This winter’s free-agent class is one of the strongest I’ve ever had the pleasure of writing up — maybe not as star-studded as the Bryce Harper/Manny Machado year, but deep with talent, especially at shortstop, along with many above-average starting pitchers. It’s a fun group to consider and should provide us with a blazing hot stove season.
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A season that may not happen, if the owners follow through on their threat to lock out the players for refusing to hand over their first-born children to MLB in exchange for moving up the super-two cutoff by five days, or something like that. It could be a cold stove indeed, unless a few teams try to strike early because others will be sitting out the offseason until there’s a new CBA in place.
This is my ranking of the top 50 free agents on the market, limited to players who are free agents now (though some have options) — no potential non-tenders, no NPB or KBO players who might be posted but haven’t been yet, just the boring old vanilla kind of free agents. (Although given how labor-intensive growing and harvesting vanilla is, and how expensive it has become, we probably should retire its use as a synonym for “plain.”)
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 potential future production, playing time and growth or regression over the life of such a contract. Your mileage, as always, may vary.
Notes: WAR figures are from Baseball-Reference unless otherwise noted. Age refers to the player’s seasonal age in 2022, meaning his age on June 30 of that year. I used data from Baseball-Reference, FanGraphs and MLB’s Baseball Savant to write this column.
1. Carlos Correa, SS, age 27
2021 WAR: 7.2 / Career WAR: 34.1
Correa is the best of the best in a strong free-agent class, coming to the market at just 27, younger than any other major free agent, and still playing up the middle of the diamond. The first overall pick way back in 2012, Correa has been good when healthy, although he’s only been healthy for two full seasons, as well as the truncated 2020 campaign; this year marks only the second time in a full 162-game season that he qualified for the batting title. Correa matched his career high in walks in 2021 and set a new high in homers with 26 while cutting his strikeout rate to a career low. He has shown the ability to hit all kinds of pitching — velocity, offspeed stuff, right- and left-handers, pretty much anywhere in the strike zone, too. He has a plus arm and ranges well to his right, with less range the other way, but he has defied predictions (including my own) that he’d outgrow the position so far, and he’s probably not going to move off short until his 30s, if then. Given how hard he hit the ball in 2021, he could easily have another gear of BABIP in him and post an 8-9 WAR season if he does. Correa should be looking for the 10-year deals that have become the norm for superstar position players, and any team that’s interested — which should be almost everyone — should value him as someone who’ll produce 50-60 WAR over that period, with some MVP-level seasons in the next few years.
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2. Corey Seager, SS, age 28
2021 WAR: 3.7 / Career WAR: 21.3
Seager won the 2016 NL Rookie of the Year award at age 22, finishing third in the NL MVP race that year, but his career since then has mostly been marked by injuries and injury-related underperformance. Since the start of the shortened 2020 season, however, he has played like the superstar he was supposed to become: .306/.381/.545 over 147 games with 31 homers, despite missing two months this past season with a broken bone in his right hand. He has hit the ball harder than ever before in the last two seasons, and a higher percentage of his balls in play have been Barrels as well. He has a modest platoon split, nowhere near what you’d expect from a typical left-handed batter, and while southpaws can still get him with breaking stuff, he does enough damage when he does connect on them that it’s a solid tradeoff. He’s a below-average defender at shortstop and always has been, so any projection going forward should assume he’s going to move to another position — likely third base, where I think he’ll be at least an above-average glove. He has to stay healthy to fulfill these projections, but he has MVP upside as much as Correa does, just with more uncertainty due to his position and an even longer history of injuries.
3. Marcus Semien, SS/2B, age 31
2021 WAR: 7.1 / Career WAR: 28.6
If you throw out his miserable 53-game performance in 2020, Semien has been one of the most valuable players in baseball in the last two full regular seasons: 15.5 WAR, playing all 324 games in those two years while playing in the middle infield in nearly all of them. Semien became an elite defensive shortstop while working with Ron Washington in Oakland, moved to second base this year with Toronto, and was an elite defender there too. His value may have held, but the way he got there changed — his walk rate dropped by about 20 percent, but he hit a career-high 45 home runs, 12 more than he had in 2019. He’s swinging more often overall, both in-zone (good) and out (less good), and was noticeably weaker against right-handers’ breaking stuff. Between that and his age compared to some other free agents this winter, he might be in line for shorter contracts, but his salary should be toward the top end — $25 million or more — especially given the value he provides and should continue to provide for many years on defense.
4. Freddie Freeman, 1B, age 32
2021 WAR: 4.7 / Career WAR: 43.1
Fresh off a 2020 campaign that won him the NL MVP Award, Freeman posted another Freeman sort of season: since the 2016-17 peak, he has posted wRC+ figures of 137, 136 and 135 in the last three full MLB seasons. He did maintain the lower strikeout rate from 2020, with a 15.4 percent rate that was Freeman’s best ever in a full season, a very favorable indicator for his ability to hold his value into his mid-30s. He’s a first baseman only, and defensive metrics don’t love his range there, so he’s mostly been a 4-5 win player, but his incredible consistency and lack of any sign of decline would make me comfortable giving him six years and $25 million or more a year.
