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2024-25 MLB Free Agent Power Rankings

2024-25 Free Agent Power Rankings: Late August

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Since Opening Day, MLBTR has taken periodic looks at the upcoming free agent class. This is our third (and likely final) installment of our in-season power rankings. Players still have a month and potential postseason play to move things around, yet the class is coming into focus.

There’s no suspense at the top of the list. The 1-2 have remained unchanged from start to finish (although the gap between 2 and 3 has closed in the past few weeks). This is our attempt to capture a player’s earning power, so age is big factor. This is not strictly a list of the best players in the class, though talent is obviously the starting point.

Our power rankings are compiled collaboratively. We worked with Darragh McDonald — with input from MLBTR founder and owner Tim Dierkes — for this installment. Players with opt-out clauses and player options are eligible for the list. Stats are through play on August 29.

  1. Juan Soto, OF, Yankees

Soto has been the clear top free agent in the class for years. He has been on track for a record-setting deal (in terms of total guarantee, AAV or both) for a while. To top it off, Soto is amidst arguably his best season during his platform year. He has already established a new career mark in home runs. He’s going to hit 40 for the first time and could top 45 by year’s end. Soto is hitting .291/.421/.590 on the season. This will be his fifth consecutive season with more walks than strikeouts.

Approaching his 26th birthday, Soto is ostensibly at the beginning of his prime. There’s not much room for him to get better, but a signing team could realistically expect another seven to 10 years of elite offensive production. Soto’s league-best strike zone awareness should age gracefully. It’s essentially unheard of for teams to be able to sign a player who is on an inner circle Hall of Fame trajectory with another four full seasons before he turns 30. Every high-payroll organization should be involved.

While Soto generally doesn’t provide a ton of defensive value, he’s having a decent season in that regard. He has a career-high five defensive runs saved in nearly 1100 innings. Statcast has him right around average. Soto could move to designated hitter in the latter half of a deal that exceeds a decade but shouldn’t have any issue sticking in right field for the foreseeable future.

Soto turned down a reported $440MM extension offer from the Nationals a few years ago. His camp subsequently rebuffed overtures from the Padres and Soto shut down any chatter about a potential midseason deal with the Yankees in June. He’ll be three years younger than Shohei Ohtani was during his free agency. Soto isn’t likely to accept a deal with the kind of deferrals that Ohtani took, but he should handily beat the approximate $461MM net present value of the Ohtani contract. He should top half a billion dollars and it wouldn’t be surprising if his camp at the Boras Corporation were aiming for something close to or north of $600MM and/or multiple opt-out chances.

2. Corbin Burnes, SP, Orioles

Burnes has been the #1 pitcher in the class throughout the summer. He has finished in the top 10 in Cy Young balloting in four straight years, highlighted by his ERA-leading 2021 season in Milwaukee. Burnes is having a good year, working to a 3.23 earned run average across 164 1/3 innings. His production has slipped coming out of the All-Star Break though. He carried a 2.43 ERA into the Break but is allowing more than five earned runs per nine in 45 2/3 innings in the second half.

The recent results are the continuation of a slightly alarming trend. Burnes was among the game’s top two or three strikeout artists a couple seasons ago. That has gone in the wrong direction over the last two years. After fanning north of 30% of opponents in each season from 2020-22, his strikeout rate dipped to 25.5% last year. It is down three more percentage points during his first (and potentially only) season in Baltimore. Burnes had a 23.3% strikeout rate before the Break and is fanning a slightly below-average 20% of batters faced within the past six weeks.

There hasn’t been an obvious corresponding downturn in his stuff. Burnes is averaging a personal-high 95.5 MPH on the cutter that serves as his primary pitch. The speed on his breaking pitches is in line with his career marks. Yet as his velocity has picked up throughout the season, the whiffs have dropped. Opponents have jumped all over his cutter and curveball in uncharacteristic fashion this month.

None of this means Burnes is no longer a good pitcher. He’s in the top 30 among pitchers (minimum 100 innings) in both ERA and swinging strike rate. Burnes is averaging over six innings per start. He hasn’t had a non-illness related stint on the injured list in four years. There’s some amount of concern with every pitcher in the class and Burnes provides the best combination of durability track record and ace upside. Still, teams will need to determine how concerned they are about his two-year dip in swinging strikes when considering whether to meet an asking price that’ll very likely remain north of $200MM.

3. Alex Bregman, 3B, Astros

Early this season, Bregman looked headed for a lost year. The former No. 2 overall pick was hitting .201/.270/.264 as deep into the season as May 12 — a span of 160 plate appearances. At that point, it was fair to wonder whether he’d be able to turn his season around.

Bregman has done that in spades. Over his past 388 plate appearances, he’s hitting .284/.335/.518 with 20 homers, 20 doubles, two triples and his typical above-average glovework at the hot corner. His overall season batting line is still skewed by that ugly start, but for the past 87 games, Bregman’s 3.6 wins above replacement (per FanGraphs) rank 15th in all of baseball.

It’s worth emphasizing that even throughout this turnaround, however, Bregman isn’t quite the same superstar-level hitter he once was. He’s been 42% better than average during this run, by measure of wRC+. That’s still great, but it’s a ways shy of the elite levels of offensive output he delivered in 2018-19, when he finished fifth and second in AL MVP voting, respectively. Bregman’s once outstanding plate discipline has faded this season as well. After walking in 13.8% of his plate appearances from 2018-23, he’s down to 6.8% in 2024. It’s the first time he’s had a below-average walk rate since his 49-game rookie season back in 2016.

Some teams might be turned off by Bregman’s batted-ball data as well — an issue that harmed Cody Bellinger’s free agency last offseason. Though Bregman has long been a plus hitter, he’s never made loads of hard contact. He’s sitting on an 89.4 mph average exit velocity and 41.4% hard-hit rate this year. Both marks are only a bit higher than the league average, but they’re higher than Bregman’s career 88.8 mph and 37.8% marks in those respective categories.

Some might think Bregman to be a product of Minute Maid Park’s friendly dimensions. The short left field porch, the Crawford Boxes, sits only 315 feet down the line. That’s surely benefited Bregman throughout his career and perhaps even informed his swing mechanics and approach at the plate. However, Bregman also flat-out hits wherever he is. The difference between his rate stats at home (.271/.371/.475) and on the road (.275/.363/.489) are negligible. If anything, he’s hit for slightly more power on the road than at home.

Even setting aside his ’18-’19 peak, Bregman has been a consistently standout player in the five seasons since. He’s batted .261/.352/.443 during that time, shown elite contact skills (12.6% strikeout rate) and played above-average defense at an important position. Bregman never settled in as a perennial MVP candidate, but he’s averaged 25 homers and better than four wins above replacement (4.4 bWAR, 4.8 fWAR) per 162 games since 2020. Teams are going to covet his hard-nosed personality as well; one general manager who’d like to sign Bregman told ESPN’s Jeff Passan that he would “completely change our clubhouse for the better.”

The MLBTR team is perhaps more divided on Bregman’s earning power than any other player on this list, but we generally agree there’s a clear nine-figure deal to be had here. Heading into his age-31 season significantly limits him, however. The question is whether the market views him with some trepidation and tries to stick in the low $100MMs or whether interest is bullish enough to push Bregman close to the $200MM range — despite minimal precedent for such a contract at his age. How he finishes the season will be a key factor.

4. Willy Adames, SS, Brewers

Adames has rebounded from his worst offensive showing in Milwaukee. He slumped to a .217 average with a .310 on-base mark a year ago, but he’s up to a .252/.337/.451 slash over 572 plate appearances this season. Adames has already matched last year’s total of 24 homers and has a shot to get to 30 longballs for the second time in his career. That’s not easy to find at the infield’s toughest positions. Among primary shortstops, only Corey Seager and Francisco Lindor have more homers than Adames’ 79 over the past three seasons.

He pairs that above-average power with a patient approach. Adames has walked in more than 11% of his plate appearances in consecutive seasons. He doesn’t have great pure contact skills and his strikeout rate has spiked over the past couple months. While the whiffs keep Adames a tier below the game’s elite infielders, he’s an above-average regular who routinely draws praise from teammates and coaches for his leadership and clubhouse presence.

