FanGraphs Crowd: The Top 82 Free Agents
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs once again facilitated this offseason a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowds to the end of better understanding the 2015-16 free-agent market.
Below are the results of same. For each player, respondents provided estimates of the years and dollars he’s likely to receive. Also, in such cases as a player is a candidate to receive a qualifying offer from his club, readers predicted whether he would or not — and whether, having received a qualifying offer, that player would accept it. Answers to other questions — regarding options, for example — also appear below.
What the reader will note regarding this particular list relative to previous iterations of same is its considerable length. This same exercise last year contained 55 names; the year before that, 47. Below, one finds 82 of them. The greater size is not the product of a concerted effort to provide greater coverage, but rather of mere necessity: the quantity of useful free agents (or potential free agents, at least) appears itself simply to be greater than in recent years.
Note that players with options certain to be exercised were omitted from balloting. Note also that, despite having received ballots, both Jaime Garcia and Torii Hunter have been omitted from the list below, owing to their near futures having been already determined — by the exercise of an option in the former case, retirement in the latter. Note finally that the crowd has demonstrated a distinct tendency to underestimate the overall contract values of free agents — especially among those players expected to receive the greatest compensation.