5. Marcus Stroman, RHP, age 31
2021 WAR: 3.6 / Career WAR: 18.4
After opting out of the 2020 season, Stroman returned with his best campaign yet, posting his lowest ERA and FIP in a full season, along with career-best walk and strikeout rates. He’s still a sinker-slider guy, at least as his primary weapons go, with four other pitches he’ll show, notably an effective splitter he introduced this year. If there’s any reason for concern, it might be that Stroman’s sinker didn’t generate groundballs as well this year — 55 percent of sinkers hit into play were groundballs, compared to 62 percent in 2019 — but the pitch was just as effective at limiting hits, and he has consistently been among the 10 best starters in the majors at limiting home runs. He’s incredibly athletic and seems able to make adjustments as well as any pitcher in baseball, like adding an entirely new pitch in his age-30 season. I think he’s the best bet among free-agent starters this year, with a combination of upside and floor that puts him ahead of anyone else on the list.
6. Kris Bryant, OF/3B, age 30
2021 WAR: 3.3 / Career WAR 28.7
Outside of his injury-shortened, pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Bryant has been a consistently above-average regular since 2017, his second of two consecutive years with wRC+ figures of 147 or better; in 2018, 2019 and 2021, his wRC+ was between 123 and 134, comfortably above average but not star level for the positions he plays. He’s primarily a corner guy who can play average defense at third or first and below-average defense in left, as well as the ability to play center in a pinch, but as he ages, he is probably going to be best suited to the infield. Bryant has had a hard time shaking the tag of a disappointment because the player he was at ages 24-25 is gone; he hasn’t reached his career highs of 94 walks (2017) or 39 homers (2016) since, but that’s just not who he is as a hitter now. He always has been an excellent fastball hitter, using his strong eye to try to get into more fastball counts, but pitchers just throw him more off-speed stuff now — which is a trend in baseball in general, too — and I think that’s the main reason he has settled into a lower gear than his MVP season. He did start to hit the ball harder in his brief time with the Giants, which is kind of a thing they do with veteran bats. I’d be very curious to see if they can get him to make an adjustment if they end up bringing him back on a long-term deal. He should be looking at five-year offers, if not more.
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7. Robbie Ray, LHP, age 31
2021 WAR: 6.7 / Career WAR: 15.1
Poor old Ray’s 2021 season has to be one of the biggest shockers of all time – he had a 6.62 ERA in 2020, and led the NL in walks despite spending 40 percent of the season in the other league. He walked 45 men in 51 2/3 innings; had he qualified for the ERA title, he would have had the highest walk rate for any qualifying pitcher since 1949. Now he might win the AL Cy Young Award. Give the Blue Jays all the credit in the world for acquiring him in the first place and helping him turn his career around so that he produced nearly half of his career value in 2021 alone. He has made physical and mechanical changes and is now throwing harder and throwing more strikes – he went from 41.6 percent of his fastballs being called balls last year to just 29.8 percent this year. His slider was the ninth most valuable among major-league starters in 2021, according to FanGraphs’ pitch values, and his fastball was sixth-most, a function of his nearly 2:1 ratio of fastballs to sliders. I can understand some trepidation about investing long term in a guy who just walked almost a player an inning a year ago, but everything about Ray looks real and sustainable, and someone should be willing to go five years with him.
8. Kevin Gausman, RHP, age 31
2021 WAR: 5.3 / Career WAR: 16.8
Gausman just needed to get away from Baltimore to unlock his potential as a starter. Buck Showalter and his Orioles staff kept trying to move Gausman to the extreme third-base end of the rubber to give him more deception against right-handed batters, since he has never had an average breaking ball, but it cost Gausman command, especially to his glove side. He was just generally ineffective as a result. Now he’s a fastball/splitter guy standing more toward the center of the rubber, able to work to both sides and get left- and right-handed hitters out even without that third pitch. His splitter was by far the most valuable splitter or changeup in baseball this year, according to FanGraphs’ pitch values, and that in turn helped put his fastball into the top 10 as well. The one concern I might have about Gausman is that he can be homer-prone, and some ballparks — Denver, Cincinnati — might be less than ideal fits for him. He has No. 2 starter stuff, and now he has the delivery and the command to pitch like one.
9. Javier Báez, SS/2B, age 29
2021 WAR: 4.5 / Career WAR: 23.4
If someone could get Báez to develop his eye at the plate the way Austin Riley did this past year, Javy would win an MVP award. He’d be unstoppable at the plate with just a modicum of selectivity, but that’s not how he’s wired. He did set a career high in unintentional walks this year … with 26. In 138 games. He has 80 bat speed, and enormous raw power, along with plus speed, plus defense at either middle-infield spot, great game awareness (that doesn’t extend to, you know, balls and strikes), and maybe the best tag skill I’ve ever seen. His peak season of .290/.326/.554 is a good estimate of his upside even now, assuming nothing else changes about his game, but I bet someone goes after him in the belief that they can get him to show some patience or discipline at the plate and make him a .320/.360/.575 guy. The good news is he’s a 4-5 win player even without it, thanks to his defense and positional value.
10. Max Scherzer, RHP, age 37
2021 WAR: 5.3 / Career WAR: 67.2
Scherzer is going to the Hall of Fame and was still among the best starters in the majors in 2021, but he’s not higher on this list because of his age and some small signs that he might be declining — which means that I wouldn’t give him the same length of contract as the players above.
Despite his age, Scherzer still ranked second among National League starters in ERA, third in rWAR and fifth in fWAR, so even 90 percent of Max is still better than 100 percent of lots of other guys. His velocity was barely down from the previous two years, but he had significantly lower spin rates on both his curve and slider, with reduced break on both pitches. That’s at least partly why he posted his highest full-season FIP since 2016 and his second-highest walk rate since 2016, with his lowest strikeout rate since 2016 despite the league-wide increases in whiffs.