Traditionally, Adames’ glove is one of his calling cards. He has been a plus defender for the bulk of his career. This year’s defensive performance has been erratic. Statcast has graded him as an average defender, while Defensive Runs Saved has been very down on his work (12 runs below average). It’ll be his first season with a subpar DRS since his 2018 rookie year.

Adames has committed 17 errors this year, fourth-most among shortstops. Statcast still credits him with plus range and arm strength. He’s not showing signs of physical decline. The walk year isn’t an ideal time for Adames’ defensive performance to crater, but this season’s poor numbers seem like more of an aberrant spike in errors than an indication that he’s losing athleticism that’ll force him off the position.

As he approaches his 29th birthday, Adames has pulled away from Ha-Seong Kim as the top shortstop in the class. He’s far better than anyone who was available in last winter’s group of shortstops. Adames should beat nine figures and has an argument for a six- or seven-year deal that puts him in the $150MM+ range. Javier Baez, Trevor Story and Dansby Swanson all leveraged this general profile into strong contracts. None of those deals have worked out well, so perhaps teams will round down on Adames, but the market has thus far placed a lot of value in shortstops with power.

5. Blake Snell, SP, Giants *

Two months ago, Snell had fallen off this list. How things have changed. The two-time Cy Young winner is back. As MLBTR’s Steve Adams explored at greater length in a piece for MLBTR Front Office subscribers, Snell has been the best pitcher in baseball for two months. Since the start of July, he carries a 1.30 ERA with an MLB-best 37.1% strikeout rate through 55 2/3 innings. His 18% swinging strike rate over that stretch easily leads all pitchers with 40+ innings. He has reached 10 strikeouts in four of his last six starts. He followed up a career-high 15 punchouts against the Rockies on July 27 with an 11-strikeout no-hitter of the Reds in his first appearance of August.

Snell’s disastrous start to the year feels like a distant memory. He signed late and allowed more than a run per inning through his first 23 2/3 frames. He had two stints on the injured list related to left groin issues. Snell’s sheer dominance since returning from his second IL stay makes it seem like he simply wasn’t healthy for the first couple months.

While Snell has been famously streaky throughout his career, few pitchers can match his highs. Over the last three seasons, he owns a 2.93 earned run average with a 32% strikeout rate over 387 innings. Even Burnes probably doesn’t have Snell’s ceiling at this point, though the left-hander has not been as consistent as the Baltimore ace.

Unless he suffers an injury in the next few weeks, Snell is a virtual lock to decline his $30MM player option for next season. He’ll return to free agency at age 32 and likely take another swing at the kind of deal that alluded him a year ago. Snell recently refuted (X link via Foul Territory) a report that the Yankees had offered him a six-year, $150MM deal last winter. It’s not clear what kind of money was on the table, but it wasn’t sufficient for Snell and his camp at the Boras Corporation to consider it preferable to the two-year guarantee that he ultimately signed with the Giants. He’ll try again without being tied to draft compensation and could take aim at a deal in the $150-200MM range.

6. Matt Chapman, 3B, Giants *

As with Snell, Chapman signed with the Giants late in the winter upon not finding a long-term deal to his liking. He started the year slowly, running a .266 on-base percentage through the season’s first month. Chapman has been fantastic since then, slashing .251/.349/.458 since the start of May. He’s up to a .244/.331/.440 mark with 21 homers across 562 plate appearances — offense that checks in 17 percentage points above league average, as measured by wRC+.

That’s par for the course for Chapman. While he’s been prone to significant swings in performance within seasons, his results at the end of the year tend to be consistent. He’ll hit around 25 homers with enough walks to offset a higher than average strikeout rate and middling batting average.

Chapman pairs that solid offense with some of the best third base defense in the majors. He’s a four-time Gold Glove winner who still rates as one of the game’s top glovemen. Chapman will play next season at 32, so his athleticism and defensive metrics might drop off within the next few seasons, but he’s one of the better all-around infielders in the majors right now.

The Giants have already opened extension talks with Chapman’s camp at the Boras Corp. He’s a Fullerton product who has a strong relationship with San Francisco manager Bob Melvin. Chapman looks likelier than anyone else on this list to sign an extension before free agency opens as a result. If he makes it to the open market, he could seek a five-year deal that exceeds $100MM.

7. Max Fried, SP, Braves

Fried established himself in the Atlanta rotation by 2019. He has been a consistent top-of-the-rotation presence since then. Over the past five-plus years, the 30-year-old southpaw has a 3.09 ERA over 139 starts. Fried hasn’t been quite as effective in the postseason, but he’s one of the biggest reasons for the Braves’ recent run of success.

The former seventh overall pick doesn’t miss bats at the level of a typical ace. He has a career 23.8% strikeout rate and has fanned 22.8% of batters faced this season. His 10.1% swinging strike rate is a hair below average. Fried excels in contact management. His 58.1% ground-ball rate is fourth among pitchers with 100+ innings. He has a five-year track record of suppressing hard contact. While Fried’s 93-94 MPH fastball isn’t overpowering, his secondary stuff (especially his curveball) is excellent.

The biggest concern with Fried is his recent injury history. A forearm strain cost him three months between May and August last summer. Fried spent a couple weeks on the injured list with ulnar neuritis coming out of the All-Star Break this season. He hasn’t pitched especially well since coming back, allowing a 5.26 ERA (albeit with a strong 27.7% strikeout rate) over his last 25 2/3 innings. It’s possible teams will have some trepidation about his arm health, but Fried has an argument for a deal in the Patrick Corbin ($140MM) or Carlos Rodón ($162MM) range if he finishes strong.

8. Jack Flaherty, SP, Dodgers *

If Fried offers consistency despite pedestrian strikeout totals, Flaherty is a more volatile upside play. The 28-year-old righty has some of the best bat-missing stuff in the majors. He has punched out 31.1% of batters faced behind a 13.6% swinging strike rate over 23 starts. He’s fifth in strikeout rate and 11th in whiffs among pitchers with 100+ innings. Flaherty has paired that with a career-low 4.8% walk rate, firing 135 frames of 3.07 ERA ball.

Excellent as his production has been this season, Flaherty is a year removed from posting a 4.99 earned run average between the Cardinals and Orioles. He has looked like a Game 1 starter at his best and a back-of-the-rotation arm at his worst.

Flaherty battled oblique and shoulder injuries between 2020-22, limiting him to 154 2/3 innings over that stretch. He has not been on the injured list in the last two years, yet that hasn’t silenced questions about his health. The Yankees reportedly pulled out of a preliminary deadline deal with the Tigers after identifying an undisclosed concern in his medical review. The Dodgers apparently didn’t share such concerns, as they sent prospects Thayron Liranzo and Trey Sweeney to Detroit thereafter.

Entering his age-29 season, Flaherty is one of the younger pitchers in the class. He doesn’t have the consistency of a $200MM arm but could land in the lower nine figures on a deal similar to Robbie Ray’s five-year, $115MM contract with Seattle.

9. Pete Alonso, 1B, Mets

The personification of the prototypical slugger, Alonso has been the second most consistent power hitter in the game since his 2019 debut. In that time, only Aaron Judge’s 225 home runs top Alonso’s 220 for the MLB lead. The Polar Bear simply mashes. He’s never hit fewer than 37 homers in a full 162-game season. He’s as durable as they come, never missing more than 10 games in a season since debuting, and the only two players with more plate appearances than Alonso since 2019 are Marcus Semien and Freddie Freeman. Teams know Alonso is likelier than most to be out there every day, and he’s assuredly going to hit for more power than nearly any of his peers.

On the other hand, Alonso will turn 30 in the offseason. He’ll receive and reject a qualifying offer in search of a multi-year deal. His defense at first base is not considered to be strong. Alonso walks at an above-average but not-elite clip. Paired with his low batting averages, that typically limits his on-base percentage to the .330 to .340 range.

