Helsley ranks sixth in WAR and ERA among relievers with at least 200 innings pitched, while also being seventh in K% and 14th in WHIP. His ERA and FIP were comfortably under 3.00 in the 2022-2024 window, before spiking this year. The Cardinals traded Helsley to the Mets at the deadline, and he really struggled in August and September, posting a 7.20 ERA and 5.19 FIP while surrendering four home runs, as many as he had in all of 2023 and 2024 combined (and matching his first half total). At the end of August, he told Will Sammon of The Athletic that he thought he was tipping his pitches.

There was virtually no dip in Helsley’s stuff in 2025, he was just uncharacteristically homer-prone. Despite a fairly checkered injury history early in his career (he had shoulder stuff as a prospect and rookie, a stress reaction in his elbow in 2021, and a forearm strain in 2023), he’s been durable for the last two seasons and is showing no signs of slowing down at age 31. He’d be a set-up man or closer on most teams. – EL

Ben’s Take
The last of this group of four relievers is also the most interesting case. Rogers definitely doesn’t “look the part.” He throws underhand, with velo in the 80s. In terms of run prevention, though, he’s been one of the best in the business for half a decade. The juxtaposition between appearance and results is matched by the mixed signals the market has sent Rogers. He got a late start and never really hit a big arbitration payday; in 2025, his last year of arb, he was paid $5.25 million. On the other hand, the Mets sent a strong package of players for Rogers at the deadline, and they treated him like a key reliever down the stretch.

With no meaningful platoon splits and an elite ability to generate grounders, Rogers is the ideal fireman. He can parachute into any situation and possess useful skills for the task, and thanks to his low-effort delivery, he can pitch a ton; he’s topped 70 innings in each of the last five years. It’s definitely unsettling to use Rogers in high-leverage situations. He’s just tossing it in there, and boy does it look weird! But regardless of what it looks like, you can’t argue with the results. I think that’ll get Rogers a two-year deal that more than doubles his career earnings.

Player Notes
I have to admit to having a long-standing fetish for sidearmers and submariners. Pitcher was my best position in Little League, and without any data to use as evidence, I wager that I may have been the only Gen-Xer or elder millennial kid to model their windup after Terry Leach, not Dwight Gooden or Roger Clemens or Nolan Ryan. So I have a natural bias towards Rogers, such that he’s usually on my roster in MLB The Show.

Rogers doesn’t miss bats, and his velocity peaks in the low 80s, but he survives by being one of the rare pitchers who shrugs at batters making a lot of contact off him. They rarely hit him hard, and when they do, it’s mostly straight into the ground. Of the pitchers with at least 50 balls hit 95 mph or harder in 2025, only Tim Hill had a lower average launch angle (two degrees vs. three for Rogers).

It also helps that Rogers doesn’t suffer the platoon splits that you see from a lot of sidewinding pitchers, which can limit their wider utility. While he doesn’t whiff lefties with his sinker, they’ve found that pitch almost impossible to drive unless Rogers makes a mistake. And his rising slider is a highlight reel generator. Rogers isn’t likely to get a closer job in 2026 and he shines the most on a team with a good infield defense, but he ought to be solid in most setup roles. – DS

Player Notes
From 2022 to 2024, Bader ranked seventh among center fielders in fielding run value while running a wRC+ of 80. That’s a valuable complementary piece, which is why the Twins brought him in to take on the busiest understudy role in baseball in 2025, backing up Byron Buxton. Things didn’t go as planned, though in a good way. First, Buxton stayed healthy and productive. Second, Bader really hit. He played in left and moved to Philadelphia when the Twins threw in the entire linen closet at the deadline. He finished with a 122 wRC+ and put up a career-high 3.2 WAR.

The idea of a Harrison Bader who swings a dangerous bat is tempting, but the underlying numbers treat that notion the way Gallagher treated watermelons. Bader’s .359 BABIP was one of the highest in baseball. Among players with at least 350 plate appearances, the 43-point drop-off from his wOBA to his xwOBA was the very highest. His 89 DRC+ was the second-lowest of his entire career. He didn’t suddenly start chasing less, making more contact, hitting the ball harder, or lifting and pulling.

