Contract Crowdsourcing 2020-21: Ballot 1 of 10
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent offseasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract-crowdsourcing project, the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2020-21 free-agent market.
This year, we’ve added a few new features to the ballots based on reader feedback. You now have the option to indicate that a player will only receive a minor-league contract, or won’t receive one at all. We’ve elected to show averages from the 2017-2019 seasons so that this year’s shortened slate doesn’t skew the numbers, but we’ve also included 2020 stats as a point of recent reference. 2020 salary figures represent players’ pre-pandemic contract amounts. Statistics are prorated to full season where noted; the projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2021 Steamer600 projections.
Below are ballots for six of this year’s free agents — in this case, a designated hitter as well as a collection of catchers.
- Previous Contract: 2 yr, $26M (2019-20)
- Previous Contract: 1 yr, $4M (2020)
- Previous Contract: 1 yr, $5.4M (2020)
- Previous Contract: 3 yr, $60M (2018-20)
- Previous Contract: 2 yr, $19M (2019-20), 2021 club option
- Previous Contract: 1 yr, $10M (2020)
Meg is the editor-in-chief of FanGraphs and the co-host of Effectively Wild. Prior to joining FanGraphs, her work appeared at Baseball Prospectus, Lookout Landing, and Just A Bit Outside. You can follow her on Bluesky @megrowler.fangraphs.com.
Hoo boy, this is gonna be a hard one.
Lots of guys who would have gotten 2 or 3 year contracts are getting one year contract; lots of guys who would have gotten 1 year contracts are getting minor league deals.