Scherzer will turn 38 in July 2022. There aren’t many pitchers who’ve been elite at that age or older; only three guys have had 7 WAR seasons in the integration era at age 38 or older, and I’m not sure any is a good comparable here. Randy Johnson had left-handedness in his favor. Phil Niekro threw a knuckleball. Roger Clemens … well, you know. Drop the bar to 6 WAR and you get two Dutch Leonard seasons from the 1940s and Bert Blyleven and his hammer curveball in 1989. Baseball-Reference shows 27 pitcher seasons worth 5 WAR or more where the pitcher was at least 38 years old, again using the integration era, just 12 of those coming this century. The odds are against Scherzer here, and that’s before we even think about how he didn’t quite seem the same at the end of 2021. I’d still take him at a premium salary, but only on a short-term deal of two years.
11. Nick Castellanos, OF, age 30
2021 WAR: 3.3 / Career WAR: 12.3
Castellanos’ WAR figures are a little misleading: He’s at 21.6 career offensive WAR but loses nearly half of that due to his poor defense in the outfield. You could probably sign him to be your first baseman or your DH and end up with more value than he has ever provided before, just by virtue of putting him somewhere he can’t hurt you with his glove. Outside of the outlier 2020 season, he has been a consistent hitter for average with doubles power that turned into home run power this year in Cincinnati (23 of his 34 homers came at home). Put him just about anywhere else, and you’ll probably get .280/.340/.500 or so, with 40 doubles, not a lot of walks, as there’s a drive into deep left by Castellanos and that’ll be a home run…
12. Chris Taylor, Swiss Army Knife, age 31
2021 WAR: 2.7 / Career WAR: 15.2
Taylor is a tremendous story — he was traded for Zach Lee and had never hit more than 8 homers in any single professional season, but the Dodgers worked with him to improve his launch angle and voilà, he has averaged 20 homers per 162 games since the start of 2017. The high average of his first year in blue didn’t last, and the new swing has meant more strikeouts, but given all the positions he can play — many of them reasonably well — his bat is more than valuable enough to get him 500 at-bats a year. I do think he’d be overtaxed as an everyday shortstop, and maybe at third base, but if a team wanted to play him mostly at one spot, he could probably do it at second base, and he’s consistently average on defense in center. The one real knock against him is that he’ll play at 31 next year, so a long-term deal puts you at risk of buying into his decline, and his contact rate can’t get much lower without impacting his overall offensive value.
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13. Starling Marte, OF, age 33
2021 WAR: 4.7 / Career WAR: 34.8
Marte certainly peaked at the right time, with the best OBP of his career in 2021 thanks to a big spike in his walk rate that didn’t come with any rise in his strikeouts or any other negatives in his line. He also posted a .369 BABIP that was near his career high and probably won’t hold going forward, especially as he hits his mid-30s. He’s been a plus defender in center for most of his career, but Outs Above Average had him just above the median this year, which is concerning given his age since it might be a harbinger of a move to an outfield corner. He did hit pretty much everything in 2021, even after some trouble with off-speed stuff earlier in his career, Statcast’s run values have him above-average against every pitch type except for splitters (in a sample of 22 pitches). I’m a little more sanguine about him holding his offensive gains from 2021 than I am about him staving off any further loss of defensive value, but if he hits close to his levels from last year while playing even average defense in center, he’s still a $20 million player.
14. Trevor Story, SS, age 29
2021 WAR: 4.2 / Career WAR: 26.8
Story had his worst season in 2021, just in time to hit free agency, which might not matter in most years but could hurt his market value in a year with so many other options at shortstop. Story is a power-over-hit guy, with huge power for a shortstop, and at one point was a plus defender as well. He does have a sizable home/road split — away from Coors Field, he has hit just .241/.310/.442 in his career, with a 31 percent strikeout rate — and while Rockies hitters with large home/road splits don’t just fall apart when they leave the team, Story always has had issues with contact. Breaking stuff kills him; since the start of 2019, he has whiffed on 18.2 percent of breaking pitches. Maybe that improves when he’s seeing them more consistently, but I’m not sure how much I’d bet on that. Outs Above Average has him as an average to slightly below-average defender at short in 2020 and 2021, which isn’t a great sign, either. I’d be skeptical before going long term with Story, wanting more data on his bat outside of Coors and his glove anywhere before making a four- or five-year investment.
15. Brandon Belt, 1B, age 34
2021 WAR: 2.7 / Career WAR: 27.2
Belt’s career has been marked by injuries as much as by strong performances; since becoming a full-time big leaguer in 2012, he has had four years where he played in 70 percent or less of the Giants’ games. Assuming he’s not going back, he did close out his Giants career with his most productive year-plus yet: Since the start of the pandemic season in 2020, he has hit .285/.393/.595 with 38 homers in 148 games. Had he done all of that just this year, he’d be getting MVP votes — he would have ranked fifth in the majors in OBP and fourth in slugging. As it was, he didn’t qualify for the batting title this year but still would have ranked fourth in slugging if he had. He’ll turn 34 in April, and his performance the last two seasons is a significant step up from anything he’d done before, but as a shorter-term play than most of the other premium bats on the market, he’d be a good target for a contender in need of some thump at first base on a three-year deal.