The good news is that even in his age-31 season, Bader showed great speed, putting up a sprint speed of 28.8 feet per second. He’s a few years removed from possessing elite speed, but he’s still fast enough to go and get it in center. Just don’t expect him to hit like it’s 2025. – DA

Player Notes
When O’Hearn was featured here at FanGraphs back in late May, the first sentence of the piece stated that he had been “the best hitter on an underachieving Baltimore Orioles team.” That largely remained true (ditto the disappointing Orioles part of the equation), as the late-blooming first baseman/DH went on to finish his 2025 Baltimore tenure with a 135 wRC+ over 361 plate appearances. O’Hearn wasn’t nearly as good after switching coasts at the trade deadline. Swapped to San Diego in an eight-player deal, he put up a solid yet unspectacular 112 wRC+ in 183 plate appearances with the Padres. All told, his 2025 output included a career-high 17 home runs and a 127 wRC+, as well as 3.0 WAR.

What should be expected of the left-handed slugger going forward? Moreover, just how much value does a 32-year-old first baseman/DH — one who primarily plays against opposite-handed pitchers — have relative to what it will cost to bring him on board? He’s been productive since leaving Kansas City and seeing markedly more action, but at the same time, the 15 home runs, 121 wRC+, and 2.0 WAR that he’s averaged over the last three seasons is good, not great.

Numbers aside, O’Hearn’s reputation as a clubhouse asset is an intangible that suitors will certainly consider. It is also worth noting that value for dollars spent is, in many ways, dependent on the team writing the checks. O’Hearn is going to get paid. – DL

Player Notes
Ahead of his 10th season as a big league regular, Polanco changed his hitting guy, closed his stance, tweaked his attack angle and had a career-best offensive campaign by wRC+ (132). Better yet for teams hoping to ride the wave, it was backloaded, as Polanco hit .282/.348/.551 after July 1. And it was undergirded by the best average and max exit velocity of his career, as well as the best hard-hit rate (45.8%). The switch-hitter’s minuscule 15.6% strikeout rate not only arrested a three-year acceleration trend, but nearly cut his 2024 figure (29.2%) in half.

That’s all great, but a healthy Polanco has usually been a plus hitter. What’s new is the level of positional uncertainty in his profile.

Polanco made 87 starts at DH for the Mariners in 2025 compared to 39 in the field, and his health history would be enough cause for it even if his fielding metrics weren’t underwater. Polanco had surgery to repair the patellar tendon in his left knee at the close of the 2024 season, allowing Seattle to pounce on him as a buy-low option. Prior to that, two surgeries on his right ankle – the last of which came after the 2020 season – precipitated his move off shortstop during his Twins tenure. He’s made a handful of appearances at third over the last three seasons, but didn’t make the sort of immediate impression to signal it as an obvious solution.

Polanco hits too well to not be a regular on a multi-year deal somewhere in his age-32 season (he’s expected to decline a 2026 player option), but his defense and injury history will require a rather specific fit. – JF

Player Notes
We were pretty high on Kim last offseason, and for good reason: He’s an average hitter overall who’ll make good contact, take a walk, steal a base, and play good-to-great defense at multiple infield positions. The Rays don’t spend big on free agents very often, but they gave Kim a contract worth $13 million in 2025, with a player option for 2026.

And they didn’t get much for it. Kim started the season with a shoulder injury that kept him on the IL until July, and he suited up for Tampa Bay just 24 times before the Rays put him on waivers. Kim finished the year as a significant part of the Braves’ “We’re not making the playoffs and everyone’s hurt, so let’s try some stuff” experiment. And he was OK, hitting .253/.316/.368 in 24 games.

Kim’s long track record of doing the basics well makes him an instant upgrade at second base or shortstop for about half the league, including more than a few teams that aim to make the playoffs. But the market wasn’t exactly white-hot for him last winter; now he’s a year older, coming off a serious injury and an underwhelming offensive season. – MB

Player Notes
Realmuto turned 34 this past March. He’s the only catcher in baseball to spend more than 5,000 innings at the position over the past five years. Over the past decade, he’s caught 24% more innings than anyone else in the major leagues. He’s spent more time behind the plate than Lard-Ass from Stand by Me. The Phillies talked a big game about easing Realmuto’s workload this past season, replacing Vibes Guy Garrett Stubbs with a real backup in Rafael Marchán. Realmuto still led the league in innings caught.

