I plug impending free agents into the spreadsheet, find players with similar production before they signed their deals, and work off those comps. Several points worth noting:
Spring projection: 10 years, $350 million
Tucker stands to cash in thanks to two deals signed in the last 12 months: Juan Soto’s $765 million contract with the Mets and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s 14-year, $500 million extension with the Blue Jays. Let’s look at how Tucker ranks with those two and some other big-name free agents of late:
The Guerrero deal is especially helpful, as it removes a comparable bat from this winter’s market and sets a very sturdy baseline for valuing Tucker. Given how his production compares to Guerrero’s at the time of the extension, Tucker should be able to argue that a $35.7 million average annual value is his floor. But how close can Tucker get to the $40 million-plus AAVs of Soto, Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani?
In Guerrero’s deal, you can see a kind of crude math: No, he’s not Soto, but his production was about two-thirds of Soto’s, and so the contract valued him at about two-thirds of Soto’s deal. In Tucker’s case, he’s been about 75 percent as valuable as Soto in the three and five years leading up to free agency. Seventy-five percent of Soto’s $51 million AAV would be just over $38 million per season. Spread that through Tucker’s age-40 season — the length Soto and Guerrero each secured — and you get a 12-year, $460 million deal.
Advertisement
Projection: 12 years, $460 million
For Bichette, Willy Adames’ seven-year, $182 million deal with the Giants last winter is particularly helpful.
Given the contracts signed by Zimmermann and Snell, a five-year, $150 million pact should be Valdez’s floor. If a team wanted to stretch out the commitment, as the Yankees did with Fried, I could see up to seven years with the AAV just below $30 million.
Projection: 7 years, $196 million
Imai’s performance by ERA in NPB aligns closely with pitchers such as Yusei Kikuchi, Kodai Senga and Hiroki Kuroda. Kikuchi might be the best comp, given he was the same age and had a similar strikeout rate as Imai before signing with Seattle in 2019.
If we use Kikuchi as the comp and add a few years to the deal, you can see an eight-year, $146 million contract, with a posting fee taking the total investment to $170 million. However, Imai’s outstanding 2025 season and the relatively weak market for top-of-the-rotation starters — only Imai and Dustin May are hitting free agency ahead of their age-28 seasons, and no free-agent starters are entering their age-29 season — make me think it will be higher than that. (It doesn’t hurt that the star of this past postseason was a similarly diminutive right-hander from Japan, even if Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s results in NPB were beyond what Imai has done.)
Imai’s 2025 season in NPB corresponds well to Daisuke Matsuzaka’s last year in Japan.
A team valuing Imai at the same level as Matsuzaka — again with some added length — would get the contract to eight years and $190 million, with a roughly $30 million posting fee on top.
Projection: 8 years, $190 million
Last time he hit free agency, Bellinger was coming off his first good season in the past three. This time, he’s established more consistent results while flashing the ability that won him an MVP back in 2019. Still entering just his age-30 season, this should be the winter he fully cashes in.
Justin Upton’s 2018 extension with the Angels is the baseline here. Yes, it’s fair to question Bellinger’s bat outside of the Bronx — he posted a .909 OPS at home versus .715 on the road — or whether he’ll ever post a 1.000 OPS against lefties again. But he’s also a far better defender than the other players in this chart, one who could plausibly play center field next year before sliding down to the corner outfield or first base as he ages. That’s why it would not be unreasonable to see Bellinger land a seven- or eight-year deal.
Projection: 7 years, $182 million
Spring projection: 6 years, $196 million
The back-of-the-baseball-card numbers for Cease were subpar in 2025: an ERA above 4.50 for the second time in three seasons and his fewest innings since 2021. Cease’s peripherals painted a rosier picture: His FIP was right in line with where it’s been since his first 162-game season in 2021, and his strikeout rate (33.3 percent) was a career best.