None of those are glaring flaws on their own, but bundled together they could make for a concerning profile among today’s front offices. A 30-year-old slugger without defensive value who sports pedestrian OBP marks and is tied to draft pick compensation — that’s not a recipe for a mega-contract. Modern teams have been increasingly wary of paying a first-base-only profile late into their 30s — or even signing such players to truly long-term deals as well.

Freeman (six years, $162MM) and Paul Goldschmidt (five years, $130MM) both inked long-term deals beginning with their age-32 seasons. Alonso is younger but also not considered as complete a hitter as those two were when they signed. It’s easy to imagine Alonso and Scott Boras wanting to top Freeman, but Alonso could have a hard time climbing to such heights.

10. Anthony Santander, OF, Orioles

Santander’s been a quality power hitter for the Orioles for years now, but he picked the right time to take his game to another level. The 29-year-old switch-hitter popped 33 home runs back in 2022 but surpassed that mark weeks ago. He’s currently sitting on a career-high 38 home runs. A 40-homer campaign seems like a lock, and Santander could finish with 45 to 50 homers if he enjoys a hot September.

Even if this is a career year in terms of power output, Santander has proven himself a perennial 30-homer threat. He does damage from both sides of the plate, though he’s a more pure lefty hitter. Santander draws more walks, strikes out less often and is a generally well-rounded hitter from the left side. From the right side, he morphs into more of a three-true-outcomes slugger. It all balances out for steady production that any club would be happy to plug into the middle of its lineup.

As is usually the case, the impressive power profile isn’t without its flaws. Santander is limited to the outfield corners (plus some briefer cameos at first base) and doesn’t grade out as a plus defender anywhere. He’s a passable enough right fielder, showing above-average arm strength to go along with plodding range, but no one’s ever going to claim Santander is an elite defender. He’s a bat-first player who figures to slow down as he enters his 30s. It’s reasonable to think that by the second half of a contract, he’ll be a clearly below-average defender in the outfield.

Even at the plate, Santander is a free-swinger who doesn’t walk like the quintessential slugger. He has a slightly above-average walk rate from the right side of the dish but is below-average from the left side. Overall, he’s walked in just 7.1% of his career plate appearances, including a below-average 8% in 2024. Santander doesn’t strike out much (20.7% career, 19.4% in 2024), but he’s still prone to low OBPs because he broadly lacks patience.

Much of what was said regarding Alonso applies here, too. Santander has more defensive value as a currently playable outfielder but a less consistent track record of 40-homer power. But like Alonso, he’ll reject a qualifying offer and head into free agency as a 30-year-old slugger with OBP questions and middling defensive contributions. While Alonso’s regular display of 40-homer pop makes him feel like a lock to reach five years, Santander could be hard-pressed to find that length. A high-AAV three- or four-year contract will likely be in play as one of the best non-Soto power bats on the market.

* Denotes ineligible for qualifying offer

Honorable Mentions (listed alphabetically): Cody Bellinger *, Gerrit Cole *^, Paul Goldschmidt, Teoscar Hernández, Clay Holmes, Ha-Seong Kim, Sean Manaea, Tyler O’Neill, Nick Pivetta, Jurickson Profar, Max Scherzer *, Luis Severino, Justin Verlander *, Christian Walker

^ Cole has the ability to opt out of the final four years and $144MM remaining on his deal at season’s end. If he triggers the opt-out, the Yankees can void it by exercising a $36MM option covering the 2029 season — bringing their commitment to five years and $180MM. MLBTR explored the Cole situation in detail in a post for Front Office subscribers this week.

2024-25 MLB Free Agent Power Rankings: June Edition

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We’re around the halfway point of the 2024 season. Trade season is still a couple weeks from getting fully underway. It’s an opportune time to refresh our ranking of the upcoming free agent class.

This is the second of at least three installments we’ll do over the course of the season. Steve Adams handled our initial write-up of the top 10 players back in mid-April. This is our attempt to capture a player’s earning power, so age is big factor. This is not strictly a list of the best players in the class, though talent is obviously the starting point. There’s no change in the top two spots, but the past few months have shuffled the next tiers.

Our power rankings are compiled collaboratively. I worked with Steve and Darragh McDonald — with input from MLBTR founder and owner Tim Dierkes — for this installment. Players with opt-out clauses and player options are eligible for the list. Stats are up to date through June 26.

1. Juan Soto, OF, Yankees

No surprise here. Soto has been the crown jewel for years and is likely to go wire-to-wire as the top impending free agent. He continues to build what looks like a future Hall of Fame résumé. Soto has been an elite hitter from the moment he debuted as a 19-year-old with the Nationals. That carried over upon his first blockbuster trade to the Padres and hasn’t changed in the Big Apple.

Soto is on pace for what might be the best season of his career. He’s hitting .303/.434/.567 across 357 plate appearances. As measured by wRC+, that offense is 85 percentage points better than league average and would be a personal high over a 162-game schedule. Soto has more walks than strikeouts for a fifth straight season. He already has 19 homers, giving him a chance to exceed last year’s career-high 35 longballs.

Not only is Soto one of the top three hitters in baseball, he’s firmly in his prime. He’ll play all of next season at 26, making him three to four years younger than a typical free agent. A signing team can realistically expect Soto to remain a top-flight hitter for the first seven to 10 years of a megadeal. While the calling card is obviously the bat, Soto has turned in decent defensive marks in the Bronx. Both Defensive Runs Saved and Statcast have credited him as a slightly above-average right fielder this season.

Soto turned down a reported $440MM extension offer from the Nats a few years ago — a decision that increasingly looks like it’ll pay off handsomely. Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner has spoken of a willingness to negotiate an extension during the season, but it’d be downright shocking if Soto doesn’t test the market at this point. (The outfielder himself suggested as much on Tuesday.) The Yankees will certainly make a run at keeping him, while teams like the Mets, Dodgers, Giants, etc. figure to be involved.

Soto will be three years younger than Shohei Ohtani was during his free agency. Soto isn’t likely to accept a deal with the kind of deferrals that Ohtani took, but he should handily beat the approximate $461MM net present value of the Ohtani contract. He should top half a billion dollars and it wouldn’t at all be surprising if his camp at the Boras Corporation were aiming for something close to $600MM at the start of the winter.

2. Corbin Burnes, SP, Orioles

Burnes has been the top pitcher in the class for some time. He broke out with a 2.11 ERA during the shortened 2020 season and backed that up with an MLB-best 2.43 ERA with 234 strikeouts over 28 starts to claim the NL Cy Young the following year. Burnes punched out an NL-leading 243 hitters the following season before turning in a 3.39 earned run average during his final season in Milwaukee.

The Brewers traded the three-time All-Star to Baltimore in advance of his final year of arbitration. While Milwaukee has gotten good work out of rookie infielder Joey Ortiz (and acquired hard-throwing lefty DL Hall), the O’s can’t have any regrets with how the trade has played out. Burnes owns a 2.35 ERA across 99 2/3 innings. He’s on his way to a fifth straight top-10 Cy Young finish and should be a candidate to win the award for a second time.

Unlike with Soto, one can at least find a yellow flag on Burnes’ stat sheet. His swing-and-miss rate has dropped over the last year and a half. Burnes struck out more than 30% of batters faced in each season from 2020-22. Among pitchers with 250+ innings over that stretch, only Carlos Rodón had a higher strikeout percentage than Burnes’ 33.4% mark. That dipped to 25.5% a year ago and currently sits at 23.9%, his lowest rate since his 2018 rookie campaign. He’s getting fewer whiffs on both his cutter and curveball than he did back in 2021-22.

Teams will at least take note of the drop-off in whiffs, but it’s not likely to have too detrimental an effect on Burnes’ market. His 95 MPH cutter velocity is still as strong as ever. The bottom-line results are among the best in the league. Burnes has pristine command and is very difficult for opponents to square up even as they’re getting a few more balls in play. While every pitcher comes with some level of health risk, Burnes’ only injured list stint in the last three and a half years came as a result of a positive Covid test.

