Keith Law’s top 50 MLB free agents: Juan Soto headlines a decent overall class

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Keith Law’s top 50 MLB free agents: Juan Soto headlines a decent overall class

This winter’s free agent class looks a bit better than last year’s dismal group, highlighted by one all-time superstar, after which there’s a decent tier of potential impact players on both sides of the ball if very few other players you could reasonably call “stars.”

This is my ranking of the top 50 free agents on the market, given what we know now and what seems most likely to happen in the next week or so. I ranked them according to how much I might commit to each of them if I were a GM with a need for that player and no particular payroll constraints — not necessarily what they will get, but what I think they’re likely to be worth, considering their likely future production, playing time, and growth or regression over the life of such a contract. Your mileage, as always, may vary.

Because I’m writing this before the World Series ends, this also represents my best guesses on some club and player options where neither side has indicated their intentions. For example, I am assuming the teams involved will exercise their options on Marcell Ozuna and Brandon Lowe, and that Cody Bellinger, Gerrit Cole, Jordan Montgomery, and Lucas Giolito will not opt out of their existing deals.

(Note: Scouting grades are on a 20-80 scale.)

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1. Juan Soto, OF

If plate discipline was a person, it would be Juan Soto. He doesn’t chase bad pitches; bad pitches chase him. When MLB finally institutes a challenge system for ****** and strikes, instead of using an automated system, the plan is to just ask Soto. So of course he’s the best free agent in this class, and a team is going to have to back up the proverbial truck for his services — especially since he’s going to start his new contract at just 26 years old.

Soto was the third-best hitter in baseball this past year by wRC+, and the only two hitters who were better are going to win their league’s respective MVP awards. He’s led the league in walks three times, finishing second this year to his teammate Aaron Judge, and has walked more than he’s struck out in every season since 2019. He has never had an OBP below .400 in seven major-league seasons.

He’s coming off a career high in homers, and while it’s easy to just ascribe that to playing half his games with the right-field fence about 20 feet from home plate (my estimate may be off, I blame the metric system), the majority of his homers were “no-doubters” by distance. For most free agents coming off a career year, it would be wise to assume some regression is coming; in Soto’s case, it could just be him entering his offensive peak.

His only flaw as a player is that he’s a below-average defender in right, and while his defensive metrics were better in 2024, playing in a smaller right field at ******* Stadium may have had something to do with it. He’s going to put up a bunch of 8-WAR seasons in the next 10 years, and, assuming that’s the length of his contract, should still be an above-average offensive player at the end of it, even if he might move to DH by his mid-30s. I suppose it’s time to retire the Childish Bambino nickname, though.

2. ****** Adames, SS

Adames has been an above-average regular for his entire major-league career. Outside of 2020, his production has never been worth less than 3.0 bWAR/3.1 fWAR, although how he’s gotten to that value has varied. His worst offensive year, in 2023, was his strongest defensive one. (He did miss about two weeks that season after he was hit in the head by a foul ball, although his offensive production was actually worse before the injury than after.)

He’s a big Three True Outcomes hitter, with walks, strikeouts and homers accounting for 41 percent of his career PA, and even with high strikeout rates, he still gets on base and hits for enough power to be an above-average regular as a shortstop. His defensive metrics have vacillated wildly over his career, averaging out just slightly above average, but the numbers jumped when he got to Milwaukee and I wonder if some of that is the result of the Brewers’ positioning, as Adames isn’t particularly fast and doesn’t have a ton of range, especially to his left.

He’s among the youngest free agents, playing at 29 next year, and should hold his value for several more seasons, but when that strikeout rate starts to creep up as he ages, he might go from an above-average regular at short to a utility guy in a hurry.

3. Corbin Burnes, RHP

Burnes hit a rough stretch in August, after which he and the Orioles tweaked the shape of his cutter, allowing him to finish strong — he struck out 24 in 19 innings in his last three outings, all against playoff teams — and enter free agency off a sub-3 ERA. Among MLB free agents, he’s the only one with a case to be considered or valued as a No. 1 starter, even with some decline in his strikeout rate since his two peak years in 2021-22. He also has a long history of suppressing hits on ****** in play, with a career .276 figure and no single-season BABIP over .309 since he became a starter.

His cutter is one of the best in the business, ranking as the best or second-best cutter by Statcast’s run values in each of the last four seasons, and he works with five pitches, including a changeup and sinker that play off each other because they have very similar movement but about 8 mph of separation.

He’s probably going to lose some velocity over the course of whatever deal he signs, but his plus command, slight groundball tendency and reliance on movement and changing speeds all point to someone who will continue to have success even if his fastball cools a little. Maybe he’s a contender’s ace now, and a No. 2 or a good No. 3 at the end of a contract. He should get at least $25 million a year, probably getting five years because that’s typical for a high-end starter even with the injury risks associated with pitching.