Realmuto is clearly aging. From 2018 to 2022, he posted a 118 wRC+ and averaged 19 homers a year. This past season, he had a 94 wRC+ and hit just 12 homers. He slugged under .400 for the first time since his 11-game callup in 2014. His glove, which peaked at 15 to 18 runs per year above average, was seven runs below average in 2025. The days of consistent five-win production are clearly not coming back; Realmuto has been worth either 2.0 or 2.1 WAR in each of the past three seasons, and I would not bet on that trend reversing itself in his late 30s.

He’s still the best free agent catcher on the market by a country mile. – MB

Player Notes
This is a soon-to-be 35-year-old who has played 14 innings of outfield defense in the last three years, so there are some decline indicators to discuss. Ozuna’s 2025 (.232/.355/.400, 114 wRC+) was a pronounced step back from the two years that preceded it, which were the best of his career. It’s not just that he barely hit more than half (21) as many homers as the two years before (40, 39), he also lost nearly nine percentage points on his hard-hit rate (44.4%). His normally prodigious all-fields juice was mostly resigned to the pull side, his annual immolation of fastballs slipped (he slugged a mere .474 against them) as he became radically more passive in the zone, and Statcast had Ozuna losing a tick of bat speed and producing fewer impact swings.

Not that older players are known for shrugging off injuries and never being troubled by them again, but Ozuna was playing through a “tear” in his right hip in 2025, which could have been heavily responsible for the content of the preceding paragraph. His strange new passivity at the dish also offered traditional benefits, like more contact to go along with the highest walk (15.9%) and lowest chase (21.9%) rates of his career. And Ozuna’s expected numbers (.366 xwOBA) represented a more mild decline from his 2024 fourth-place NL MVP finish than he actually experienced.

Over the past three years, Ozuna has hit the ninth-most homers in the sport and owns a slightly better wRC+ (137) than fellow free agent DH Kyle Schwarber (135), but that version of him isn’t necessarily the one hitting the market. – JF

Player Notes
Relievers can be volatile season-to-season, and that’s especially true when the pitcher in question’s accompanying track record is more mixed-bag than Mr. Dependable. Keller’s résumé resembles that of the former, which makes him an especially intriguing candidate in this year’s free agent class. A former starter who battled Thoracic Outlet Syndrome before being signed off the scrap heap by the Chicago Cubs in January, Keller came into the year having logged a 5.18 ERA over the past four campaigns. Rejuvenated by a return to full health and an opportunity with a new team, he proceeded to saw off bats. Enjoying a career-best season, Keller came out of the bullpen 68 times to the tune of a 2.07 ERA and a 2.93 FIP.

His 27.2% strikeout rate was meaningfully higher than his 17.1% career mark coming into the campaign. Increased velocity played a part in that. Throwing both a four-seamer and a two-seamer, Keller averaged 97.1 mph with his heaters, whereas last season that number was just 93.7. No longer just a hunter of ground balls, he is now a pitcher who misses bats.

Any expectation that Keller will remain a short-stint reliever comes with a caveat. While he thrived in that role in 2025, he could potentially return to the rotation. Asked about that possibility late in the year, he told me that while he’s been happy working as a reliever, he also loves starting. That subject may come up as he explores his options. – DL

Player Notes
Iglesias posted his highest ERA (3.21) and FIP (3.31) since 2019 in a season so uneven that he temporarily lost his job as closer. Through June 5, he served up seven homers in 24 innings, blew four of 12 save opportunities, and was torched for a 6.75 ERA and 5.72 FIP. To that point, his slider was getting hammered, accounting for five of those homers as batters hit .583 and slugged 1.833 against the pitch, which he was throwing 13.5% of the time.

Iglesias didn’t entirely ditch the slider, but he dialed its usage down to 7.5% while relying more on his four-seamer. The results were night and day; from June 9 (the start of what turned out to be a three-week stretch in a setup role) through the end of the season, he allowed just one homer in 43.1 innings while posting a 1.25 ERA and 1.98 FIP and converting 21 of 22 save chances; his strikeout rate shot from 23.1% to 30.4%. Over his final 26 2/3 innings from July 28 onward, he allowed just one run and 11 hits while striking out 27 and walking just six.