Burnes will play all of next season at age 30. Aaron Nola landed seven years and $172MM last offseason going into his age-31 campaign. Burnes is a better pitcher. He should be able to find an eight-year deal that also runs through his age-37 season, and there’s a chance he gets to nine years. While Burnes will probably come up shy of the nine-year, $324MM deal which Gerrit Cole landed a few years ago, he shouldn’t have much issue surpassing the $200MM mark and could beat $250MM.

3. Willy Adames, SS, Brewers

Adames is the biggest riser from the previous iteration of this list. We had him eighth in the class two months ago. Adames has since pulled away as the clear top shortstop and quite arguably the best infielder. The Brewers shortstop has rebounded from a pedestrian offensive season and is on pace for the best year of his career.

Over 353 plate appearances, the Dominican-born infielder owns a .238/.331/.423 slash line. He has 13 home runs and is drawing walks at a personal-high 12.2% clip. Most importantly, Adames is striking out 21% of the time. That’s trending as easily the lowest strikeout rate of his career. Whiffs have been the biggest question for the righty-hitting infielder. If he’s striking out at a league average pace, there aren’t many weaknesses to his game.

Adames has reached 20 home runs in all four full schedules he’s played. Barring injury, he’ll surpass that again and quite likely end in his customary 25-30 homer range. While Milwaukee’s American Family Field boosts power numbers, Adames has solid exit velocities and gets a lot of balls in the air. He has a decent approach and has incrementally improved his contact rate, particularly on pitches within the strike zone.

Even if Adames is more of a good hitter than an elite one, he’s a major asset on the other side of the ball. DRS and Statcast have graded him as one of the sport’s best infielders over the last six seasons. DRS has been bizarrely down on his defense this season, yet Statcast has had no such qualms. Most teams will view him as a plus or better defender, at least for the next few years. Adames turns 29 in September and should remain a sure-handed infielder with a good arm into his early-mid 30s.

On top of the well-rounded production, Adames has drawn rave reviews from teammates and coaches in both Tampa Bay and Milwaukee for his clubhouse acumen. It’s the kind of leadership and intangibles that teams love from a franchise shortstop. Players like Trevor Story, Javier Báez and Dansby Swanson all landed six- or seven-year deals between $140MM and $177MM with a broadly similar profile. None of those contracts have worked out quite as the signing team hoped — the Story and Báez deals have been unmitigated disasters — which could give teams pause. Yet those examples show the value teams place on a plus defensive shortstop with enough power to hit in the middle to upper third of a batting order.

4. Alex Bregman, 3B, Astros

Bregman’s platform year started rather inauspiciously. He hit .219/.280/.372 through the end of May, a stretch that briefly relegated him as far as sixth in the Houston batting order. Bregman was not only doing his market no favors, he was a major contributor to the Astros’ terrible start to the season.

Fortunes have changed in June for team and player alike. Bregman owns a .341/.404/.494 line through 94 plate appearances this month. His overall season slash is still fairly pedestrian, weighed down by his early-season swoon. He’s rounding into form though, and he remains one of the best hitters (non-Soto division) in the class.

Bregman has been an above-average hitter in all nine seasons of his career. His 41-homer season from 2019 looks like a clear outlier at least partially attributable to the juiced ball. Bregman has gone from an MVP candidate to “merely” a very good everyday third baseman. Over the past five seasons, he carries a .260/.355/.437 batting line — a wRC+ that checks in 23 percentage points better than league average.

Some teams could take issue with Bregman’s batted-ball profile. He has never had massive raw power that translates into eye-popping exit velocities. His game has been built around pristine strike zone feel and an innate ability to pull the ball in the air, thereby maximizing the power he does possess. This year’s 35.9% hard contact rate is below average. Bregman’s walk rate has also fallen sharply as he’s gotten a little more aggressive and pitchers have attacked him in the strike zone with higher frequency.

Bregman could wind up being something of a divisive free agent. The batted-ball data and drop in walks could strike some clubs as a harbinger of decline. Bregman’s camp will point to his preternatural contact skills, solid third base defense, excellent durability, and status as one of the faces of a team that has gotten to the ALCS in seven straight seasons. Bregman turns 31 around Opening Day and still has a shot at a six- or seven-year deal that could push into the $150MM range (or further, if he can continue his blistering June pace).

5. Max Fried, SP, Braves

A former seventh overall pick, Fried has been a top-of-the-rotation arm for most of his time in Atlanta. He turned in a 4.02 ERA in his first full season back in 2019. The southpaw hasn’t allowed more than 3.04 earned runs per nine in any of the five seasons since then. Fried got off to a rocky start this year, surrendering 11 runs in five innings over his first two outings. Set those aside, and he’s looked better than ever. Over his last 13 starts, he carries a 2.12 ERA while averaging 6.53 innings per game and holding opponents to a .191/.255/.254 batting line.

The way Fried succeeds is somewhat unconventional. He doesn’t miss bats at the level typically associated with an ace. Fried has punched out 23.8% of his opponents in his career and carries a 22.3% strikeout rate this season. That’s solid but not overwhelming. He excels behind plus command and elite contact management. Fried is routinely near the top of the league in limiting opponents’ exit velocities. He has never posted a ground-ball rate lower than 50% and is racking up grounders at a huge 60.6% clip this season.

Fried isn’t a peak Dallas Keuchel or Kyle Hendricks type who thrived despite middling velocity. He throws sufficiently hard, averaging nearly 94 MPH on his four-seam and sinker. His mid-70s curveball isn’t a power breaking pitch, but it generates so much movement that hitters have never been able to square it up. Statcast credits him with seven distinct offerings. He leans most heavily on the four-seam, curve, sinker and changeup.

Some teams could shy away from paying top-of-the-market money to a pitcher who doesn’t have elite whiff rates. Others could have some concern about Fried’s arm health. He lost three months of the 2023 season to a forearm strain. (He also has a Tommy John surgery on his résumé, although that came back in 2015 when he was a prospect.) While Fried has looked no worse for wear, that adds a little extra risk for an investment beginning in his age-31 season.

Fried’s camp will probably view the Nola and Rodón (six years, $162MM) deals as comparison points. Fried is a Southern California native, which has led some to speculate he could prefer to sign with a team on the west coast, though he hasn’t publicly tipped his hand on any geographical preferences. He and the Braves have kicked around extension terms a few times over the years without coming to an agreement.

6. Jack Flaherty, SP, Tigers

Fried’s high school teammate is the first player on this top-10 who didn’t crack the list in April. He was one of a number of rebound starting pitching targets in the class. Flaherty has pulled away from the group with a dominant first three months to his Detroit tenure. Through 14 starts, he carries a 2.92 earned run average. He has punched out a third of opposing hitters with a huge 14.2% swinging-strike rate.

It’s Flaherty’s best sustained stretch since the second half of the 2019 season, when he looked to be breaking out as one of the best pitchers in the game. The intervening four years were largely disappointments. Flaherty struggled to a 4.91 ERA during the shortened 2020 schedule. He lost extended chunks of the next two seasons to shoulder problems. The righty avoided the injured list last year but looked like a shell of his former self. He allowed nearly five earned runs per nine with a roughly average 22.8% strikeout rate between the Cardinals and Orioles. Baltimore used him in relief at times down the stretch.

MLBTR predicted Flaherty would land a mid-level three-year deal last offseason. Given his youth, that would’ve offered him a life-changing payday while still affording him the opportunity to return to the market ahead of his age-31 season. Instead, he bet on himself and took a straight one-year pact. That looks like it’ll pay out handsomely. A nine-figure contract could be on the table. He’ll play next season at age 29 and has a shot at five or even six years. It wouldn’t be without risk given the volatility of his career, but Flaherty arguably has a higher ceiling than any starter in the class beyond Burnes and Fried.

Like everyone else on this list, Flaherty is eligible to receive a qualifying offer. He’s likelier than any of the other top free agents to be traded this summer, which would take the QO off the table. (Players traded midseason cannot receive a qualifying offer.) The Tigers are still on the periphery of Wild Card contention but haven’t hit enough to be a bona fide contender. A deadline deal would allow Flaherty to hit free agency unencumbered by draft compensation.