16. Eduardo Rodríguez, LHP, age 29
2021 WAR: 1.8 / Career WAR: 15.4
Rodriguez missed all of 2020 after contracting COVID-19 and developing a case of cardiomyopathy severe enough to put his career in jeopardy, so any return this year would have been a win for him. His 4.74 ERA this past year doesn’t reflect how well he pitched – he had a 3.32 FIP, with a career-worst strand rate, and a .410 BABIP allowed with men on base, most of which seems pretty fluky given how out of line it is with his prior performance. Rodriguez has never had much of a breaking ball, working with a plus fastball and plus or better changeup, but his cutter was a legitimate third weapon for him in 2019. In 2021, it was his worst pitch, even though it wasn’t physically very different from how it had been before. There are a lot of signs here that his ERA was more noise than signal, and some reason to think that another year removed from his heart ailment might give him back more strength or stamina. He has above-average starter upside, which he reached in 2019, with the same kind of volatility as other premium starters on this market have.
17. Carlos Rodón, LHP, age 29
2021 WAR: 5.0 / Career WAR: 11.5
Rodón was worked very hard at North Carolina State, so it wasn’t that surprising when he started to have shoulder trouble in 2017 that cost him most of that season, and Tommy John surgery that cost most of 2019 and limited him to 7.2 innings in the shortened 2020 season. He was one of the best starters in the American League when he was healthy this year, but his shoulder barked again after his Aug. 7 start, and when he came back from the injured list at the end of the month, his velocity was down. He was still effective, thanks to the quality of his slider and changeup; even though his slider isn’t the hellacious weapon it was for the Wolfpack, it’s still plus, and he didn’t give up a homer on the pitch all year. He’s a gamble, given how he ended the year, but it’s essentially No. 1 starter upside that you can get at a discount to that value because of his injury history.
18. Noah Syndergaard, RHP, Age 29
2021 WAR: 0.0 / Career WAR: 15.9
Syndergaard missed all of 2020 and 2021 while recovering from Tommy John surgery and barely made it back to the majors at the end of the season in a sort of “proof of life” callup where he showed he hadn’t lost his fastball but also wasn’t all the way back. His velocity was down almost 3 mph in his two MLB appearances in 2021 compared to where he was before the surgery, although there are many plausible explanations for that; we also didn’t even see him throw any breaking stuff, which the team proscribed while he was still rehabbing. Before the injury, he had a plus slider and plus changeup, with a four-pitch mix that also included a fastball that topped out at 100.4 mph in 2019, but he’d only thrown two full seasons in the majors (at least 30 starts/180 innings in each). Had he been healthy heading into this winter, he would have rivaled Stroman for the top spot among free-agent pitchers. Now he might be a target for a make-good one- or two-year deal that defers his big payday until he can reach the market with a big platform year of a regular workload and his peak stuff.
19. Jon Gray, RHP, age 30
2021 WAR: 1.3 / Career WAR: 11.1
Is Gray going to be underrated because he pitched at Coors Field for half his games so far in his career, or overrated because everyone thinks “if you just get him out of Coors, he’ll be a star,” or somewhere in between? Gray hasn’t been better away from Denver in his career, with a 4.65 road ERA versus a 4.54 home one, and a much higher walk rate on the road, so it’s not as simple as flipping that one switch. His four-seamer does play better on the road — higher whiff rate, lower in-play rate — and the slider is an out pitch, with plus break in both dimensions. He has generally been durable, avoiding major arm injuries and only missing any significant time due to a pair of foot fractures, but he did hit the injured list in 2021 with a back injury in May and forearm tightness in September. I’m more in the “underrated” camp, as I think there’s just another gear here we didn’t see in Denver, but I know that could be wishful thinking, especially since you’d think a guy with a power four-seamer that can touch the high 90s and a slider that still shows plus tilt at altitude would be a decent fit for that environment. I’d still give him three or four years and mid-rotation money just for the innings, with the hope my coaching staff can unlock something more.
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20. Kyle Schwarber, OF/1B, age 29
2021 WAR: 3.2 / Career WAR 9.0
Schwarber had his best season in the majors, which might have something to do with the change of scenery or could just be some random good fortune. He always has had big power and murdered fastballs but struggled more with off-speed stuff and was often futile against left-handed pitching. He was adequate against southpaws in 2021 for the first time in his career, although it was fueled by a .377 BABIP that seems really unlikely to recur, and I’d still prefer to use him as the strong side of a platoon rather than as an everyday player. Schwarber is a consistently below-average defender in left and would probably be better served as a first baseman or just a DH whose job is to go mash right-handed pitching. At age 29, he’s not going to suddenly turn into a solid defender at first base, but it’s at least worth exploring that. I think he’s a good bet to produce at this level against right-handers for several more years — maybe some of those homers are doubles instead, but close to it — while needing a platoon partner and a permanent break from playing the outfield.
21. Michael Conforto, OF, age 29
2021 WAR: 0.9 / Career WAR: 15.7
Conforto hits the market after his worst season as a big leaguer, the first time he failed to reach 2 WAR since 2016, and might be a candidate for a one-year “pillow” contract, where he goes somewhere with a guarantee of playing time to try to re-enter a less crowded free-agent market next winter off a better performance. Always a plus hitter for contact and average, Conforto struck out even less than usual in 2021 but had his worst results on contact. He was hurt for part of the year, missing time due to COVID-19 in the spring and a hamstring injury after that. But a lot of what went wrong for Conforto looks like bad luck combined with a career-high pull rate, which is bad news for any left-handed hitter in our heavily shifted times. From 2017 through 2020, he hit .265/.369/.495, good for a 133 wRC+, so he has a healthy history as a well-above-average hitter, as well as an average or slightly better defender in an outfield corner. That player would probably be in line for a five-year deal this winter. But between the down year and the deep free-agent class, Conforto might make more money in the long term by taking a one-year deal and playing like his old self next season.
