Contract Crowdsourcing 2025-26: Ballot 2 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. Unless otherwise indicated, the projected WAR figures are from the first cut of the 2026 Steamer600 projections.
Below are ballots for 10 of this year’s free agents — in this case, a group of pitchers, including some of the best hurlers to reach free agency this winter.
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 think Cease is going to be looking for a $180M+ deal and he’s going to have to settle for something like 2 years, $50M with an opt out because I don’t see anyone giving him that.
I have a feeling he’s looking for something in the ballpark of Fried (like $200M+), and that seems extremely unlikely.
Why? I don’t think he will get Fried’s contract (I was much higher on Fried than most, suggesting 7/$175m, and being called crazy by Braves fans). However, why would he not get into that ballpark?
I feel like he’s too volatile, and his relative lack of command makes him a risk for aging well. I could very well be wrong, but that’s my gut take.
I think Fried was a year older but he had a recent history of running ERAs lower than his peripherals and Cease has a recent history of running them higher. I don’t think that’s anything to worry about IMO, usually that’s just because of the defense behind them, but teams will balk at $180M because of that.
I don’t know, how many of these guys have put up at least 3.4 fWAR for the last 5 consecutive seasons? He’s stayed healthy and has had consistently good (not great) underlying metrics. I might give him 5 years over anyone besides Framber, and I could see at least 1 team going to 6 years. I said 6/$150.
The Giants, for example, could make good use of a workhorse starter whose biggest problem is lefty HRs.
I also had 5/150 for Cease.
I think probably Framber, Cease, and Bieber are all going to get offers in that $115-$140M range. I think Ranger Suarez might get more, but maybe that’s just because I like Ranger Suarez and not because teams do. If that’s the case he’ll be in the same range as the other 3.