The Lester comparison isn’t crazy. Lester endured some prolonged rough stretches leading into his free agency, though he sequenced them better, entering the market off arguably his best season (and one year removed from being a World Series hero). Cease won’t get to that number (at least not accounting for inflation), but he’ll probably join a group of pitchers paid more for their stuff and peripherals than for their ERA — a cohort headlined by Zack Wheeler.
Cease offers an intriguing mix of potential (thanks to two top-five Cy Young finishes) and durability; no one has made more starts than his 174 since 2020. In a market without a bona fide ace, that should work in his favor.
Projection: 6 years, $174 million
Bregman turned down a reported six-year, $160 million deal with Detroit to sign a shorter-term deal in Boston, earning more than $32 million this past season and opting out to hit the market again ahead of his age-32 season. The bet on himself should pay off.
As it stands, Bregman should land at least Chapman’s deal. That his WAR this past season was lower owes to a quad injury; he otherwise played to a five-win pace, and he’s not so injury-prone as to worry too much about his durability. Devers’ present-day AAV of almost $32 million is the ceiling here; Bregman didn’t quite reach that number on his pillow deal with the Red Sox. (With deferrals, the AAV for that three-year deal was $31.6 million.) Let’s split the difference between the AAVs of Chapman and Devers, landing at $28.5 million per season.
Projection: 6 years, $171 million
Every year I’ve done this, there’s one guy who stands out as a relatively unheralded player about to make a lot more than the casual fan expects. I think Suárez is about to join the likes of Brandon Nimmo and Willy Adames when he signs easily into nine figures.
The left-hander has been behind Wheeler, Aaron Nola and Cristopher Sánchez in the Philadelphia rotation. He’s made just one All-Star team and he’s never received a Cy Young vote, in part because he’s never qualified for the ERA title. But put his numbers up against other pitchers who sign for big money, and he’s comfortably aligned.
The deals for Gausman and Wheeler are arguably the two best signed for a starting pitcher in the last decade. And while Suárez generally misses some time during the season, no single injury has been catastrophic, and he’s always been healthy for October, where he’s pitched to a sparkling 1.48 ERA. Let’s update that Gausman deal and add a year.
Projection: 6 years, $153 million
When Schwarber signed his last free-agent deal, a DH had never won the MVP nor earned more than $22 million per season. Shohei Ohtani helps things.
Obviously, Ohtani wasn’t signed just to DH, but his MVP campaign in 2024 established a higher value on the position than existed before. And Schwarber was significantly more valuable himself in 2025 than ever before. And so later-career contracts for the likes of Victor Martinez, Nelson Cruz and Michael Brantley all feel low for Schwarber. (At the start of the season, I’d informally pegged Schwarber in that range: something like three years and $60 million.)
You can make the case that Alonso is the high man in the next tier down rather than the low man in that top tier.
That said, I do think WAR tends to underrate the value of a pure slugger (with defensive limitations) like Alonso, especially one as durable as he’s been. I think he’ll end up occupying the space between these tiers, with the chance of getting to $30 million per season on a shorter deal and an AAV just below it on a longer one. Which is all to come around to the same projection as last year.
Projection: 5 years, $140 million
Let’s just reuse the chart from above for Naylor’s value.
Naylor’s youth here helps him; he should sign for longer than any of these players, with a five-year deal firmly within reason. I’m going to stick with four, however, because just about every player who gets five or more years has a better track record than Naylor.
Keeping it to four years means an AAV on the higher side of this cohort.
Projection: 4 years, $92 million
Murakami and Okamoto can look like mirror images of one another. They’ve posted very similar numbers in NPB, and they’ve each played third base but fit better in the majors at first base. Murakami swings from the left side and is four years younger; Okamoto should be the better defender, at least initially.
Their performance in NPB most closely resembles what Seiya Suzuki did before signing with the Cubs in 2022.
Suzuki’s production in the majors is akin to that of Naylor, and so that’s the baseline I’m operating off of in projecting a deal for Murakami and Okamoto.