22. Clayton Kershaw, LHP, age 34
2021 WAR: 2.4 / Career WAR: 71.9
Kershaw’s situation parallels Scherzer’s: Teams must judge him for what he will be, not for what he has been. Kershaw made just 22 starts this year, and hasn’t made 30 starts in any regular season since 2015. His 121 2/3 innings this year mark his lowest total for any full season since his rookie year of 2008, when he was promoted to the majors in late May. His velocity was back down after a temporary bump up in 2020, and his slider and curveball are both less sharp than they were at his peak. Yet he was still worth about 2.5 wins above replacement in about two-thirds of a season, as he pounds the zone with all of his pitches, and he’s still relatively hard to hit. He has never allowed a .300 BABIP in any season other than his rookie year, and the .289 BABIP he allowed in 2021, while the highest of his career since then, was still well below the league average. He hasn’t reinvented himself so much as relied on different strengths. His season ended before the playoffs because of a forearm strain that didn’t include any UCL damage but did require a PRP injection, so there’s additional risk beyond that of age and decline. If someone doesn’t sign him early in the winter, he might be the ideal candidate to throw for teams in March or April and offer five months of great pitching, the way a certain other pitcher from Texas handled the last few years of his career.
23. Mike Zunino, C, age 31
2021 WAR: 3.7 / Career WAR: 10.6
Zunino was worth 3.7 WAR this year (4.5 on FanGraphs, where he gets an additional eight runs of value from framing) in just 109 games, so he was, by those metrics, the most valuable catcher in the American League and only behind Buster Posey among all MLB catchers. That he did it while hitting .216 is a sign of the incompleteness of batting average as a way to value hitters, and I assume a substantial source of cognitive dissonance for the same sort of galaxy brain that thinks “WAR – what is it good for?” is a clever headline. He’s one of the extreme examples of a power-over-hit guy, the type of hitter who had no major-league role until the last five years or so, but his defensive value kept him around. In 2017 he had a season like this past one, with a bit more OBP and less power (although the baseball itself has changed since then). The power and the defense — receiving and framing — aren’t going anywhere, but he has had years where he hit and walked so infrequently that it drowned the value of his power and glove, including 2019 and 2020, when he hit a combined .161/.233/.323 with 13 homers in 373 PA. There’s so much risk here, with five seasons in eight in the majors where he couldn’t even muster a .260 OBP. But catching is also so scarce that someone will probably give him three years and hope they get two of the good Zunino years during the deal.
24. Anthony DeSclafani, RHP, age 32
2021 WAR: 3.9 / Career WAR: 10.1
Desclafani was a reliever at the University of Florida, traded twice before he exhausted his rookie eligibility, but carved out as a career as a starter by going from a four-seamer/slider guy to a sinker/four-seamer/slider guy, always with excellent control. He has generally had trouble with lefties, as most sinker/slider or four-seam/slider guys do if they don’t have an average changeup. In 2021, he threw the changeup more and got more tumble to the pitch, leading to his best line against lefties yet. Even with some likely regression there, given the small sample, he’s a solid mid-rotation starter, especially now that he seems to be completely back from elbow and other injuries that wrecked his 2017 and 2018 seasons, including a partially torn UCL that never required Tommy John surgery. He could be in line for four years, although I’d be more comfortable at three, and $15 million to $20 million per.
25. Avisaíl García, OF, age 31
2021 WAR: 2.9 / Career WAR: 10.9
García has long been among the league leaders in maximum exit velocity, topping 115 every in every year except for the pandemic-shortened 2020. However, he would put the ball on the ground too often — a function of his swing but also his poor pitch selection — to convert that into enough value to make him a regular. Between his year in Tampa Bay in 2019 and this past full season in Milwaukee, he has driven the ball a little bit more — but because he hits the ball so hard, a few more line drives and fly balls add up to a few more doubles and home runs. He’s a below-average defender in either corner, but not enough to have to move off the position. García has mashed lefties for most of his career, with OBPs against southpaws over .400 since he arrived in Milwaukee for 2020, and will always have that floor as a platoon bat, but should get two to three years to be a regular with 25+ homer upside.
26. Yuli Gurriel, 1B, age 38
2021 WAR: 3.7 / Career WAR: 13.8
Gurriel didn’t come to the majors until 2016, his age-32 season, but he just had one of his best years yet at age 37, losing power from 2019 but posting the best walk rate and BABIP of his career so far, while continuing his track record of extremely high contact rates. Over the last five seasons, Gurriel has the eighth-lowest strikeout rate among qualifying hitters, with a higher isolated power than anyone else in the top 10. He’ll turn 38 in June, and while he has actually improved his ability to connect with good velocity in the last three years, he doesn’t do much with it, and at some point soon that’s going to be enough of a weakness to materially impact his production — which, given his defensive limitations, means he’ll go from a solid regular to a bench piece very quickly. The Astros are very likely going to pick up his $8 million option. If they don’t, I’d give him a one-year deal for his contact rate, hoping his newfound patience sticks around, but he’s a bad first baseman and probably doesn’t have the power to be more than an average regular there or at DH.