4. Max Fried, LHP

Fried has been one of the best pitchers in baseball over the last five years, ranking 11th in fWAR since the start of the 2020 season with 15.4, missing the top 10 because he’s lost some time to blisters over that span rather than due to poor performance. His curveball has always been a hammer, somewhere between 12/6 and 11/5, with tight rotation and a ton of vertical break, so it’s been his most-used secondary pitch for his entire career, although he threw seven pitch types this past year, according to Statcast.

He threw a “sweeper” more in 2024, in his case a different slider with a lower velocity than his traditional one and a higher spin rate for more break along both axes, and when he gets it down it’s a real ******* against hitters on both sides of the plate. Because he relies so little on his four-seamer to finish off hitters, he seems like a good bet to hold value into his mid-30s, and I think he’ll get a deal that surprises the average fan, approaching $30 million a year and perhaps up to five years.

Alex Bregman heads to free agency after a down season offensively. (Troy Taormina / USA Today)

5. Alex Bregman, 3B

Bregman hits free agency coming off the worst full season of his career, and while he did improve his offense in the second half, it was all power — he had a .316 OBP before the All-Star break and .315 after, which is easily the worst he’s posted. Long a fantastic fastball hitter, including in 2023, he collapsed against them in 2024, taking way more fastballs for strikes and fouling more off as well, as lost bat speed meant that he couldn’t turn on them like he used to.

He’s 30, young to have lost that much bat speed, and perhaps the power surge in the second half is a positive sign. He did post the best OAA of his career in the field at +5, if you’re looking for reasons for hope. Bregman is one of the purest hitters I’ve ever seen, going back to high school; I don’t want to believe this is the beginning of the end, but the batted-ball data are not hopeful.

6. Roki Sasaki, RHP

We’ll see if Sasaki actually gets posted this winter, as he has already asked his employer, the Chiba Lotte Marines, to post him once before, but they have his contractual rights through the 2026 season. Sasaki has ridiculous stuff and the results to go with it. He’s been up to 102 mph with some run; his splitter might be an 80, as he deadens the ball and gets very late bottom to it; and he has a pretty sharp slider around 90-92, you know, just to have a third pitch.

It’s a funky delivery with a very high leg kick and then an awkward leg swing out front, but he’s online and on time. It’s not as long a stride as it could be, but I can’t see changing anything; if that means there’s some injury risk here, you just live with it.

He has been hurt quite a bit, missing a chunk of 2024 with “right arm discomfort” and time in 2023 with an oblique injury. His 2022 workload of 129 innings is his peak, so while it’s No. 1 starter stuff, he hasn’t come close to the innings we expect from an ace or even a No. 2 starter.

If he does get posted, he’s going to be “over-valued” based on what he’s done to date. A team will make a monetary investment in him based on upside, as if someone is buying a prospect rather than an established big-league ace.

Snell had a late start to his 2024 season, but when he returned from a stint on the injured list on July 9, he pitched a lot like a guy who’d just won his second Cy Young Award, throwing 80 innings with 114 strikeouts and 30 walks allowed, along with a 1.23 ERA.

Some of it was fluky, of course, like the .203 BABIP he allowed in that stretch, but he has plus stuff — a curveball with big horizontal break that was one of the most valuable pitches of its type in 2024, a fastball with good carry, a changeup without much life but that has great deception. He walks too many guys, but he misses a ton of bats and his stuff generates a lot of weak contact, enough that he still can be an above-average starter even when he’s not winning awards.

8. Jack Flaherty, RHP

The secret to Flaherty’s success this year was the secret to his success earlier in his career — exquisite command. He lived at the bottom of the strike zone all year with his two breaking pitches, with that tight two-plane curveball the most effective pitch of its type last year on a per-pitch basis (among pitchers who threw at least 200 curveballs). After several years of injuries, he’s been mostly healthy the last two seasons, with 306 total regular-season innings pitched in that span, and was able to work around an elevated home run rate by limiting walks and getting hitters to expand the zone more than he has in previous years.

If healthy, he’s a strong No. 3 starter who can work deep into games because he’s efficient and misses enough bats to survive some hard contact.

9. Jurickson Profar, OF

Profar was so bad for the Rockies in 2023 that the team released him in August, after which his old friend A.J. Preller, who first signed Profar when the Curaçao native was an ******** in 2009, picked him up for the last few weeks of the season. The Padres re-signed him in February for $1 million, and the former No. 1 prospect in baseball responded with a career year — a .280/.380/.459 line worth 30 batting runs and 4.3 fWAR, held down by his continued poor play in left field. (The guy was a shortstop until he hurt his shoulder in 2014. I do not understand how he’s this consistently bad in an outfield corner.)

Profar began hitting the ball ******* than ever in 2024, and he posted the lowest chase rate of his career. He took his walks, and when pitchers came into the zone, he took his hacks. He’ll turn 32 in February, and he battled some tendinitis in his knee in 2024, although he played in 158 games this year. He may not reach his 4-win peak again, but despite the one-year nature of the breakout, everything he did in 2024 looks sustainable, and he could be a 3-win player for several more years.