So it would seem Iglesias is back to being a reliable ninth-inning option, albeit an aging one whose average four-seam velocity dipped from 95.5 mph to 94.8. He’s never been the flashiest closer, but the number of playoff teams with ninth-inning question marks suggests he’ll find work. – JJ

Player Notes
It keeps pouring on Brandon Woodruff, and Brandon Woodruff keeps splashing through the puddles. After missing most of the 2023 season with shoulder inflammation, Woodruff missed the entire 2024 season with a torn capsule in that same shoulder, then suffered a lat strain just a few weeks after he finally returned in 2025. He’s made just 23 starts and thrown 131 2/3 innings over the past three seasons. But in those 23 starts, he’s gone 12-3 with a 2.73 ERA and 3.39 FIP. In 2025, he ran the highest strikeout rate and lowest walk rate of his entire career.

Woodruff’s fastball velocity was down in a big way this year, dropping from 95.9 mph in 2023 to 93 mph. That’s a huge deal for anyone, but it’s even bigger for a guy who throws either a fastball or a cutter a whopping 78% of the time. It’s hard to know how much of that velocity Woodruff could get back next year, when he’s – fingers and everything else crossed – fully healthy. He’ll be 33 and the injury history is scary, but he’s done nothing but pitch well, even with the diminished velo. Someone’s got to take a chance that one of the better pitchers in the game can keep on pitching well, right? Right? – DA

Player Notes
Bassitt has posted at least 2 WAR in every full season since 2019. He has been as consistent as you could ask for. His 3.96 ERA, 4.01 FIP and 170 innings across 31 starts in 2025 are a testament to that consistency, which is a credit to him even as his stuff has taken a step back. If you plot a time series chart of his velocity, movement, and location over the last seven seasons, you’ll see the changes. Bassitt has lost a few ticks, changed his arm slot pretty significantly from his classic over-the-top mechanics, and become more susceptible to the platoon advantage.

Because Bassitt has dropped his arm slot a bit, his two most valuable pitches over the course of his career (his sinker and curveball) have also changed. If you drop your arm slot, the same grip you’ve always used can result in an altered movement profile. Take Bassitt’s curveball. It’s dropping less than it ever has, but it has gained arm-side movement. That juxtaposes with how the change has affected his sinker, which helps explain lefties having more success against him. Bassitt had league average vertical movement for his entire career until this season. Now the sinker falls off harder, and he uses it more against right-handed hitters than he ever has. The velocity trends aren’t ideal, but Bassitt is still limiting hard contact. The crafty righty may be in a new stage of his career, but he has proven he can adjust with father time. – ER

Player Notes
Giolito made his 2025 debut in late April following rehab from a UCL repair in January of 2024. He went on to post an 80 ERA-, suggesting an above-average performance, but as Michael Baumann wrote back in September, his top line results provide cover for some pretty ugly underlying metrics. Consider the actual batting average and wOBA he allowed (.236 and .301) compared to the expected numbers based on contact quality (.274 and .353), which push his xERA to 5.01, as opposed to the 3.41 ERA he actually posted. And unfortunately, Giolito is not one of those pitchers who routinely outperforms his expected stats.

As Baumann noted when contrasting Giolito’s 2025 season to 2021 (the last time he posted a sub-4.00 ERA), all three of his primary pitches suffered from diminished stuff this year, leading hitters to chase less on pitches outside the zone and whiff less overall; consequently, Giolito saw an eight percentage-point drop in his strikeout rate coupled with a spike in his hard contact. It’s possible he’s still rounding back into form following surgery, and that this version of Giolito is not the pitcher he will be moving forward. And given that his arm angle has dropped five or six degrees over the last few years, a few mechanical tweaks might be all he needs to get back on track. For now, Giolito profiles as a back-end starter with considerable upside, but also one with no guarantee that he’ll be able to replicate his 2025 results. – KO

Player Notes
In an earlier comment, I mentioned that I’d picked Ranger Suárez because I felt strongly about him. I picked Arraez for the opposite reason. I don’t have the faintest idea how a front office would go about valuing a player like him (a phrase I probably should have avoided, because there is no such thing as another player like him).