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27. J.D. Martinez, DH, age 34
2021 WAR: 3.0 / Career WAR: 26.8
We can probably throw out JDM’s miserable 2020 season, when he was still dealing with the aftereffects of a 2018 ankle injury and had to unlearn some bad mechanical habits, but his 2021 production was still down from where he was during his peak years. And that’s fine, as long as teams reset their expectations for him. He still hits the ball extremely hard, with plus power, but his walk and strikeout rates are heading the wrong way, and in 2021 a handful of what used to be homers turned into doubles. He’s still productive enough to be an above-average DH, and there could be another big year in there before he’s through, but his age and skill set make a decline more likely than a bounceback.
28. Steven Matz, LHP, age 31
2021 WAR: 2.0 / Career WAR: 9.3
Matz is yet another GWH (Good When Healthy) starter on this market, with four seasons where he handled what passes for a starter’s workload these days, in two of which he was above-average, including 2021. His command was much better this past season for Toronto than it was in the truncated 2020 season, his last with the Mets and his most catastrophic, with a huge difference in the consistency of his changeup, which has always been his best pitch. He works with four pitches, but his slider has always been below average, and it was by far his worst pitch again in 2021, to the point that maybe he just needs to junk it and work with his fastball, change, and fringe-average curveball. For teams that have shifted their pitching model to keep most starters to twice through the order, he’s a good fit, and young enough still that I would consider three years for him at an AAV around $9-10 million.
29. Alex Cobb, RHP, age 34
2021 WAR: 1.7 / Career WAR: 14.4
Cobb signed a four-year deal with the Orioles that was a disaster from the start, even though he was coming off a strong year with the Rays after missing nearly two years from Tommy John surgery. He was often hurt in Baltimore, missing nearly all of 2019 with a back injury and then hip surgery, and when he wasn’t on the injured list, he had a 5.10 ERA for the O’s, allowing 41 homers in 217 innings. They traded him to the Angels last winter for second base prospect Jahmai Jones, and Cobb returned to his pre-Baltimore form for 18 starts, with an ERA of 3.76 and even better FIP of 2.76. He was the same guy on the mound, so perhaps it was about playing in front of a better defense, or a pitcher-friendly park, or just randomness. But if he can stay healthy he’s at least a league-average starter, with plus command, a plus changeup, and a good enough sinker to make him a true groundball pitcher. Given his age and injury history, however, he’s probably looking at one- or two-year deals in the $10 million AAV range.
30. Alex Wood, LHP, age 31
2021 WAR: 1.3 / Career WAR: 12.7
Wood hasn’t pitched enough to qualify for the ERA title since 2015, missing most of 2016, 2019 and 2020 with shoulder and back injuries, on top of the Tommy John surgery he had as an amateur. His high-effort delivery probably doesn’t help matters, but it’s also the source of tremendous deception — left-handed batters probably think the ball is coming from behind their ears, and all hitters have to cope with the polar-opposite movements out of his hand from his slider to his sinker and changeup. Despite the low slot, he has been effective against left- and right-handed batters, and he throws more strikes than you’d expect to see from a pitcher with those mechanics. You just can’t count on him to make 30 starts; if he does, great, but you can’t plan on it. A team willing to take on that risk, and accept 20 starts of well-above-average results, should be interested in a one-year deal here, maybe with escalators for starts made or innings pitched.
31. Raisel Iglesias, RHP, age 32
2021 WAR: 2.8 / Career WAR: 11.4
Iglesias has defied the norm for relievers, with above-average results in six straight years in the bullpen with no injury interruptions. The one big surprise in his 2021 season was that he was still homer-prone, giving up nine of his 11 homers in Angel Stadium, ordinarily a good park for pitchers. It’s not the ballpark, but his location — he just misses up too often with his fastball and slider. That’s the one thing keeping him from being an elite reliever, although he does as well as you can without that, missing bats, limiting walks, and showing a minimal platoon split. Longtime readers know I don’t believe in giving any relievers three-year deals (or longer, because the track record of relievers getting four- or five-year deals is dismal), but Iglesias merits two years and $12 million to $14 million a year, considering his performance and the inherent risk of relief pitchers.
32. Eduardo Escobar, IF, age 33
2021 WAR: 2.6 / Career WAR: 12.0
Escobar sure seemed to enjoy getting out of Arizona, hitting better in two months in Milwaukee, with the best walk rate of his career and a return to a normal BABIP after he had just a .271 BABIP with the Diamondbacks over parts of three seasons. His batted-ball data was consistently better than his results there, and he should be an above-average hitter wherever he goes next, at least for the next year or two. He’s versatile in the field, an above-average defender at second and a passable if below-average one at third, playing first base in 2021 for the first time in his big-league career. As a switch-hitter without much of a platoon split, he’s more than a bench bat, but probably best suited for a multi-position role that takes advantage of his ability to move around between second, third and maybe first or even left field.
33. Nelson Cruz, DH, age 41
2021 WAR: 2.5 / Career WAR: 42.4
Somewhere in Nelson Cruz’s house, there’s a baseball card hanging on the wall, covered by a curtain — a picture of him looking old and haggard on one side, and on the other side, he’s hit .160/.230/.280 in 2021 and was released in late May.
34. Anthony Rizzo, 1B, age 32
2021 WAR: 1.7 / Career WAR 36.9
Rizzo comes to free agency after a decade with the Cubs that included his prime seasons, but age has started to catch up with him a little bit (as it does to us all). He’s probably looking at an everyday player ceiling and a payday to match, rather than the star money he would have gotten three or four years ago. Rizzo has lost some bat speed, so better velocity is becoming a problem for him, and his walk and strikeout rates are slowly heading in the wrong direction. He’s still patient enough and has enough power to be a possible regular at first, especially since he continues to show well against left-handed pitchers, but there’s more downside potential than upside here, and I’d be loath to go more than a year and $10 million to $12 million.