10. Teoscar Hernández, OF

The Dodgers picked up Hernández on a one-year, $23.5 million deal, and got the best year of his career — and probably the best that a player of his profile can deliver. He hit .272/.339/.501 around a 29 percent strikeout rate, setting career highs in walks and homers, and if he hadn’t been so bad on defense he would have been close to a 5-WAR player.

He’s always been a fan of pitches that are straight and less so of pitches that are bendy, although in 2024 he actually had his best-ever results off curveballs (likely just random noise). He did improve his swing decisions, swinging more at strikes and less often at ******, and cutting down on all swings at breaking ****** versus 2023. If that better approach carries forward, he should crank out a couple of 3-4 win seasons before he hits that decline phase.

How much will Ha-Seong Kim’s shoulder injury impact his long-term

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at shortstop? (Dustin Bradford / Getty Images)

The Padres and Kim hold a mutual option for 2025 at a bargain price of $7 million, but after Kim’s 2024 season ended early due to shoulder surgery that might keep him out for a chunk of next year, his status is unclear. He has developed in his four years in MLB into an above-average regular, showing substantial improvement in his strike-zone judgment and swing decisions, so that even though he struggles with good fastballs and has below-average power, he’s able to get on base at a high enough clip to be roughly a league-average hitter — and added to his plus defense at short, that makes him a very valuable player.

Beyond just the lost time from the surgery, it was on his throwing shoulder, so there’s always the chance his arm strength is diminished when he returns, perhaps enough to move him off shortstop — which was the case with Profar many moons ago, although his shoulder injury was different. A healthy Kim would be in line for a huge deal, maybe six years and $30 million per year given the paucity of shortstops on the market this winter, but if he’s really going to miss half of the 2025 season, perhaps he should sign a make-good deal somewhere for a year to re-enter the market next autumn.

Manaea was just an oft-injured fill-in who was himself filling in for the Mets’ various injured starters when the team suggested he drop his arm slot to give him more deception, and once he did — “throwing like Chris *****,” in the words of one scout — he became one of the best starters in the National League.

Starting on July 30, around the time he first began dropping his slot, he made 12 starts, throwing 75 2/3 innings with 83 strikeouts, 18 walks and a 3.05 ERA/3.35 FIP, holding opposing batters to a .230 OBP. What’s most interesting is that he didn’t lose effectiveness against right-handers, even when they could get a longer look at his arm and most of his pitches would be moving in towards their bat path. He also deprecated his old slider in favor of a sweeping one that trades velocity for more break in both directions; the new pitch missed more bats and resulted in less hard contact.

Manaea had some significant injuries early in his career, including shoulder surgery in 2018, but he hasn’t hit the injured list with any arm-related issues since 2019, and he’s made 28 or more starts three times in the last four seasons.

His situation reminds me of Charlie Morton’s 2016-17 offseason, when the 34-year-old Morton had made just four starts before a knee injury ended his season, but he was a completely different pitcher in those four starts. The Astros bet on the change in stuff, giving him two years and $14 million, and he threw over 300 innings with a 3.36 ERA and generated over 5 WAR.

Manaea will turn 33 in February, so there’s risk with his age and past workload, but I think the changes are real and could give him a couple of additional years as an above-average starter.

Wacha, who holds a player option worth $16 million, just turned in his third straight year of solid or better performance as a starter, this time qualifying for the ERA title with his highest innings total in eight years (166 2/3), doing it all with the same pitch that made him a first-round pick in 2012, an elite changeup. That pitch, with great deception out of his hand and big tumble as it reaches the plate, ranked third among all changeups in MLB in 2024 by Statcast’s Run Values at +17, and it’s at +38 over the last three seasons.

Wacha has never really had an average breaking ball and it hasn’t mattered. The only thing that has held him back has been injuries, but he’s thrown 120 innings or more in the last five non-pandemic years, which these days is enough to get you a rotation spot. After a slew of one-year contracts that have seen Wacha pitch for six clubs in six years, he really should get a two- or three-year deal as he comes off his best season to date.

Peralta was a deserving All-Star in 2021, his best season, but missed half of 2022 with a shoulder injury and his curveball hasn’t been the same since, leaving him more of a four-seamer/changeup guy who’s a very solid third or fourth starter. He’s been healthy and consistent the last two seasons, making 30+ starts and throwing 165+ innings in each.

The lack of an average breaking ball has left him with a reverse platoon split, as righties have hit him for a lot more power — unsurprising for someone who relies heavily on a four-seamer. I think what you see in Peralta over the last two years is what you’ll get, and that’s a $15-20 million a year pitcher who should really get three to four years for his consistency. Milwaukee holds an $8 million option for 2025 that they would be nuts to decline.

15. Pete Alonso, 1B

I understand that Alonso is a fan favorite and may be beloved in the Mets’ clubhouse, but he’s entering free agency off the two worst years of his career and he is the type of player who ages very poorly. Alonso has hit .229/.324/.480 over the last two seasons and struck out just under 25 percent of the time, while his batted-ball data is almost all trending the wrong way. He just posted the highest groundball rate of his career in 2024, while his hard-hit rates are all at or near career lows, and he has become very vulnerable to breaking stuff.