7. Pete Alonso, 1B, Mets

Alonso remains one of the sport’s preeminent power hitters. He has hit at least 37 homers in his four full seasons (and was on a 43-homer pace during the shortened season). He’s not quite at that level this year, connecting on 16 homers with a .465 slugging mark. That puts him at a 33-homer pace, although it wouldn’t at all be surprising if he outperforms that during the summer months.

Teams know what they’re getting with Alonso. He’s incredibly durable and has only had two minimal injured list stints as a big leaguer. He’s likely to hit 35+ homers in the middle of the lineup. The average and on-base marks are fairly pedestrian, but no one has more home runs than Alonso since he came into the league in 2019. Though his hard contact rate and average exit velocity are more ordinary than one might expect, no one questions his ability to hit for power in any stadium.

Alonso has a case as the second-best offensive player in the class. There’s not much value in the rest of the profile. He’s a below-average baserunner and a limited defender. Defensive Runs Saved has graded him as an average first baseman over the course of his career; Statcast has him below average with the glove. Alonso is entering his age-30 season and will likely try to beat the Matt Olson (eight years, $168MM) and Freddie Freeman (six years, $162MM with deferrals) contracts. He might need to move to designated hitter midway through a five- or six-year pact.

The Mets have maintained they want to keep their franchise first baseman. Alonso reportedly declined a seven-year, $158MM extension offer during the 2023 season. (He’s earning $20.5MM this season in his final arbitration year, so he’d “only” need to top $137.5MM to come out ahead on that decision.) That reported offer came before the Mets hired David Stearns as president of baseball operations. The sides seem content to table discussions about a long-term deal until Alonso gets a chance to field offers from other teams. He seemed like a trade candidate when the Mets were floundering early in the season. That’s harder to envision now that New York has pulled themselves back into the Wild Card race.

8. Ha-Seong Kim, SS, Padres

Kim is one of the top defensive players in the class. Public metrics have given him strong grades for his work all around the infield. The Padres liked Kim’s glove enough to fully commit to him as their shortstop this year, bumping Xander Bogaerts to the right side of the second base bag.

The offensive profile isn’t as exciting. Kim is a decent hitter whose game is built around excellent strike zone awareness and pure contact skills. Kim has walked nearly as often as he has gone down on strikes. A dismal .236 batting average on balls in play has depressed his overall output, as he’s hitting .223/.333/.385 across 328 plate appearances. While there’s surely some amount of poor fortune in that mark, Kim’s batted-ball metrics aren’t impressive. This season’s 35.5% hard contact rate, while a career high, is still a couple points below average. The South Korea native is on pace to top last year’s personal-high 17 home runs, but he’s probably never going to be a huge power threat.

After a poor first season at the MLB level, Kim was worth around four wins above replacement annually in the next two years. He’s on a similar pace in 2024. There’s probably not much more in terms of untapped upside, but Kim’s combination of contact skills, defense and baserunning (he has 53 stolen bases over the past two seasons) make him an above-average regular. He’s going into his age-29 season and could land a five-year contract in free agency.

9. Nick Pivetta, SP, Red Sox

One of the more volatile pitchers in the class, Pivetta has somewhat quietly excelled over the past calendar year. The right-hander’s performance has long lagged behind the quality of his stuff. It seemed as if he might always be too inconsistent despite flashing mid-rotation potential. As recently as last May, he looked as if he might pitch his way off the Red Sox’ roster entirely.

Things finally clicked for Pivetta after the Sox kicked him to the bullpen in mid-May last year. The former fourth-round draftee dominated in a multi-inning relief role. He continued overpowering hitters after the Sox returned him to the rotation for the final six weeks of the ’23 campaign. Pivetta has worked exclusively out of the rotation in 2024 and is still posting a gaudy strikeout and walk profile.

Over 11 starts, he owns a 4.06 earned run average. Pivetta has fanned 27.2% of batters faced against a 6.4% walk rate. He’s giving up a lofty 1.87 home runs per nine innings, leading to an unimpressive 4.42 FIP. Metrics that normalize HR/FB are far more bullish (3.43 SIERA, 3.56 xFIP). The longball has always been an issue and is a key reason he has never posted a sub-4.00 ERA season in the big leagues. Yet it’s possible a team falls in love with the stuff and the strikeouts.

Dating back to last year’s initial bullpen conversion, Pivetta touts a 3.48 ERA with a huge 32.1% strikeout rate across 160 1/3 innings. Opponents are hitting .202/.263/.388 in 639 plate appearances. Pivetta lost around a month this season to a flexor strain in his forearm. That’s a potential concern, but there wasn’t any structural damage and he has held up since being reinstated on May 8. Outside of virus-related placements, that was Pivetta’s first injured list stint in his MLB career. If the forearm issue is in the rearview, he looks like a volume innings eater with the stuff to be a No. 3 starter. Even going into his age-32 campaign, he’s got a shot at a four-year deal if he can sustain this K-BB% and keep his ERA at a reasonable level.

10. Luis Severino, SP, Mets

Severino jumped across town after a terrible final season with the Yankees. The two-time All-Star signed with the Mets on a pillow contract that guaranteed him $13MM. The early returns are good. Severino has turned in a 3.29 ERA while averaging six innings per start through his first 15 outings. It’s a marked improvement from the 6.65 ERA that ended his time in the Bronx.

If one looked no further than the ERA, it’d be easy to conclude that Severino is back to the No. 2/No. 3 form he’d shown for most of his Yankee tenure. It’s not that simple. Severino hasn’t recaptured the swing-and-miss stuff that essentially evaporated after 2022. This year’s 19% strikeout rate is a match for his 18.9% mark a season ago. His 8.5% swinging-strike percentage is down slightly from last season and trending towards a personal low. Rather than overpowering hitters the way he once did, Severino has gotten by with dramatically better batted-ball results than he had during his final season with the Yankees.

The 30-year-old deserves some credit for that. Severino has incorporated a sinker that he’s using around a quarter of the time. While the pitch doesn’t miss bats, it has helped increase his ground-ball rate to a career-high 50.8% clip. Hitters have also had a significantly harder time squaring up his four-seam fastball than they did last season. Severino has said he believed he was tipping his pitches last year.

There’s certainly some amount of fortune in this year’s results. Opponents hit .326 on balls in play last season; that’s all the way down to .252. His rate of home runs per fly-ball has more than halved (from 20.9% to 9.4%). That’s not all luck, but it’d be too optimistic to wave away the role of batted ball variance entirely. As is so often the case, the truth lies somewhere between the past two seasons.

Severino is not likely to secure the kind of nine-figure deal that once seemed attainable unless he dramatically improves the whiff rate. Still, there’s enough to like in the profile to warrant a three- or potentially four-year contract. Players like Taijuan Walker ($72MM) and Jameson Taillon ($68MM) landed four-year guarantees around $70MM with similar career arcs. They’d been former top prospects who once looked like potential top-end arms before settling in as mid-rotation types without a ton of strikeouts. Severino, who turns 31 in February, could be following that trajectory. He’ll be eligible for a qualifying offer unless the Mets trade him.

Honorable Mentions (listed alphabetically): Cody Bellinger*, Matt Chapman*, Gerrit Cole *^, Paul Goldschmidt, Teoscar Hernández, Clay Holmes, Danny Jansen, Max Kepler, Tyler O’Neill, Jurickson Profar, Anthony Santander, Max Scherzer, Christian Walker

* Denotes ineligible for a qualifying offer

^ Cole can opt out of the remaining four years and $144MM on his contract at season’s end, though if he signals his intent to do so, the Yankees can override his opt-out by tacking on a tenth year at another $36MM. Because Cole was only recently reinstated from the injured list and because the Yankees can effectively veto his opt-out, we’re not including him on this installment. If, as the season wears on, he’s pitching well enough to trigger that opt-out and there’s talk of the Yankees allowing him to walk, he could land on future iterations.