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35. Kenley Jansen, RHP, age 34
2021 WAR: 2.3 / Career WAR: 18.6
Jansen, like Kershaw, has never thrown a pitch for an organization other than the Dodgers, so it’s hard to even imagine him in a different uniform. He’s also not the elite reliever he used to be, walking a career-high 32 batters in 2021 for his highest walk rate since his rookie half-season, while his strikeout rate has held steady around 30-31 percent the last four years, down from his peak in the 40 percent-plus range. The good news is that he’s gotten some velocity back, with his trademark cutter up over 1.5 mph from 2020, and with a higher spin rate (albeit one that declined as the year went on — it was in slider territory back in April). He also saw spin rate gains on his sinker and slider, two pitches he has begun using more as his cutter, which made up over 80 percent of the pitches he’d throw in his peak years, became less effective. So he’s not his old self, but he’s also not just a broken-down ex-closer. There’s something here for a coaching staff to work with, stuff that will miss bats and that could make him elite again if he can command it at all.
36. Jorge Soler, OF, age 30
2021 WAR: -0.4 / Career WAR: 3.5
The Soler we saw for 55 games with Atlanta at the end of 2021 looked an awful lot like the guy who set the (since-broken) single-season record for home runs as a Royal back in 2019, and I think that’s the guy he can be going forward. He hits the ball extremely hard, with peak exit velocities typically in the top 1-2 percent of major leaguers, and his average contact level is also high quality, but in most years of his career he just hasn’t made enough contact — or, in 2018, he’s put the ball on the ground too much. Soler morphed into a sort of unrepentant hacker this spring with the Royals. But after the trade to Atlanta at the deadline he became far more disciplined, chasing pitches out of the zone about 20 percent less often, swinging more in the zone, and making more contact on pitches in and out of the zone. He began drawing walks at a much higher rate and also doing more damage when he did swing. He has been all kinds of awful, or at least many different kinds of awful, in the outfield, creating negative Outs Above Average — Outs Below Average, I suppose — in every year but the shortened 2020 season, so maybe he needs to DH, or just play left field in a small park (Houston?). But I do believe the hitter we saw in August and September is indicative of the player Soler can be. Some team might get a huge bargain on a one- or two-year deal here.
37. Collin McHugh, RHP, age 35
2021 WAR: 1.9 / Career WAR: 10.9
After opting out of the 2020 season, McHugh returned from his worst major-league season in 2019 this year to post one of his best performances, working in a varied role for the Rays where he averaged closer to 2 innings per appearance — heresy just a few years ago. He’s mostly a slider/cutter guy, mixing in the occasional four-seamer, and the slider and cutter are so hard for hitters to distinguish out of his hand that they’re both out pitches for him. There are no guarantees with reliever health, but the Rays never used McHugh on back-to-back days, and while it’s just a hypothesis, I think the heavy usage of short relievers on no rest — sometimes even on three consecutive days — is a major reason they have been so volatile year-to-year. I’d give McHugh two years and $8 million to $10 million to keep doing what he’s doing.
38. Tyler Anderson, LHP, age 32
2021 WAR: 1.6 / Career WAR: 8.1
Anderson is a serviceable fourth starter, a lefty with a four-pitch mix, nothing plus, with excellent control but a tendency to give up the long ball, even now that he’s no longer pitching in Denver. Despite the elevated home run rate, he limits hard contact overall, thanks to above-average spin on his four-seamer. And he gets the most out of it, with a 99 percent Active Spin rate, meaning just about all of that spin contributes to the pitch’s movement. He has missed time with knee injuries but has been pain-free since 2019 surgery. And he might have a late-career renaissance with a new club that likes his mix of back-end rotation floor and some potential for improvement given what we already know he can do with his four-seamer.
39. Craig Kimbrel, RHP, age 34
2021 WAR: 2.5 / Career WAR 21.9
The Cubs gave Kimbrel a three-year deal partway through the 2019 season, and the first two years were disastrous: 36 innings, 24 runs allowed, including 11 homers, and 24 walks for a 6.00 ERA. He was a revenant for the first four months of 2021, was traded to the other side of Chicago, and turned right back into a pumpkin, with a 5.09 ERA and a big spike in his home run rate again. His stuff has dropped off since his last full, good season in 2018, but it didn’t change appreciably between 2019-20 and 2021, and his curveball is still a hammer. He doesn’t locate his fastball as well as he used to, and that’s where he gives up nearly all of his damage: 14 of the 16 homers he has allowed in the last three years were on four-seamers, and just two on the curveball. You’re rolling the dice here, but one year and $10 million might work for a contender hoping to catch the good Kimbrel in a bottle. I couldn’t go longer given his track record over the longer term.
40. Jonathan Villar, IF, age 31
2021 WAR: 1.8 / Career WAR: 13.4
In six years since Houston traded Villar to Milwaukee (for Cy Sneed, -0.4 WAR, now out of baseball), he has played for five different teams, been outrighted (by Baltimore, off a 4.3-WAR season), produced 1 WAR or more four times, and played at least 100 games at second base, shortstop and third base. He’s not a very good defender, with consistently negative Outs Above Average figures at all three spots, but he’s typically a league-average hitter, and that will play for a non-contender that needs an infielder or a contender looking for a useful bench piece.