He’s also a very poor defender at first, which has been the case since he was a prospect, with Statcast crediting (debiting?) him with ******-18 runs on defense over his career. Slow position players who are poor defenders and rely on power for most of their value tend to age more poorly than other categories of position players, and Alonso might be the ne plus ultra of such players, even though he’ll only be 30 next season. He’s a 2-3 win player as is and might be half that in five years, so while he’d be great to sign on a short-term deal, even for $20-25 million, I think any longer deal is going to end up paying him for past production rather than future.

16. Yusei Kikuchi, LHP

The Astros traded for Kikuchi at the deadline this year, and he gave them the best stretch of his MLB career, with a 2.70 ERA in 10 starts. He tends to get high marks from analysts for his stuff, but lower marks from hitters, as he’s given up a lot of hard contact in his MLB career, on his fastball and both breaking pitches. Neither the slider nor curve has high spin or much break, and he has to survive by pounding the zone and relying a bit on his defense.

In 2024, he posted the lowest walk rate of his career, and if that holds, he should have several more years as a fifth starter ahead of him, especially given his durability since he came over from NPB before the 2018 season.

Anthony Santander is coming off a 44-homer season. (Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)

17. Anthony Santander, OF

Santander picked a good time to have his best year, with career bests in homers (44), walks (58), slugging (.506), and wRC+ (129). It also came with a career-worst BABIP of .225, which was in fact the lowest of any qualifying hitter in MLB last year. He swings hard and is trying to lift everything in the air, which is great when he squares it up but results in a lot of pop-ups as well — probably not enough to explain the horrendous BABIP, but enough to think his career rate of .263 is probably closer to his true talent level.

He’s a below-average defender in a corner, at ******-5 total RAA in the last two years, but the power is enough to make him a 2.5-3 win player even if he doesn’t repeat the 44-homer performance. He’s one of the best selections in the Rule 5 draft since the rule changes gutted the talent pool over a decade ago, at 11.1 WAR and counting through age 30. He should get four-year, $20-22 million AAV offers in a weak market for power hitters.

Martinez’s four-win (referring here to Wins Above Replacement) campaign in 2024 came out of nowhere — he actually moved from a great pitcher’s park to one of the most hitter-friendly ones, yet he cut his home-run rate, and on top of that posted the lowest walk rate of his career. In fact, that walk rate of 3.2 percent was the lowest by any pitcher not pitching for the Mariners, with a minimum of 100 innings.

Martinez was dynamite in relief for the Reds, and more around league-average when he worked as a starter, with a 3.84 ERA in the latter role across 16 starts and 89 innings, still with a 3.3 percent walk rate. He showed a huge split between the first time he faced a batter (.188/.222/.319 in 2024) and the second (.291/.324/.488) when working as a starter. Before this season, he’d been less dominant the first time through the order, making this split more pronounced with his improvement in that area this year.

His out-pitch is a changeup, which ******** plus, although he has a kitchen sink of weapons at his disposal, and maybe there’s a better pitching plan out there for him that will help him be more effective a second time through the order and make him a solid five-inning starter for the back of a rotation. He offers a really high floor as an excellent swingman/reliever, which should generate a lot of interest and some three-year deals.

Eovaldi made 29 starts last year and threw 170 innings, the third-best total of his long career, which might be the most important stat in his 2024 line given his injury history (including two Tommy John surgeries). He doesn’t throw quite as hard as he did in his peak years but has averaged 95-96 mph consistently for three seasons. His splitter ******** an out-pitch, with late movement down and to his arm side, yet he still throws it for strikes a surprising amount of the time — only 32 percent of the splitters he threw last year were called ******. (Among the 10 MLB pitchers who threw the most splitters in 2024, only Shota Imanaga had a lower percentage of called ******.) Eovaldi will turn 35 in February so Father Time stalks him at every turn, but he’d be a strong No. 3 starter candidate for most contenders right now, and he can probably stay reasonably effective even once age starts to take some of his velocity away. He has a $20 million player option that vested because he reached 300 innings over 2023-24, but he can probably get at least that AAV over two or three years in the market.

20. ********** Walker, 1B

Walker didn’t get to play full-time until he left Baltimore and took over at first base for Arizona in his age-28 season, and since then he’s been a 3-4 fWAR player every time he’s played enough to qualify for the batting title, coming in at 3.0 fWAR last year (and 2.6 by bWAR). He came into his power a little later than most hitters, but he’s held it, with very strong batted-ball data last year highlighted by a 13.3 percent Barrel rate, although he’s starting to show some small signs of age, especially against good velocity.

Walker ******** an excellent defensive first baseman and has enough patience and power to be a regular there for a contender, although I’d be wary of going more than two years given his age and the high bar for offense at his one position. We’ll see if Mister ********** can keep motoring along into his mid-30s.