2024-25 MLB Free Agent Power Rankings

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The season is underway, which makes this a good time to look ahead to next winter with the first installment of the 2024-25 MLB Free Agent Power Rankings! It’s an annual series here at MLBTR, wherein we try to rank the upcoming class of free agents by measure of their estimated earning power.

MLBTR will take periodic looks at the top of the class from now through the remainder of the season. Season performance will start to influence these rankings, but two to three weeks into the season, it’s not a huge factor. By the end time the season draws to a close, however, 2024 results will weigh heavily into the rankings. A strong platform year can elevate any player’s status in free agency, just as a poor walk year can tank their stock.

Our power rankings are compiled collaboratively. I worked with colleagues Anthony Franco and Darragh McDonald as well as MLBTR founder and owner Tim Dierkes for the first installment of this year’s rankings. Players with opt-out clauses and player options are included, even if they’ve previously given indications they may forgo the opportunity to return to the market.

Statistics are up-to-date through April 12.

* denotes players who are ineligible for a qualifying offer

1. Juan Soto, OF, Yankees

Were it not for Shohei Ohtani reaching the open market a year sooner, Soto might have a claim to the most coveted free agent ever. Because he skyrocketed through the minor leagues and took MLB by storm beginning at age 19, Soto’s final year of arbitration eligibility comes in just his age-25 campaign. He’ll play the entirety of his first free agent season at 26 years of age. For some context, Aaron Judge — who re-signed on a nine-year, $360MM contract with the Yankees upon reaching free agency — debuted at 24 and had 773 big league plate appearances heading into his own age-26 season.

Soto is a freak of nature who was one of MLB’s best hitters at an age when most top prospects are still in college or just entering the low minors. He hit .292/.406/.517 as a teenage rookie in 2018, and his preternatural plate discipline, bat-to-ball skills and raw power have only improved since. Through more than 3400 career plate appearances, Soto has walked at a staggering 18.9% clip and struck out in just 17% of his plate appearances. He entered the current season with 160 home runs, and while he’s never had a 40-homer campaign before, a move to Yankee Stadium and its notorious short porch in right field could help him get to 200 long balls before he turns 26.

Since his 2018 debut, Soto leads qualified big leaguers with a mammoth .422 on-base percentage. Mike Trout’s .415 mark ranks second, and Freddie Freeman (.402) is the only other hitter north of .400. Soto is “only” 16th in home runs in that time, but his 154 wRC+ — which indicates he’s been 54% better than an average hitter after weighting for home park and league run-scoring environment — is tied with Mookie Betts for fourth-best in baseball, trailing only Trout, Yordan Alvarez and Judge.

If there’s one wart to Soto’s game, it’s that he’s limited to the outfield corners and isn’t regarded as an especially strong defender. He’s had seasons with positive grades from both Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average, but on the whole he has negative marks from both in his career — both in left field and in right field. That said, he’s also only had two truly *bad* seasons per both of those metrics, and taken in totality, he sits around -2 DRS and -4 OAA per season. Obviously, that’s not great, but it’s also not exactly egregious. And given the otherworldly contributions he makes at the plate, playing a slightly below-average left or right field is more than an even trade-off.

Soto famously rejected a 14-year, $440MM extension offer from the Nationals before being traded to the Padres. Rejecting an offer of that magnitude led to plenty of jaws dropping, but when considering that it included his three final arbitration seasons and 11 free agent years, it’s not as jarring as it seems at first blush. Soto wound up earning $71.1MM over those three seasons, meaning he really “only” needs to earn $370MM or so in free agency to come out ahead. There’s already talk of a potential $500MM free-agent deal for Soto. Barring a catastrophic injury, he’ll likely come out ahead in that bet on himself. He’s the clear No. 1 free agent on next year’s market and will be one of the most sought-after free agents not only in baseball history but in all of professional sports.

2. Corbin Burnes, RHP, Orioles

Since his 2020 breakout, Burnes ranks fifth in the majors in innings pitched, eighth in strikeout rate, fourth in K-BB%, second in opponents’ batting average, fifth in ERA, second in FIP and third in SIERA. Put another way — regardless of which metric you prefer to judge pitchers, Burnes ranks in the top-eight in just about any metric. He’s a bona fide No. 1 starter — very arguably one of the five best pitchers the sport has to offer at the moment.

Detractors might point to Burnes’ 2023 numbers as the potential beginning of a decline. His 3.39 ERA, 25.5% strikeout rate and 8.4% walk rate were all more “very good” than elite. Through three starts in Baltimore, he’s trending back in the other direction. Small sample caveats obviously apply, but Burnes has opened his first season with his new club on a tear, tossing 18 2/3 innings of 1.93 ERA ball with a 28.6% strikeout rate and superlative 2.9% walk rate. His velocity is as strong as ever; his devastating cutter is averaging 95.1 mph — an exact match for his career-best mark, set back in 2021 when he won the National League Cy Young Award.

Burnes won’t turn 30 until October. He’s never been on the injured list due to an arm issue. His only IL stints were due to an oblique strain and Covid. Burnes might not be quite as dominant as he was when he was striking out more than 35% of his opponents from 2020-21, but he’s a workhorse ace and former Cy Young winner who still ranks among the game’s elite arms. Gerrit Cole’s nine-year deal with the Yankees began in his age-29 season. Teams have generally been wary of committing to long-term deals for pitchers that span beyond their age-37 season (though there are exceptions, as evidenced by Jacob deGrom’s current five-year deal).

Burnes is dominant enough that he could prove to be an exception, but even if he’s limited to eight-year terms, he’ll have a chance at surpassing a $250MM guarantee. With a big enough year, nine years and/or $300MM+ could be on the table.

3. Alex Bregman, 3B, Astros

Bregman would’ve hit free agency in the 2022-23 offseason were it not for a five-year, $100MM extension he signed upon first reaching arbitration. That locked in his first — but very likely not his last — nine-figure contract and still allowed him to hit the open market at a fairly standard point, heading into his age-31 season.

There’s perhaps a perception that Bregman is declining or trending in the wrong direction, as his production has dipped from the MVP-caliber levels he displayed in 2018-19. He also doesn’t have the most appealing batted-ball profile, which we saw work to Cody Bellinger’s detriment in free agency this offseason. Bregman’s 88.6 mph average exit velocity and 38.2% hard-hit rate in 2023 were both pretty pedestrian marks.

One key difference between Bregman and Bellinger, however, is that Bregman has never had gaudy Statcast numbers — even when he was putting up the type of numbers that led to consecutive All-Star nods and top-five MVP finishes in 2018-19. Bellinger, on the other hand, previously had top-of-the-scale exit velo and hard-hit numbers, leading to more questions about whether his resurgent 2023 showing was truly sustainable.

Bregman has always possessed sensational contact skills. He’s never fanned at higher than a 15.5% clip in a full season. The former No. 2 overall draft pick legitimately possesses one of the best hit tools in all of baseball. He couples that with elite plate discipline, too; Bregman has walked at a 12.6% clip in his career and a 13.7% rate dating back to 2018. He’s walked more than he’s struck out in four individual seasons and in the aggregate from 2018-24. His 41-homer campaign from 2019 looks like a clear outlier in what’s now known as the juiced-ball season, but Bregman still popped 48 homers from 2022-23.

Some may question how much power he can manufacture following a potential change of scenery. Minute Maid Park’s short porch in left field — the Crawford Boxes — seems practically tailor-made for Bregman’s fly-ball heavy, pull-side approach. (Or, perhaps alternatively, he reworked his swing to take advantage of that quirk in his home park.)

There’s little doubting that he’s had some home runs that are Crawford Box specials over the years, but a look at Bregman’s career splits don’t paint the picture of someone who is a product of his hitter-friendly home environment. Bregman’s a career .273/.377/.473 hitter in Houston and a .275/.368/.498 hitter on the road. He’s actually hit nine more homers on the road in his career despite having only 64 more plate appearances away from Minute Maid Park than at home.