41. Zack Greinke, RHP, age 38
2021 WAR: 1.2 / Career WAR: 73.1
So that’s three starting pitchers on this market who are heading to the Hall of Fame but are coming off seasons that will probably see them receive more tepid interest than you’d expect from their reputations. Greinke had what is probably the worst year of his career, with his highest FIP ever and lowest strikeout rate since 2005, when strikeouts in general were lower across the game. It’s a simple problem, but unfortunately there isn’t a simple fix: His four-seamer has dipped in velocity to the point where it’s barely viable for a right-hander, and he lives in the middle of the zone with it, trying to get to his plus changeup and solid-average curve and slider. I wouldn’t bank on him being league average with this stuff, but he could be a good fifth starter on a contender.
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42. Mark Canha, OF, age 33
2021 WAR: 2.5 / Career WAR: 9.9
Canha’s one-year power spike in 2019, when he hit 26 homers and slugged over .450 for the only time in his career, looks like a fluke. And his value in 2021 came largely from his OBP of .358, which was boosted by his major league-leading 27 times hit by pitch. His home run output might improve if he’s not in Oakland, but if not, he’s an average defender in center with good-not-great OBP skills, lacking the power to be a regular in a corner.
43. Andrew McCutchen, OF, age 35
2021 WAR: 1.4 / Career WAR: 46.0
McCutchen had sort of a bounceback year, hitting 27 homers, the most he’d hit since 2017 and the third-highest total of his career, along with one of the best walk rates of his career. But he also posted a .242 BABIP, by far his worst ever, 39 points below his previous worst, which came in the truncated 2020 season. He’s just not hitting the ball as hard as he used to, which could be Father Time creeping up on him. (He’s behind you right now, in fact.) But Cutch still has a great approach, he’s not getting beaten by good fastballs yet, and the home run output shows he still has some ability to make hard contact. He’s a fringy regular in a corner now, and might be looking at one-year deals from here on out, maybe two years from a club that values his veteran presents presence.
44. Christian Vázquez, C, age 31
2021 WAR: 1.0 / Career WAR: 4.9
Vázquez had a down year at the plate in 2021, but had hit 30 homers in 185 games between 2019 and 2020, which, with his typically above-average defense, would be enough to make him an average regular, good enough to start on maybe half the teams in baseball. He wasn’t that guy in 2021, and wasn’t exactly that guy before his power surge in 2019, so there’s also a real chance he’s just a good defensive catcher who puts the ball in play without a lot of damage. With catching always in short supply, however, someone will probably give him a year or two to see if they can catch him on the rebound.
45. Ryan Tepera, RHP, age 34
2021 WAR: 1.8 / Career WAR: 4.9
Who is Ryan Tepera? A pretty good right-handed reliever, as it turns out, coming off his best season. He throws his slider more than anything else; it’s plus, and hitters do not hit it, missing half of the sliders they swung at in 2021. He’s a one-inning reliever but gets lefties out as well as righties, and he’s good enough for high-leverage spots.
46. Rich Hill, LHP, age 42
2021 WAR: 1.3 / Career WAR: 15.7
Hill’s formula could work as long as his arm holds up; it’s two pitches, the fastball and curveball, with solid control and a lot of deception. Lefties can get away with this well into their 40s — Jamie Moyer did it, with a changeup rather than a curveball, when he was sitting 82-84 — and in Hill’s case it’s probably more about his arm health than his potential effectiveness.
47. Matt Duffy, 3B/IF, age 31
2021 WAR: 1.6 / Career WAR: 9.2
Since Duffy’s big breakout season in 2015, he has played just one full season in the majors, missing the equivalent of nearly three seasons, including all of 2017. Healthy again in 2021, he was quietly productive for the Cubs, and there’s probably more in there, as he did no damage at all against lefties (that is, with the platoon advantage). He can play third or second, and can fill in at a few other spots, even making two starts at shortstop last year. He’s better suited to frequent utility work than everyday status, but a non-contender could try him as their regular at third or second and hope he has a big enough start to generate trade value for July.
48. Andrew Heaney, LHP, age 31
2021 WAR: 0.3 / Career WAR: 5.3
Clearly, I believe better days are ahead for Heaney, who was an above-average starter when healthy from 2018-20 but became very homer-prone in 2021, especially on his four-seamer, which he seemed to want to throw right down the middle, with exactly the results you’d expect from that strategy. He seems like a great candidate for a cutter, with just a fastball, curve and changeup in his arsenal, but even locating his fastball more to the inner and outer thirds would help. He’s one of the best reclamation-project starters in this free-agent class.
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49. Johnny Cueto, RHP, age 36
2021 WAR: 0.8 / Career WAR: 32.9
Cueto was better by FanGraphs’ WAR last year, at 1.5 wins above replacement, enough to convince me to keep him on this list and talk about him as a fourth or fifth starter for some clubs. He can show a plus fastball and plus changeup, still missing a lot of bats with the latter pitch, although he gave up more damage on the pitch in 2021. He returned from an elbow strain to make one last appearance on Sept. 30, and as long as he’s healthy, he seems like a possible 20-25 start option for the back of a contender’s rotation.
50. Danny Duffy, LHP, age 33
2021 WAR: 2.1 / Career WAR: 19.8
Duffy pitched pretty well before the second of two forearm injuries ended his season. He threw five different pitches, getting strong whiff rates on four of them, everything but his sinker, a pitch he doesn’t need anyway. If he’s healthy, he should have a lot of interest from teams as a swingman/spot starter who has no real platoon split and would almost certainly take a one-year deal.
(Top photos of Freddie Freeman, Carlos Correa and Corey Seager: Getty Images)