O’Hearn has always hit the ball hard, but it came with a lot of strikeouts — as many as 158 in one of his minor-league seasons — and as a result he didn’t get semi-regular playing time until Baltimore purchased his contract from the Royals before the 2023 season. Not only did he get the most playing time of his career (494 PA) in Baltimore, he improbably became a contact hitter, going from a 22 percent K-rate in 2023 to 14 percent this most recent year. The Orioles helped him with his mechanics in 2023, including keeping his hips more online during his swing, and this year helped him change his swing decisions. For example, in full counts, he swung 68 percent of the time in 2024, down from 88 percent the year before. He might be a hidden gem in the class, as he’s just a completely different hitter than he was before, and he’s never even gotten 500 PA to prove it.

22. Gleyber Torres, 2B

Torres was one of the top prospects in the game before his MLB debut, and came out strong in his first two seasons, including what ******** his offensive peak year in 2019, but he hasn’t been able to match that in any of the four post-pandemic seasons since. He’ll turn 28 in December, so he’s really young for a free agent and should have plenty of years of peak production left, but he just can’t turn on a fastball any more.

He’s lost some bat speed, certainly, and it shows against four-seamers — 63 percent of the time he put that pitch in play, it was to the right side of the field, and he hit four times as many of those fastballs to right field as he did to left. His .257/.330/.378 line with below-average defense was only worth 1.7-1.8 WAR in 2024, making him a below-average regular. Maybe some team can get him to pull the ball again and get back to some power — if it can help stem the drop in his bat speed, too.

Suárez had a superficial bounceback year heading into free agency, but a large part of it was Arizona’s hitter-friendly home park, and some of the rest was probably fluky. He hit just .239/.308/.422 on the road, with much more power at home. He also saw a power spike despite a drop in his Barrel rate and some of his other batted-ball data; all of that combined with his age, 34 in 2025, would seem to make him a candidate for some regression in his output. He’s still an above-average defender at third base and is probably a solid regular even accounting for a drop-off in his offense, although I wouldn’t want to go beyond two years with him given the warning signs.

Luis Severino finally had a mostly healthy season after five-plus years of struggling with injuries. (Evan Bernstein / Getty Images)

24. Luis Severino, RHP

Severino’s comeback season was his first time qualifying for the ERA title since 2018, which was many injuries ago, including a Tommy John surgery. He’s only down about 1.5 mph from his peak, which is amazing given how much time has passed and how many arm troubles he’s had, and the Mets had him add a sinker to counteract some of the declining life on the four-seamer.

He still has issues with left-handed batters, allowing 16 homers to them (versus seven to righties), and his slider, once his best pitch, has lost a lot of its ***** — it has the same velocity but doesn’t have anywhere near the same break in either dimension as it once did. I’m more worried about his durability — given his history and a delivery that still doesn’t use his lower half very well — than his stuff, although I can see concerns there as well.

25. Jeff Hoffman, RHP

The Twins had Hoffman in camp in March 2023, but released him at the end of March, three days after which the Phillies picked him up on a minor-league deal. He altered the grip on his slider, and the Phillies had him throw it a lot more often, and he’s responded with the two best years of his career, throwing 118 2/3 innings with 158 strikeouts, 33 unintentional walks, and a 2.28 ERA/2.54 FIP, and 3.9 bWAR/3.5 fWAR.

He has a modest platoon split but is more than good enough to stay in against most lefties, and he has multiple weapons to miss bats with the slider and splitter. I think he’s the best short reliever available in free agency, and those guys have been getting three years and $30-35 million the last few winters.

26. Nick Pivetta, RHP

Pivetta is a dependable fifth starter who can be a consistent five-and-***** guy, but who really shouldn’t face the order a third time. He’s allowed hitters to slug .505 against him the third time around in his career, .511 in 2024. He’s unusual for a starter in that he works mostly fastball-sweeper-curve, without a changeup or a split (which he used a little in 2022 but not at all in 2024) for lefties. Despite that he really hasn’t shown any platoon split as a starter over his career. He spent a month on the IL last year with a right elbow flexor strain, his first IL stint since missing a week-plus in September 2021. Five inning starters are all the rage now, so he should find plenty of suitors even as a guy who’s probably going to max out at 2 WAR.

27. Paul Goldschmidt, 1B

Goldschmidt’s production collapsed in 2024, as he has lost bat speed and it crushed him across the board, with career worsts in walk rate, strikeout rate and all three triple-slash stats. He still hits the ball hard, but he hits it less often, and more of it is on the ground. He’s been whiffing more on good fastballs each of the last two years, which often comes with age and its attendant loss of bat speed. He might have one more rebound season, but there’s a better chance that he’s done as a regular.

28. Max Kepler, OF

Kepler was nearly a 3-win player in 2023, but two knee injuries limited him to 399 PA this season and he was never quite right when he did play, with the lowest average exit velocity, hard-hit rate and walk rates of his career, along with near-lows in wOBA and wRC+. He usually crushes fastballs, pulling them hard for most of his home-run power, but in 2024 he couldn’t turn on good velocity at all, and if he pulled it at all it was to second base. Was it age, injury, or a combination of both?