Defensively, Bregman isn’t an elite third baseman, but he’s posted average or better marks in DRS and OAA nearly every season of his career. There’s no reason to expect a position change in the near future, but if he does need to move off the hot corner at some point, a shift to second base, left field or first base seems feasible for the former shortstop. And as someone who’s been 36% better than average at the plate in his career — and 25% better dating back to 2020 — he has more than enough bat to profile as a regular anywhere on the diamond.

A seven- or eight-year deal seems plausible in free agency, and there’s always the chance that a luxury-paying team will gauge his interest in a longer-term deal with a non-premium AAV in order to tamp down the CBT hit. A deal north of $200MM seems plausible for Bregman. The Astros have said at multiple points in the past they’ll make an extension offer at some point, but there haven’t been serious talks on that front yet and Bregman can justifiably seek the type of long-term pact that owner Jim Crane has completely avoided over the years.

4. Pete Alonso, 1B, Mets

The Polar Bear is raw personified, bashing 40-plus homers on the regular since his 2019 debut. Alonso has not only established himself as one of baseball’s premier sluggers — he’s done so while maintaining a strikeout rate that’s lower than the league average. At a time when many prodigious sluggers are comfortable selling out for power, Alonso has the type of easy, plus-plus power that doesn’t require him to do so. He’s fanned in just 20.7% of his plate appearances dating back to 2021 and popped the fifth-most long balls in baseball along the way. He trails only Aaron Judge, Matt Olson, Kyle Schwarber and Shohei Ohtani in that span. All four of those sluggers have whiffed at higher rates than Alonso.

Alonso’s extreme fly-ball approach does lead to a glut of pop-ups and some low BABIPs — though last year’s bottom-of-the-barrel .205 average on balls in play (and .217 average overall) were likely outliers. He’s a career .250 hitter who walks at around a 10% clip — enough to boost his OBP into the .340 range most seasons. Paired with his prodigious power, that’s plenty to make Alonso one of the most feared hitters in the National League.

After debuting as a 24-year-old back in 2019, Alonso is on pace to hit the open market heading into his age-30 season. He’s not unusually young like Soto but is reaching free agency at the same point that’s seen plenty of sluggers get paid. He’ll be two years younger than Freddie Freeman and Paul Goldschmidt were when signing their current contracts (Freeman’s in free agency, Goldschmidt’s as an extension). That pair of contracts pays those star first basemen $26-27MM annually.

Alonso isn’t as good a pure hitter as either Freeman or Goldschmidt, nor is he the same defensively. He’s consistently graded out as a sub-par defender, per OAA, and a roughly average first baseman by measure of DRS. But Alonso is younger, has more power than either of those two former MVPs, and has the benefit of Mets owner Steve Cohen likely being extra-motivated to keep his franchise slugger. It wouldn’t be at all surprising to see Alonso follow a similar path to Judge. That’s not to say he’ll sign a $360MM deal — he won’t — but he could reject a qualifying offer, explore what the market has to offer, and then take the top offer back to the Mets and effectively ask that they match it.

A six-year deal would run through Alonso’s age-35 season. Seven years would take him through age-36. Either of those terms feels plausible, as does an AAV in the vicinity of — or even slightly in excess of — the Freeman and Goldschmidt deals.

5. Blake Snell, LHP, Giants*

Will the second time prove to be a charm for Snell? The $200MM+ contract he sought in free agency this past winter never materialized, likely due to a confluence of factors. Beyond the sheer scope of his ask, Snell hit free agency at a time when roughly half the league was experiencing uncertainty regarding its long-term television status. We’re also slated for a record number of CBT payors, including several big spenders — Yankees, Dodgers, Mets — currently paying a 110% tax that made a long-term deal for Snell wholly unpalatable. Further yet, recent high-profile spenders like the Padres, Rangers, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Mets all took steps back in terms of their aggression.

None of that even touches on Snell’s command troubles, though his penchant for issuing free passes hasn’t stopped him from dominating opposing lineups over the past several seasons. Snell is now a two-time Cy Young winner — one of just 22 in MLB history — who’ll spend the 2024 season pitching in an even more spacious home park than he enjoyed in San Diego.

Snell will turn 32 in the coming offseason, so he won’t have age on his side. But he already rejected a qualifying offer from the Padres, meaning he’s ineligible to receive another one at any point in his career. That lack of draft pick compensation will be a bonus, and it’s possible next offseason’s market will bear more favorable circumstances. If the Mets, Red Sox, Rangers or Padres begin spending again and if even a couple of CBT payors are suddenly in position to dip back under the threshold, Snell could find more suitors this time around.

He’s not a lock to hit the market, of course. Snell’s two-year $62MM deal with the Giants allows him to opt out at season’s end, leaving a $30MM player option on the table. So long as he remains healthy and effective, he’ll be a lock to do so. The left-hander ranks 11th in ERA (3.05) and seventh in strikeout rate (31.7%) among qualified big league starters dating back to the 2018 season. He’s had a couple rough seasons along the way, but the broader body of work is genuinely excellent.

As previously mentioned, teams are typically wary of committing beyond a starting pitcher’s age-37 season. For Snell, hitting the market at 32, that’d make it tough to secure a contract lengthier than six years. A six-year deal checking in at $28MM or more would allow Snell to still claim that he topped $200MM in free agent earnings (when combined with his current $32MM in earnings). That type of offer seemingly wasn’t there this time around, but if Snell turns in a third straight dominant season — he had a 2.72 ERA and 31.7% strikeout rate in 2022-23 — someone’s likely going to pony up with a big offer.

6. Max Fried, LHP, Braves

Few starters in baseball have been as consistent as Fried on a year-to-year basis. The former No. 7 overall draft pick has turned in a sub-3.00 ERA in three of the past four seasons, with the lone exception being a 3.04 mark in 2021. Fried’s strikeout rate has fallen between 22.3% and 25.7% for five straight seasons. His walk rates in that time have landed between 4.4% and 8.5% (though that 8.5% came in 2020’s short season and is something of an outlier, he’s been under 7% in every other full season). His ground-ball rate sits between 51.2% and 57.7% each year.

Fried isn’t an overpowering ace in the sense that he hits triple digits with his heater and strikes out a third of his opponents. He has above-average but not elite velocity, leading to average or slightly better strikeout rates. However, Fried has plus command and ground-ball tendencies, and he dodges hard contact at consistently excellent levels.

Prior to the 2023 season, Fried was also quite durable, ranking 19th in the majors in innings pitched and 21st in games started. That doesn’t include his 10 postseason starts (and four relief outings) — a total of 58 2/3 additional innings. A forearm strain suffered in early May last year, however, knocked Fried out of action for about three months. Though he was characteristically excellent when health — 2.55 ERA, 3.14 FIP, 3.38 SIERA — Fried was limited to 14 starts and 77 2/3 innings.

Proving that forearm strain is behind him will be paramount to his free agent platform. Another 30-plus starts won’t completely eliminate any trepidation stemming from last year’s injury, but another season with considerable missed time — particularly due to an arm injury of any nature — would create cause for clear concern.

Fried has been more durable than Carlos Rodon (six years, $162MM with the Yankees) and has a far lengthier track record of success. He and his reps will likely take aim at toppling that mark in free agency. Braves fans would surely like to see an extension, but it hasn’t happened in the past, and Fried is plenty justified in asking for the type of long-term deal and semi-premium AAV that the Braves have steered clear of in recent years. He seems likelier to follow Freddie Freeman and Dansby Swanson out the door than he does to receive an extension offer that’s commensurate with his market value.

7. Cody Bellinger, OF/1B, Cubs*

Bellinger didn’t get the mega-deal he sought this past offseason. Excellent as his 2023 campaign was, there were surely teams wary of his woeful 2021-22 showing on the heels of shoulder surgery. Beyond that, his exit velocity, hard-hit rate and other batted-ball metrics were decidedly pedestrian.

Agent Scott Boras has pointed to Bellinger’s massive decline in strikeout rate as a factor, painting his client as a hitter who adopted a two-strike approach more focused on putting the ball in play than on doing massive damage. There’s surely a blend of truth and garden-variety agent spin woven into that defense.