At 26, Murakami offers a huge chunk of his prime, and we’ve seen how that’s driven up the cost in super-long deals for Soto, Guerrero Jr. and Yamamoto. At the same time, Murakami is also coming off a season hindered by injuries, including elbow surgery last winter, that might limit teams’ comfort level about going so long.
But I still see some team willing to go to eight years for a 26-year-old slugger. If you double the projection for Naylor — four years and $92 million — and account for the posting fee, that leaves an eight-year, $158.5 million deal for Murakami.
Okamoto will be 30, so let’s apply the Naylor projection to him as well, accounting for the posting fee. A $92 million total investment means a four-year, $78.5 million deal for Okamoto.
Projection for Murakami: 8 years, $158.5 million Projection for Okamoto: 4 years, $78.5 million
Díaz opted out of the two years and $37 million remaining on the five-year deal he inked with the Mets after the 2022 season. Since then, Josh Hader’s five-year deal with Houston set a higher bar on the closer market (at least when accounting for the deferred money in Díaz’s deal), and Díaz can look to once again become the game’s highest-paid closer.
The question is the length of the deal. Díaz signed for five years entering his age-29 season, and Hader signed for five going into his age-30 season. Díaz will be 32 next year, and no closer in the last decade has signed for more than three years at that age.
Díaz should get to $20 million per season, and it’s hard to see him signing for less than the less accomplished Tanner Scott did last season. If he hits the open market, he could get that fifth year. But it also wouldn’t be a surprise if, like last time, he re-signed with the Mets before free agency formally opened.
Projection: 4 years, $84 million
While Flaherty’s 2025 wasn’t as good as his 2024 — after all, he didn’t finish it as the Game 1 starter in the World Series — it stacked another solid season together and pushed him another year further from his injury-plagued mid-20s. He’s now thrown more than 450 innings over the past three seasons.
He has an eclectic group of comps.
Flaherty looks positioned to land somewhere in the four-year range between Gray’s deal (valued at $65 million in today’s money) and Rodriguez’s (valued at $84 million).
Projection: 4 years, $78 million
Free agency is about timing. Had King been a free agent last winter, coming off a seventh-place Cy Young finish in his first full year as a starter, he’d have made nine figures. He pitched nearly as well in 2025 but only half as often, missing time with shoulder and knee ailments.
An interesting comp for King is C.J. Wilson, who also transitioned from the pen to the rotation in his late 20s and experienced immediate success.
I would suspect a deal for King to be creatively structured, guaranteeing a good amount of money on the front end with an opt-out structure for the back end. Think a three-year deal at $75 million with an opt-out after each season.
Projection: 3 years, $75 million
While Josh Donaldson represents a dream scenario for Suárez, the likelier result is a deal closer to those signed by Justin Turner.
Again, power gets paid, and Suárez hit 49 homers last year. So let’s bump up that Turner AAV over three years.
Projection: 3 years, $69 million
If you have a decent pedigree, the deal you sign once ready to return from Tommy John surgery is going to be pretty good.
Bieber has done more than any of those three did in the lead-up to free agency, pitching solidly down the stretch for the pennant-winning Blue Jays. Like King, his deal could involve an early opt-out or two to enable another bite at the apple after a fully healthy season.
Projection: 3 years, $63 million
Two years ago, I compared Giolito (off his disastrous finish to the season with the Angels and Guardians) to Taijuan Walker and Jameson Taillon, projecting him to earn a four-year, $70 million deal. When he signed for basically half that, I felt a little stupid. Now, with the same comps, Giolito is positioned to outearn the deal I had initially proposed, provided his late-season elbow injury isn’t cause for deeper concern.
Giolito’s rockier health over the last two years probably shortens the length of the deal. But another one worth close to $20 million per season should be in the works.
Projection: 3 years, $57 million
One starting pitching deal that’s going to pay dividends for the rest of the market is the two-year, $46 million extension that Seth Lugo signed with the Kansas City Royals over the summer. That deal covers Lugo’s age-36 and age-37 seasons, and it sets a nice bar for veterans such as Kelly and Bassitt who are in the short-term market.
