Contract Crowdsourcing 2025-26: Ballot 11 of 12
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. As in other recent seasons, FanGraphs is once again facilitating a contract crowdsourcing project, with the idea being to harness the wisdom of the crowd to better understand and project the 2025-26 free agent market.
In recent years, we’ve added a few features to these 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. If there is a player option, team option, or opt out in a player’s contract, you’ll be able to indicate whether you think he will remain with his current team or become a free agent. Numbers are prorated to full season where noted. The projected statistics and WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2026 ZiPS projections.
Below are ballots for eight of this year’s potential free agents — in this case, a group of foreign pros from NPB and the KBO who may be posted this winter. For more detailed scouting information, be sure to read their reports on The Board, as well as Eric Longenhagen and James Fegan’s recent piece on the players who could be coming over from Asian pro leagues this offseason.
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.
I gave Murakami over 100m even though I dont really get why anyone would do it in a market where if you want to give 100-150m to a portly slugger that youre not sure is going to hit .220 you have Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso to choose from, or this Japanese mystery box that could be anything…even Kyle Schwarber or Pete Alonso
But teams love mystery boxes so here we go!
Big difference between Schwarber and Alonso — Alonso’s got plenty of pop, but Schwarber is top 3-5 in raw power, hits lefty, and hits well against lefties.
Do not undersell the age difference either. Many teams (correctly, IMO) are willing to pay more for riskier but younger bat, because the upside payoff can be huge.
.269 vs .263 career ISOs with one playing in Chicago/Philly and the other in CitiField. Schwarbs has a much more efficient pulled fly approach, if anything I’d rate Pete’s raw power higher but it’s close to a push
Alonso also hits RHP better than LHP. Main difference is Schwarbs takes the walks (and is 2 years older)
Idk about the Murakami aging curve. Yeah it’s why he’s worth the risk, I guess, but does aging curve matter if he shows up and goes Gallo on you? The Gallo aging curve has 1 good season after 25
I think if youre the team who gives Murakami the biggest deal you probably have the rosiest outlook on him. What does that rose actually look like, though?
Scenario 1: He hits 50 bombs a year and teams fear him enough that none of the other flaws in the profile matter. This is basically just Kyle Schwarber, though
Scenario 2: He’s better defensively than everyone thinks and can kind of fake it enough at 3B to be some approximation of Austin Riley? But Riley is actually a pretty good example that just because some is good at 25/26 doesnt mean theyre gonna keep that up
What do you mean? Injury concerns?
Riley has had no defensive issues the last two years. The best UZR/150 he’s ever posted have been 2024 and 2025. By quite a bit, too. Statcast has them as his best years besides 2023.
Baseball Reference actually loves his D, hasn’t had him negative in any full season, only his partial seasons in 2019 and 2020. When Riley was putting up 5 – 6 wins a year here, he was putting up 6 – 6.5 wins a year over at BR based on their evaluation of his defense. I’m not going to do the math but they have him taking a small step back the last two years, but still a positive. They have Riley’s defense equal to Machado’s the last two years, and better than Chisholms.
Riley’s health and bat have indeed slipped, but his batted ball profile was same as ever in 2024 and he was in the middle of a heater before he got injured. This year it was down – but very slightly, most of the lower statcast expected stats are from his higher K% – and you have to think an abdominal injurty is directly related to the down offense (by his standards).
I went with 6 / $90M, which I think was around Yoshida’s deal. I thought his deal was inexplicable, so that’s my default now for “Japanese hitters who have produced but have red flags.” I definitely think he gets less than Seiya Suzuki who was an incredible hitter in the NPB.
He’s roughly as good a hitter as Seiya but the way he does it is just such a massive red flag. Seiya went from like a 15% BB/15% K guy in Japan to 10/25 in MLB. Murakami is K-ing near 30% already in NPB. Of course, he’s also hitting bombs at a historic rate in deadball NPB…
I feel like whatever team signs him should just trade for Spencer Jones since it’s the same bet
I think the difference is that Murakami did perform better against secondary stuff a couple years ago and there’s a chance he was injured and / or got in some bad habits. Plus that teams think they can fix a guy who hasn’t been in an MLB org.
Jones will be a better defender though, which he will probably need in order to have any sort of career .
If he was could have been posted after his monster season he would have gotten PAID. I’m not sure how to value him especially with the swing and miss that’s become pronounced over the last two years. This year he was definitely limited but his power production returned. I think that the teams with best development/hitting labs will be looking at him and thinking they can help him maximize his talent and reduce the swing and miss. Schwarber is an interesting comp because he’s had a fairly high SO rate for his whole career but he’s become progressively better at taking walks. If you look at him as a younger version of Schwarber who likely can play first and occasionally fake 3rd that’s an appealing package. He’s definitely risky. If teams want to limit their downside risk a 4 or 5 year contract would make sense then arbitration would allow them to control an additional 1-2 years. But if that’s the case he might be best served by a three year deal that prohibits additional years of team control or the use of QO to retest the market before he turns 30 but that depends on how much risk he’s willing to accept and also how much he values his downside risk of returning to Japan for a monster contract.
Also I don’t know how to value this year in general with a lockout likely looming and who knows what’s in the next CBA.
Fun fact only one team gets to sign those guys. Still 28 other teams