I’d be willing to bet on some return to his 2021-23 levels, especially since he can still defend and has been adequate against lefties the last few years, but I wouldn’t bank on more than about 2-2.5 wins of value in 2025. If I’m Kepler, I’m certainly thinking about a one-year deal to try to re-establish my value and going for a four-year deal if I have a strong season.

29. Tyler O’Neill, OF

O’Neill demolished left-handed pitching in 2024, hitting .313/.430/.750 against southpaws, good for the third-best wRC+ versus lefties of any hitter in the majors in 2024, behind only Judge and Heliot Ramos (!). Those numbers were despite a strikeout rate of 31 percent for O’Neill even with the platoon advantage. His line against righties was a different story, .209/.290/.403 with a 35 percent strikeout rate.

He’s a below-average defender in either corner but has enough arm to play right. His ideal role is a platoon corner outfielder who could come off the bench as a pinch hitter against a lefty reliever, but I expect someone to pay him and play him as a regular even with the wide platoon split.

30. Andrew Heaney, LHP

Heaney’s ERA wasn’t anything special this past year at 4.28, but he threw 160 innings, the second-highest mark of his career, and his peripherals were really strong, producing a 2.2 fWAR figure that is also his second-best. He used his four-seamer less than in the previous few years, a positive shift since the pitch is fairly flat despite a lot of arm-side run, although right-handers still produce too much power against him, hitting 20 of the 23 homers he allowed last year. Some of this is from his cross-body delivery, and some is from pitch selection, as 75 percent of the pitches he throws to righties are four-seamers or sliders.

He gave the Rangers 307 innings and 59 starts over two years, by far the most he’s pitched in any two-year stretch, and is a solid fourth-starter candidate for most teams as is, but I wonder if just tweaking the pitch selection against right-handed batters could make him a little better.

31. Tomoyuki Sugano, RHP

Sugano has an arsenal of mostly average or fringe-average pitches, with his splitter maybe a 55, but he has incredible command and control that help everything play up. If you were ever going to bet on a pitcher to pitch above his pure stuff, this is the guy. He doesn’t miss enough bats to be more than a fifth starter or so, but he avoids walks — 2.6 percent this past year in NPB, 4.8 percent the year before — and hits his spots enough to limit hard contact. At least, that’s how it’s worked in Japan, but MLB lineups are a lot deeper, and there’s certainly a chance his fringy stuff catches up to him against higher-caliber hitters.

Shane Bieber will miss part of the 2025 season as he works his way back from Tommy John surgery. (Jason Miller / Getty Images)

32. Shane Bieber, RHP

Bieber underwent Tommy John surgery in April 2024, which will probably keep him out for part of the 2025 season but not all of it, barring a setback in his rehab. In 2022, he was one of the top-10 pitchers in baseball, racking up 4.8 fWAR across 200 innings, but his elbow started to bother him in 2023 and he both missed time and lost effectiveness on his breaking stuff as a consequence.

He’s been good when healthy and has worked with outstanding command and the ability to generate groundballs, so there should still be a ton of interest in him, probably for two-year deals that focus more on the value he’ll provide in 2026 when, presumably, his command is better as he’s further from the surgery. One thing to bear in mind is that some pitchers come back from TJ without the same breaking stuff, and Bieber does rely quite a bit on his slider and knuckle-curve.

33. José Quintana, LHP

Quintana, the most successful Colombian-born pitcher in MLB history, gave the Mets 170 innings of league average-ish pitching this season — better than that by ERA, worse by FIP, as his BABIP of .263 was pretty fluky. He’s missed large parts of two of the last four seasons, and in the other two he’s taken the ball every fifth day and soaked up some innings, although at 36 he’s lost a little velocity and that’s likely to continue. He should get one-year deals from here on out, probably in the $8-10 million range for now to balance out the innings upside with the injury risk, even though he’s probably a 1-1.5 WAR pitcher if he pitches a full season.

34. Walker Buehler, RHP

Buehler’s first year back from his second Tommy John surgery did not go as planned, as he posted a 5.38 ERA/5.54 FIP in 75 1/3 innings, allowing 16 homers and 89 hits. He had the lowest velocity of his major-league career, averaging 95 mph on his four-seamer, down slightly from 2021-22 and way down from its 2018-20 levels, with comparable drops on his other pitches as well. His command was way off, with a lot of middle-middle fastballs and a lot of curveballs that stayed up (even with more vertical break on the pitch than he had before 2024).

Buehler did miss two months with right hip inflammation, so it’s quite possible that contributed to some of his struggles, but regardless I’m inclined to think another year away from the surgery will at least see him get his command back. His 2024 stuff would still be enough to make him an above-average starter if he locates it. If I were the Dodgers, I’d make him the qualifying offer, because a healthy Walker Buehler is going to generate more than $21 million in value — and if they don’t, someone else should offer him that deal.