A repeat of his 2023 production — or anything close to it — would strengthen Bellinger’s case immensely. It’d further distance him from that awful 2021-22 showing, lending further credence to the notion that injuries played a significant role in his perceived decline. And whether Bellinger replicates his numbers by returning to his maximum-damage approach or simply proves that his newer brand of more well-rounded, low-strikeout offense is sustainable, either approach should prove lucrative.

Even though an opt-out would trigger Bellinger’s third trip to free agency, he’ll still be heading into just his age-29 season next year. He can still play a fine center field (or corner outfield, presumably) and remains a good option at first base as well. There’s plenty of defensive and baserunning value to supplement his bat.

Bellinger will pocket $30MM in the first season of his three-year, $80MM deal with the Cubs, meaning he’ll be opting out from two years and $50MM. That seems likely, barring a 2021-22-esque collapse or a massive injury. Because of his age, that immense long-term deal that eluded him this past offseason still feels plausible. That he can no longer be saddled with a qualifying offer — players can only receive one in their career, and he rejected one last offseason — only strengthens his case.

8. Willy Adames, SS, Brewers

Adames joins Javier Baez, Trevor Story and Dansby Swanson as the latest in a line of high-end shortstops to reach free agency heading into his age-29 season. That trio signed for respective guarantees of $140MM (Tigers), $140MM (Red Sox) and $177MM (Cubs). Adames doesn’t have the individual accolades that group possesses. He’s never been an All-Star like each of that trio has. He hasn’t won Gold Gloves like Swanson and Baez. He hasn’t won the Silver Sluggers that Story has.

Yet despite the lack of hardware, Adames has a strong claim to be valued in similar fashion. It’s true that he had a down year at the plate in 2023, but that was in part driven by a career-low .250 average on balls in play. Since 2020, Adames is a .240/.316/.450 hitter. He’s been 8% better than average overall, by measure of wRC+, and he peaked with a 121 wRC+ (21% better than average) from 2020-21. Adames fanned at a sky-high 36.1% back in 2020 but has reduced that mark considerably; over his past 1300 plate appearances he’s punched out at a worse-than-average but far more manageable 26.2% rate. He struggled badly against lefties early in his career (despite being a right-handed hitter) but has improved against them in recent seasons.

From 2021-23, Adames averaged 26.67 homers per season — topping out at 31 round-trippers in 2022. He’s walked at an above-average but not elite 9.4% rate in his career — including a personal-best 11.1% in 2023. Adames has long been touted as having plus defensive tools, but his execution and consistency were lackluster early on, leading to some middling grades. Over the past two seasons he’s been outstanding, tallying 17 DRS and a flat-out elite 26 OAA.

If Adames can bounce back from last year’s .217/.310/.407 line and turn in something closer to the .251/.319/.471 slash he logged from 2020-22, he’ll have an easy case to be paid comparably to Story, Baez and Swanson. He’s likely to hit the market on the heels of four straight 20-homer campaigns. He’s a plus defender. He’s relatively young. He’s not the most consistent hitter on a year-over-year basis, but that was true of Baez, Story and Swanson. They all got paid. Adames will also draw bonus points for his gregarious personality and leadership skills. Both the Rays and Brewers have lauded him in that regard, and the primary reason Tampa Bay traded him — Wander Franco’s looming emergence — now looks regrettable (even if getting Drew Rasmussen in return for him has yielded plenty of value).

9. Ha-Seong Kim, SS/2B, Padres

Kim came to MLB with great fanfare as a 25-year-old KBO superstar who’d been posted by the Kiwoom Heroes. He signed a four-year, $28MM deal with San Diego that contains a mutual option for a fifth season. Mutual options are generally accounting measures and are almost never exercised by both parties. In Kim’s instance, it’s a no-brainer to decline his end of the option and hit free agency in search of a deal that could pay him three to four times his original MLB guarantee.

While Kim’s rookie season didn’t live up to the hype, he’s since acclimated to MLB quite nicely. Now 28, he posted a .256/.338/.391 batting line (109 wRC+) from 2022-23. His power has increased in each MLB season, resulting in a career-high 17 homers last year, and he swiped a hefty 38 bases in 47 tries for the Friars last season. Kim’s walk rate has climbed every MLB season as well, topping out at a robust 12% in 2023, and after fanning in 23.8% of his plate appearances as a rookie he’s dropped that mark to 18.5% in 2022-23.

Decent power, strong on-base skills and plus speed give Kim plenty of appeal, but his glove is perhaps his greatest selling point. Kim is an elite defensive infielder capable of handling any of second base, shortstop or third base. He won his first Gold Glove for his play at second base last season, though that’s unlikely to be his last. (He also won a Gold Glove in his final three seasons of KBO play.)

There’s no defensive metric that pegs Kim below average at any of those three positions. He’s logged more than 1000 innings at second base, nearly 600 at third base and more than 1600 at shortstop. Defensive Runs Saved, Outs Above Average and Ultimate Zone Rating agree that he’s excellent at all three. The Padres signed Xander Bogaerts to an 11-year contract and moved him to second base just one year later despite Bogaerts posting decent numbers at short in 2023. Kim has racked up 23 DRS and 10 OAA in his 1600+ innings at shortstop. He has fluid infield actions, sure hands and is a regular source of highlight-reel defense.

Kim doesn’t have a strong batted-ball profile, but it’s not out of the question that he could crack 20 homers, walk in more than 10% of his plate appearances, swipe 40 bags and play Gold Glove defense this season. He’ll play all of the 2025 season at 29 years old. A nine-figure contract isn’t out of the question.

10. Jordan Montgomery, LHP, Diamondbacks

As the old adage goes, if at first you don’t succeed — hire a new agent and try again. Montgomery languished in free agency all winter, never landing the six- or seven-year contract he was seeking. He took a one-year, $25MM deal with the D-backs that’ll afford him a player option at $20-25MM basically just for staying healthy. The contract wasn’t finalized before Opening Day, meaning Montgomery can’t receive a qualifying offer this winter. Barring a major injury, he’ll likely decline that player option and return to the market.

Montgomery, 31, has made at least 30 starts in each of the past three seasons. In that time, he’s pitched 524 1/3 innings of 3.48 ERA ball with a 22.5% strikeout rate, a 6.2% walk rate, a 44.5% ground-ball rate and just 1.00 HR/9. His 2023 campaign was the finest of his career, featuring a personal-best 188 2/3 innings of 3.20 ERA ball, plus another 31 innings of 2.90 ERA ball in the postseason — a strong performance that helped push the Rangers to their first-ever World Series title.

Though he doesn’t miss bats at an elite level, Montgomery is better than average in just about every meaningful category for starting pitchers and has been a workhorse since his 2020 return from Tommy John surgery. We at MLBTR erred in thinking a six-year deal was attainable heading into the 2023-24 offseason. Another typical Montgomery season could put him in position for a strong four-year or perhaps a five-year deal at a lighter AAV than we predicted last offseason. He should be able to top teammate Eduardo Rodriguez’s four-year, $80MM contract — and a deal in the $100-110MM range over five years doesn’t feel out of reach if Monty continues at his recent trajectory.

Honorable Mentions (listed alphabetically): Walker Buehler, Matt Chapman*, Gerrit Cole^, Jack Flaherty, Paul Goldschmidt, Teoscar Hernandez, Rhys Hoskins, Frankie Montas, Tyler O’Neill, Luis Severino, Max Scherzer*, Gleyber Torres, Justin Verlander*, Christian Walker

^=Cole is currently on the 60-day IL and expected to be out into June. He can opt out of the remaining four years and $144MM on his contract at season’s end, though if he signals his intent to do so, the Yankees can override his opt-out by tacking on a tenth year at another $36MM. Because Cole is currently injured and because the Yankees can effectively veto his opt-out, we’re not including him on the initial version of our rankings. If, as the season wears on, he’s pitching well enough to trigger that opt-out and there’s talk of the Yankees allowing him to walk, he could land on future installments of the list.

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