In 2025, over 154 games and 675 plate appearances, Arraez swung and missed just 65 times. Those are slow-pitch softball numbers, and from 2022 to 2023, Arraez rode that absurd contact ability to a .335 batting average, a 131 wRC+ and 6.1 WAR. But over the past two years, the dividends from this approach have dwindled. Arraez is walking and striking out less than ever, but he’s also hitting the ball softer than ever. He’s run a combined 107 wRC+ over the past two seasons, and because he’s a defensive liability even at first base, he’s put up just 2.0 total WAR.

That’s not particularly close to even average production.

Arraez is entering his age-29 season, and this is his first crack at free agency. He’s got a lot of baseball left in him. Considering his career .329 BABIP, it seems safe to assume that his 2025 mark of .289 was something of an aberration. But Arraez needs an awfully big bounce-back to become a three-win player again. Whoever signs him will need to possess some confidence that they can find a way to nudge his one-of-a-kind approach in the right direction. – DA

Player Notes
For the last handful of years, Jansen has struck me as one of the last of his kind. He was one of a few catchers in the league who spent most of their time in a traditional stance, eschewing the one-knee down trend that has swept the majors. Between that, the tape he wears on both wrists, and his lack of batting gloves, you could have plopped Jansen into the ‘80s or ‘90s, and he would have fit right in. But this season, Jansen got with the times, using the knee-down approach at a league average clip of 95%.

Jansen has always been one of the better blockers in the game, but the framing? Not so much. His receiving skills have been trending in the wrong direction for the last few seasons. The Rays advocated for the knee down approach to help him out, as it typically facilitates improved framing, but it seemed to accelerate Jansen’s decline instead. He was one of the worst catchers by framing runs this season, mostly deteriorating on his glove side and at bottom of the zone. As a league average bat, Jansen has the profile to be a starting catcher if his defense, especially his framing, is decent. Without that, it’s more likely he’ll be viewed as a part-time guy with a much smaller share. – ER

Player Notes
Caratini is an ideal part-time catcher, a seasoned pro who not only won’t kill you with his bat, but will actually add something at the plate. In his two-year stint in Houston, he got on base at an impressive .329 clip. Catchers as a whole ran a .305 OBP in 2025. Imagine what backup catcher statistics look like. He doesn’t hit for much power, but so what? He had double digit homers as a backup catcher; the lack of power is relative to league average, not relative to the cohort of guys he’ll be compared to. He’s a respected veteran and trusted game caller, personal catcher for years to Yu Darvish, the man of a million pitches.

Is he past his peak? Is there risk of a total WAR collapse? Probably. Caratini is 32 and his defensive numbers are down across the board, always a scary sign. You probably can’t expect the OBP to carry all the way over, either; age and regression come for us all. But for a year, at a backup’s salary? It’s all about the framing. Relative to the other options for teams who want a capable backup catcher, Caratini is one of only two real choices, along with Danny Jansen. I think that means he’ll get the standard good backup catcher deal, probably at a place where he wants to play given how many teams could use him. – BC

Player Notes
Ponce was Milwaukee’s second rounder way back in 2015 out of Division-II Cal Poly Pomona and was developed as a starter until the middle of 2018, when he became a long reliever. The following year, Ponce was sent to Pittsburgh in exchange for Jordan Lyles, and though he exhausted rookie eligibility as a Pirate, he never really grabbed hold of a role (he has just 55.1 big league innings to his name), and in 2022, he departed for Japan. Ponce didn’t get much better abroad until 2025, when he transitioned from NPB to the KBO, dramatically improved his conditioning, added two ticks to his fastball, and began to dominate hitters with a more split-looking offspeed pitch than before. He had a 1.89 ERA in an incredible 180 2/3 innings, struck out 36% of opponents and walked just 6%, and even at the very end of October, he was parked in the 94-97 mph range during Hanwha’s playoff run.