Kelly reaches major-league free agency for the first time as he enters his age 37 season, off a year when he was hurt but finished healthy and made 13 starts. He’d been worth 3.2 fWAR in each of the 2022 and 2023 seasons, throwing 377 1/3 innings over those two years, then missed four months in 2024 with right shoulder inflammation. The good news is that his average fastball velocity was only down 0.3 mph from 2023, and his changeup was still plus, so you can still project him as a 2-3 win pitcher if you think he can make 25+ starts this season. A younger pitcher would probably want a one-year make-good deal to try again next winter. This could be Kelly’s one big chance in free agency, and he may be more interested in getting every dollar he can this time around, even if it means leaving some upside on the table.

Miscast as a starter for most of his eight years in the majors, Weaver signed a minor-league deal with the Yankees in January and ended up their closer in September. He never had an average breaking ball, not even in college, and his changeup was above-average but not good enough to make him Michael Wacha. The Yankees had him alter the grip on his changeup to give it more tumble, and along with the cutter he added in 2023, he now has enough of a mix of weapons to get hitters on both sides out — and is missing way more bats than ever, going from a career whiff rate just under 25 percent before 2024 to a 33.5 percent rate this year. Someone might try to start him again, but I’d let him stick in a relief role, perhaps just letting him be more of a two-inning guy than a straight ninth-inning-or-bust choice.

Over the last three seasons, Pederson has hit .267/.365/.502 against right-handed pitching, playing almost exclusively against them, and in the rare times he’s been allowed to face a lefty, he’s walked 15 percent of the time, a big improvement from how he fared earlier in his career. He’s still a platoon player, just one who doesn’t require you to break the glass to deploy the emergency right-handed caddy every single time the opposing team ****** out a southpaw. He didn’t play the field at all for Arizona in 2024, but he’s a 45 defender in a corner. If either side declines his mutual option, he should be able to get a similar deal in the market, another year and $12.5 million, maybe a shade more given the sustained performance.

38. Carlos Santana, 1B

Santana just keeps chugging along, throwing up a 3.0 fWAR/2.6 rWAR season at age 38, mostly by crushing left-handed pitching (.286/.356/.578) and playing great defense at first base. Fun fact: Santana led all free agent position players in OAA this year, per Statcast, at +11, one ahead of Harrison Bader and ********** Walker. He’s not great against righties but does take his walks against them, with a .219/.318/.358 line that makes him below-average but playable because of the on-base percentage. His age makes him a one-year deal guy, but he gave the Twins way more value than his base salary of $5.25 million covered.

39. Kirby Yates, RHP

Yates just had his second-best season at age 36, posting a 1.17 ERA/2.50 FIP in 61 2/3 innings. He brought his walk rate under 10 percent for the first time since 2019, and for the second year in a row had an extremely low BABIP, which is part luck but also partly a function of how hard he is to square up. He’s held his stuff extremely well into his 30s, losing only 0.7 mph from his peak (2017) until now, and the splitter is still plus, enough to make his four-seamer a real swing-and-miss pitch, too. The only real risk factor I see is his age, but for one year he’d be a great late-game relief option for any club.

40. Clay Holmes, RHP

There’s a photo of Holmes in the dictionary under the entry “sinker/slider guy.” He had a 65 percent groundball rate last year thanks to a turbo sinker at 95 mph, and he misses a ton of bats with his slider, adding a sweeper more to the mix this year for a different look. If he walked fewer guys, he’d be an elite, 2-WAR or so reliever for any kind of high-leverage work, but with a walk rate around 8 percent, he’s just a tier below that.

41. Tanner Scott, LHP

Scott is the top left-handed reliever in the market, with a fastball that touches 100 mph, a slider in the upper 80s and a history of missing both bats and the strike zone. He also tends to limit hard contact, which somewhat mitigates the lack of control, although his .247 BABIP allowed in 2024 was his lowest in a full season and probably overstates his value going forward. He’s a fine late-game reliever if he throws enough strikes. I see a guy who’s walked at least 11 percent of batters faced in every year of his career but one, and I’m not sure I’d want to go multiple years, even though someone certainly will.

Will Carlos Estévez land on a team that wants to make him a closer? (Joe Camporeale / USA Today)

42. Carlos Estévez, RHP

Estévez hits free agency off his best year, as he had a career-low unintentional walk rate of just 3.8 percent, down from 9.4 percent the year before and 8.5 percent for his career heading into 2024. He sits in the high 90s with a short slider that hitters have a lot of trouble with, rarely using a changeup, but he doesn’t miss as many bats as you’d expect from the stuff, and he gives up more hard contact than you’d expect as well. When he’s throwing strikes like he did last year, he’s a very good short reliever, but not a guy for the highest-leverage spots. I’d give him two years and $10 million or so per, but I suspect someone will give him three years and make him a closer again.

