Contract Crowdsourcing 2025-26: Ballot 3 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 nine of this year’s free agents — in this case, a group of infielders that includes some notable postseason performers and former All-Stars, as well as a three-time batting champion.
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 people will be really surprised by Bo’s deal, I put down 9/252 but that still feels on the conservative end.
My first thought was $200M, but I came down to $175 after thinking about it. Either way, I am probably too low.
He’s young and good.
I put down 8 years, $176M. He’s going into his age-28 season, which means teams will feel free to pile on the years. I think that if he doesn’t get a deal that is at least that big he probably takes a pillow deal.
I think that it is possible that I am low because the Blue Jays just gave Vlad Jr a $500M deal, and I could see them going up to half that amount for Bichette. They’re the same age.
But it’s hard to see many other teams get involved.
-The Red Sox would make sense if Bregman leaves, but I think he stays.
-The Braves are a wild card if they decide to move on from Albies, but I don’t think he will.
-The Dodgers, if they miss out on Tucker, but I think they get him.
-I actually think he’s a fantastic fit for the Royals and Pirates but it seems unlikely they would pay a free agent that much money (and they would have to definitely top other teams to get him to go there).
If you could reasonably believe he could be a shortstop for the next five years I could see this but he just isn’t most likely. And the offense is good but not great.
Adames was 1.5 years older, and he was not quite the offensive player but was a legit shortstop. I think Bichette would be lucky to get Adames deal with maybe one extra year to account for age.
Take a step back from looking at his defensive metrics and consider, instead, that you’re getting a 28 year old middle infielder who has reliably put up a wRC+ over 120 in five of his last six seasons while lowering his strikeout rate and increasing his power year after year. Adames is a better, but still only an average-ish, defender and has never even come close to putting up the batting line that Bo did this past season. Not to mention that the next infielder of Bo’s caliber to hit FA will be Gunnar Henderson after 2028, lot of scarcity there.
Also, I think Trea Turner, Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, and Corey Seager have pretty clearly shown that declining infield defense in your 30s is not a guarantee anymore with the type of coaching available to major leaguers.
How long is he a MI for? His sprint speed is down to 21st percentile this year — among the lowest at SS.
The difference between a 120-130 wRC+ SS
Four of his (actual) five seasons. He hasn’t even really played six full seasons — in ’19, he got into 46 games, in ’20 it was 29 of the shortened 60 game season. So you’re looking at 21-25. He has lowered his strikeout rate, but his power isn’t really different in any measurable way; ISOs are in the .170-.180 range, HH rate in the mid 40s, HR/FB rate in the mid-teens. Other than his dreadful ’24, he’s been incredibly consistent across the board.
He also runs a mid-30s chase rate and his OBP is going to be very BABIP driven.
The fielding gap is much, much wider than you think — over the last four years, Adames is in the top five in FRV among SS and Bichette is hanging out with CJ Abrams.
Bichette’s a really good player, and would likely be quite valuable even at 2B, but he’s got more red flags than a Soviet parade.
The other points, sure, but again as I said there are several examples of infielders becoming *better* defenders as they age and get slower in the last few years. I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all to imagine Bo sticking at 2B for the vast majority of his contract and being a more than acceptable defender there.
And still basically all of these red flags applied to Adames too, in addition to him being a year older entering FA, but he still got over $180M.
Maybe teams are more conservative than I expect, but it’s really not every day that someone of Bo’s caliber hits FA before they’ve celebrated their 28th birthday and the bidding war will probably be serious.