There are all kinds of indicators here (especially the change in Ponce’s physicality, and the stamina he’s had across nearly 200 innings when you factor in his playoff starts) to suggest that this improvement is real, and that Ponce can fit into a good team’s rotation. He’ll bump 98, his curveball has gorgeous depth, his best splitters fall off the table, and he commands the same upper-80s cutter we saw from him while he was stateside. It’s plausible that his curveball quality will dip with an MLB ball (there’s at least some volatility to that part of his game), but Ponce’s pure stuff looks better than Erick Fedde’s did when he came over on a two-year, $15 million deal a couple of years ago. – EL

Player Notes
Armstrong has pitched for eight major league teams and been designated for assignment seven times; he didn’t enjoy a full big league season until he was 28. His breakout 2023 campaign with Tampa Bay (1.38 ERA in 52 innings) didn’t slow the churn, as in typical Rays fashion, he was flipped to the Cardinals for Dylan Carlson at the 2024 deadline and then was DFA’d twice more before the close of that year. It’s on a humble one-year, $1.125 million contract with the Rangers that Armstrong racked up a 2.31 ERA in a career-high 74 innings, recorded a career-high nine saves while working in a variety of roles, and accumulated roughly 30% of his career WAR (4.6) in a single season (1.4).

At first, a search for Armstrong’s signature skill feels fruitless. It’s not quite missing bats (26.1% K%) because it certainly isn’t generating chases (23.3%). It might be homer suppression (five allowed in 2025), but he doesn’t get grounders (35.9%). Tons of strikes (58.9% zone rate) at average velocity (93-94 mph) would be an atypical calling card for a high-leverage reliever.

Instead, Armstrong’s standout feature is a new sweeper that adheres to nominative determinism. No sweeper in baseball drops less, which keeps it uniquely on plane with a coffer of fastball shapes that lack outlier vertical movement. Limited to cameo appearances before last year, Armstrong threw the mid-80s breaker nearly a fourth of the time in 2025 and saw big league hitters bat .080 against it with a .120 slugging percentage. Finding a Stuff model that doesn’t love a weird sweeper is as common as eyewitness sightings of The Easter Bunny, so there should be many teams convinced that Armstrong can handle the eighth inning, or perhaps a little more. – JF

Player Notes
Pitching for the Angels, his third team in four seasons since departing the Dodgers in free agency, Jansen posted a 2.59 ERA, his lowest mark since 2021, while converting 29 saves in 30 chances. Underneath the hood, however, he showed some warning signs. He struck out a career-low 24.4% of hitters and served up his highest home run rate since 2019 (1.22 per nine), as well as his highest average exit velocity (91.5 mph) and hard-hit rate (44.6%). Thus he ended up with his highest FIP since 2018 (3.98), and highest xERA of the Statcast era (3.78).

Jansen’s cutter remains damn good, justifying his decision to emphasize it instead of his sinker; he threw the cutter 81.6% of the time, down from 84.1% in 2024 but a substantially higher rate than during the 2019–23 span. Batters hit just .163, slugged .300, and whiffed 25.2% of the time against the pitch. They also went 2-for-27 with a 25% whiff rate against his slider, though he threw it just 7% of the time.

In other words, Jansen can still pitch, and has milestones on the horizon that could cement his legacy; with three saves, he’ll surpass Hall of Famer Lee Smith for third all-time, and with 24, he’ll join Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman in the 500 save club. All else being equal, he may choose another summer closing for a second-division team instead of prioritizing a lower-leverage role with a contender. – JJ

Player Notes
Here’s the fun thing about trying to predict what Ferguson will do going forward: 2024-25 was the first offseason in five years where he didn’t completely remake his repertoire over the winter. Even so, he changed dramatically, dropping a run off his ERA and half a run off his FIP despite losing seven percentage points off his strikeout rate. Ferguson will also be looking to join his sixth different organization since the end of 2023, so I guess he’s the baseball equivalent of a guy who fakes his own death every few years and moves to a new state to start over.

The latest version of Ferguson made 70 appearances across stints with the Pirates and Mariners, and allowed just two home runs in 65 1/3 innings. He was death on lefties, allowing just a .219 wOBA to same-handed hitters, and while his .311 wOBA against right-handed hitters probably precludes him from high-leverage work, it’s survivable in the age of the three-batter minimum.