43. Alex Verdugo, OF

Verdugo had maybe his worst year at the plate despite playing in a ballpark that favors left-handed batters, hitting just .235/.282/.388 against right-handed pitching, making him barely better than a replacement-level player. He probably should have lost his job to Jasson Domínguez, but that’s not material to his free-agent case; he’s a solid platoon guy for the corner outfield, hitting .279/.329/.464 off righties just a year prior and .280/.334/.447 for his career. There was a whole kerfuffle this summer when it emerged that he has been dealing with contact dermatitis, probably from his batting gloves, for three years, but he didn’t hit any better after that and it seems like a red herring. He’s a 50/55 defender with a plus arm, with enough thump against right-handed pitching to be the strong side of a 2-WAR platoon.

D’Arnaud is a passable starter for a second-division team at this point, with below-average on-base skills and above-average power that make him a solid bat at the position yet not enough to handle DH. He’s an average defensive catcher with a fringy arm, catching fewer than 20 percent of would-be base-stealers in three of the last four seasons. He’ll be 36 next year, and is coming off the highest whiff rate (32.8 percent) and highest strikeout rate (26 percent) of his career, with a concerning amount of his production coming off changeups — as in, slower pitches. He might be approaching the cliff, and contending teams should aim higher if they need a starter.

Moncada missed nearly all of 2024 with a right adductor strain, playing only 12 games, 11 of them before he hit the IL, but even before this season, he appeared to already be past his peak. In 2019-21, he hit .279/.363/.464 in 328 games, with a 10.8 percent walk rate. In 2022-23, he dropped to .234/.288/.386 with a 6.5 percent walk rate. He’s a fringy defender at third who was awful at second when he played it in 2017-18, so it’s the hot corner or the outfield. Maybe he gets completely healthy and regains some of the power and contact quality he had at his peak; I think it’s more likely that that version of the player isn’t coming back.

46. Hyeseong Kim, 2B

Kim hit .326/.383/.458 last year for Kiwoom in the KBO, and .321/.381/.418 over the last four seasons, with his slugging percentage increasing each year. He’s still a hit-over-power guy, striking out just 11 percent of the time this past year but with a huge groundball rate of 60 percent. He might be able to add some strength, but to be more than an extra guy he has to start elevating the ball a lot more. His former Kiwoom teammate Ha-Seong Kim did make some big adjustments after he came over to MLB, but he started from a higher baseline, hitting 30 homers in his last year in KBO. Hyeseong Kim, however, probably needs a swing adjustment and more strength to be an everyday second baseman in MLB.

47. Jose Iglesias, SS

Iglesias had the half-season of his life, and kept rolling enough in the postseason that I think someone will try to sign him to play every day, even though we have over 4,000 PA here to tell us that he’s not close to that kind of hitter. His batted-ball data agrees; his exit velocity metrics are all on the low end, and his expected batting average was 50 points below his actual one, which tells us something when projecting forward. He’s no longer the plus defender at short he used to be, but he’s at least average there and can handle second or third, as well. With his contact skills, he’s an ideal utility guy, but if someone tries to give him an everyday gig they’ll probably be looking for a replacement by midyear.

Gibson is the exemplar of the modern innings-eater. He’s made at least 25 starts in 10 straight years (excluding 2020) and qualified for the ERA title eight times in his 11 seasons, missing a ninth by two innings. He was right around league-average in 2024, but below-average in 2022 and 2023, as he just doesn’t miss enough bats. He mixes in six pitches, none of them better than a 55, with the sweeper and curveball to generate some whiffs and a sinker to give him a slightly above-average groundball rate. It’s unexciting, sure, yet there’s a lot of value in taking the ball every fifth day, even if it’s just to go 5-6 innings.

49. Paul Sewald, RHP

Sewald missed April with an oblique strain, then got off to a great start to 2024, allowing one run in his first appearance and none in his next 17 games. But from July 1 on he had a 7.04 ERA/4.60 FIP, with a .385 BABIP allowed and seven homers allowed in three innings, before his season ended with a neck injury in early September.

He’s been a four-seamer/slider guy forever, switching to a sweeper-style slider around 2020, but his four-seamer got hit hard in the second half, as he lost about an inch of movement on the pitch. He gave up seven doubles and four homers just on the four-seamer in the 23 innings he threw from July 1 onward. That’s nothing like the Sewald we saw from 2021-23 and through the end of June last year. He doesn’t rely on velocity, but on command and the sweeper, so he should hold his value longer into his 30s than most.

50. Carson Kelly, C

Kelly has bounced around the last two years, from Arizona to Detroit to Texas, but as a strong defensive catcher who has some contact skills, he could play another six to eight years as a backup. He’s a great athlete and smart player, neither of which has translated into strong on-base skills or hard enough contact to make him a regular. If he came into any power, he could probably end up a second-division regular again.

(Photo illustration by Meech Robinson / The Athletic / (from left to right) Corbin Burnes, Juan Soto, ****** Adames: Julio Aguilar / Getty Images; Patrick Smith / Getty Images; Stacy Revere / Getty Images)

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