Ferguson will probably be highly sought-after this offseason, because unlike someone like Kyle Tucker or Pete Alonso, he’s both useful and affordable for all 30 teams. It’s notable that the five teams he’s pitched for over the past three seasons include perennial contenders like the Dodgers, Astros, and Yankees, as well as the Pirates. Bad teams need relievers to tick the innings counter over; good teams need guys to eat up medium-leverage opportunities in the regular season. The Mariners recently found out what happens to pitchers like Ferguson in the playoffs (multiple runs allowed in two of his three postseason outings this year), but just getting there is half the battle. – MB

Player Notes
The Reds, who play in one of the most homer-friendly parks in the majors, cannot stop acquiring homer-prone pitchers: Pagán, Zack Littell, Brady Singer, even first-rounder Chase Burns. Two offseasons ago, I concern trolled about Pagán’s tenure in Cincinnati, but you know what? It worked out fine. It has worked out fine for most of these guys.

Pagán had a great year in 2025; he posted his lowest ERA since 2019 and set new career highs in appearances and saves. While the Reds staggered around waiting for the Mets to collapse in September, Pagán was one of Cincinnati’s best players. In his final 12 appearances, he struck out 15 and allowed only one run and nine total baserunners. Over that critical last 10-day period, he saved five of Cincinnati’s final six regular-season wins.

The South Carolina native turns 35 next May, but his fastball velocity actually went up in 2025, and he got his splitter to tunnel much better with his heater, leading to some of the best hard contact suppression numbers in baseball. The home run issues remain, so I don’t think contenders will be lining up to throw big money at Pagán to close, but he’d be a good pickup for a rebuilding team with a need for quality relief innings and an eye toward flipping him to a contender next July. – MB

Player Notes
Weaver’s run as a reliever perfectly embodies the volatility of the position. Just last October, he was on top of the world. He had claimed the closer role late in the season and was nails during the Yankees’ playoff run, serving as their most reliable guy every step of the way. He had stretches of real dominance. But after a great start to the 2025 season – he had a 1.05 ERA through his first 25.2 innings – everything flipped on its head. After taking the closer role once again (this time from Devin Williams), Weaver strained his hamstring, causing him to miss three weeks.

From his return through the end of the season, his fastball was ineffective. The precision he had at the top of the zone with the pitch was suddenly gone. And at 94-95 mph, that isn’t going to cut it, no matter how good Weaver’s changeup was and is. The confidence that Aaron Boone had in him deteriorated. He gave up 10 runs in 9 1/3 innings during September. Then, when given a few chances in the playoffs, he gave up five runs across three appearances and only got a single out. Now Weaver finds himself in a tough position. He’s a good candidate for a bounce back from his rough second half – his velocity and movement during his 2025 swoon were consistent with what he showed during his 2024 dominance – but it’s likely that his true talent lies somewhere in between. – ER

Player Notes
Oops, I didn’t mean to hog all the sidearmers! Milner is fun, and he has a 3.21 FIP over the last four seasons, but the fact that he has significant platoon splits makes him a little trickier to use out of the ‘pen. He basically does everything just a bit worse than Tyler Rogers. Like Rogers, he allows a lot of contact, but his command isn’t as sharp, his breaking pitch isn’t as comically absurd, and his sinker is less effective at turning bats into noodles. Milner has a changeup, but it doesn’t keep righties in check.

Given the platoon split, Milner’s probably isn’t suited to making scripted eighth inning setup appearances, but if you need to get a lefty out, and you’re in a situation where you’re not afraid of him facing a potent right-handed hitter, Milner is a highly useful role player. I would guess he ends up with a one-year contract in 2026. – DS

Player Notes
Finnegan might be baseball’s most underrated closer. Over the past three seasons, the 34-year-old right-hander has registered 90 saves and logged a 3.65 ERA over 190 innings while taking the mound for the Washington Nationals and, most recently, the Detroit Tigers. Acquired by the Tabbies at this summer’s trade deadline in exchange for a pair of prospects, Finnegan was credited with three wins and four saves in August before missing much of the final month with a groin injury; his absence contributed to a tumultuous stretch run that saw the club barely survive a September swoon.

A split-finger fastball is Finnegan’s best pitch, and he began utilizing it more after moving to Motown. The Detroit native threw 67.7% four-seamers and 29.6% splitters this season with the Nats, compared to 40.9% four-seamers and 54.8% splitters with his hometown team. As he told me shortly before landing on the shelf, “I’m basically doing what I’ve always done well, but maybe I just haven’t utilized [the splitter] to its full capabilities. The Tigers have a lot of trust in my offspeed, so they’re telling me to go out there and use it.”

The results speak for themselves. Over 16 appearances comprising 18 innings, Finnegan fashioned a 1.50 ERA, a 1.97 FIP, and a 34.8% strikeout rate. Continued reliance on his splitter seems like a given, but which team’s uniform he’ll be wearing next year is currently unknown. Whichever team it might be, Finnegan could be the answer to their ninth-inning question. – DL

Player Notes
Mahle returned for a pair of starts at the end of 2025 after missing three months for a rotator cuff strain, which allowed him to finish a season on an active roster for the first time since 2021. Tommy John surgery wiped out all of Mahle’s 2023 and most of his 2024, but shoulder tightness, fatigue and strains have popped up the intervening gaps to limit him to 24 starts over the last three years. As will happen with that volume of arm aches over such an equal distribution between Mahle’s right elbow and right shoulder, his velocity has dipped since his career-best 2021 season, and he averaged 92 mph this past year. Not coincidentally, Mahle’s tenure in Texas saw him dip below 50% fastball usage (if you don’t round up) and below a 20% strikeout rate for the first time.

But in between all that… he kinda carved?

From the start of April through the end of May, Mahle went five or more innings and allowed two runs or fewer in 10 of his 11 starts. Relying on his plus command and increased use of a splitter to avoid hard contact (37.1% hard-hit), Mahle finished 2025 with an extremely peripheral-defying 2.18 ERA in 86 2/3 innings. Lacking premium velocity, bat-missing secondaries, or the ability to keep the ball on the ground is an insecure means of getting outs even if Mahle were coming off a run of good health. He sure isn’t, which likely resigns him to the best one-year make-good offer the market can bear. – JF

Player Notes
If you’re looking for a reliable back-of-the-rotation starter, Littell may very well be your man. The 30-year-old right-hander isn’t flashy — big velocity and tons of strikeouts aren’t among his attributes — but he consistently answers the bell and keeps his team in games. Littell has gone at least five frames in 51 of his 61 starts over the past two seasons, logging a 3.73 ERA along the way. Moreover, his 343 innings rank 24th-most over that span.

Not bad for a former 11th-round draft pick who was largely an afterthought on most prospect lists. When he was first featured here at FanGraphs in an August 2015 Sunday Notes column, I wrote that “you’ve probably never heard of Zack Littell.” That remained mostly true for another handful of years.

Originally in the Seattle Mariners system, he’s now been with eight organizations, most recently the Tampa Bay Rays and Cincinnati Reds. Obtained by the latter of those teams at the July 31 trade deadline, the bearded North Carolina native was trusted enough by Terry Francona that he started Game 2 of Cincinnati’s Wild Card series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. His mound opponent that day was Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a high-profile pitcher whose long-term contract dwarfs what Littell will be receiving on the open market by a wide margin. But while back-of-the-rotation starters don’t rake in the big bucks, they are valuable. Much for those reasons, Littell should be on a lot of shopping lists this winter. – DL

Player Notes
It would be easy to shrug off Verlander’s 2025 season. He moved from Houston to San Francisco. His ERA, FIP, and home run rate dropped in a big way, but his xERA and xFIP went way up. He went 4-11. Sounds scary, right? Are we really going to bet on a soon-to-be 43-year-old pitcher who put up a bounce-back season through the tried-and-true method of pitching in a park where it’s a lot harder to hit home runs?

Before you travel too far down that road, make sure you account for the fact that Verlander made 29 starts and threw 152 innings in 2025. At 93.9 mph, his fastball still isn’t all that far below average, and for the second year in a row, he’s been excellent at limiting hard contact. Stuff+ still sees him as solidly above average. He put up 2.2 WAR, which put him just outside the top 50 among all pitchers. Surely at least a couple teams – preferably teams with spacious ballparks – will be interested in a back-end starter who can eat a few more innings before he heads to Cooperstown. – DA