Kelly and Bassitt are coming off better seasons than Lugo, though Lugo was one year removed from a Cy Young runner-up finish. That just about evens it out, and I would expect Kelly and Bassitt to be right in the neighborhood of Lugo’s deal.
Projection: 2 years, $46 million for Kelly and Bassitt
Realmuto has settled in as a two-win player the last three years, with WARs of 2.0, 2.0 and 2.1. Counterintuitively, given the scarcity of quality two-way catchers, the position does not get paid particularly well. In spring training extensions this past year, Cal Raleigh and Alejandro Kirk had their free-agent years bought out at roughly $5 million per WAR.
So this is probably not the tier Realmuto was hoping to land in, entering the season:
Realmuto’s durability, athleticism and track record should push his next deal beyond any of those listed. But he’s no longer in the group that landed contracts worth more than $20 million per season in today’s money.
Projection: 3 years, $45 million
Spring projection: 6 years, $174 million
No walk-year player lost as much value for his next deal as Gallen did during a difficult 2025 season. His ERA jumped higher than Cease’s with none of the peripheral caveats. The stuff was noticeably worse. Gallen did submit an excellent August (and so-so September) to make the final numbers more respectable.
It’s thus rare to find a pitcher in his purported prime to endure this type of season without an injury as an excuse. The closest comps are guys whose struggles had been a bit more gradual than Gallen’s.
The floor here is probably a two-year deal like the one Giolito signed two years ago with Boston; that included a second-year player option. Accepting a qualifying offer from Arizona should also be a consideration. I like a two-year deal that guarantees Gallen $24 million ($18 million salary plus $6 million buyout) for the first season (so just above the qualifying offer) with a player option for an additional $24 million in the second season.
Projection: 2 years, $42 million
O’Hearn is firmly in what I like to call the Rizzone:
While coming off a better season than Rizzo was in his free-agent forays, O’Hearn doesn’t have the longer track record (and name recognition) Rizzo did. So I think he’ll come in just below Rizzo’s numbers.
Projection: 2 years, $36 million
Expect a narrative proxy war to be fought over Arraez’s free agency. A batting champ three times in the last four years, Arraez embodies an approach to the game that doesn’t exist much anymore. Front offices seldom value his type of contact skills, although the success of the Brewers and Blue Jays this past season could prompt a change in perspective.
There are two things that make this more difficult for Arraez. First, he’s coming off his worst season in the majors, in which he hit .292 — 30 points off his career mark entering the year. Second, his defense has slid so much that he barely played second base last season, splitting time as a DH and a below-average first baseman. It would be easier to reward his unique skill set if he paired it with some defensive value.
Throw in that Arraez will play next season at only 29, and it’s tough to find players in the same boat. His best comps might be two shortstops who were valued very differently.
So this is more of a shot in the dark than usual. I do think that at least one team out there will look less at what Arraez doesn’t do and more at what he does offer — and how it could fit a modern lineup. And that would bring him much closer to Didi Gregorius’ AAV than Amed Rosario’s.
Projection: 2 years, $30 million
Trent Grisham: 3 years, $54 million
Robert Suárez: 3 years, $54 million
Ha-seong Kim: 3 years, $50 million
Gleyber Torres: 3 years, $48 million
Brandon Woodruff: 2 years, $40 million
Jorge Polanco: 2 years, $35 million
Harrison Bader: 2 years, $32 million
Brad Keller: 3 years, $30 million
Dustin May: 2 years, $26 million
Raisel Iglesias: 2 years, $24 million
Michael Kopech: 2 years, $22 million
Tyler Rogers: 2 years, $21 million
Zack Littell: 2 years, $20 million
Luke Weaver: 2 years, $19 million
Devin Williams: 1 year, $18 million
Jordan Montgomery: 1 year, $18 million
Seranthony Dominguez: 2 years, $17 million
Justin Verlander: 1 year, $17 million
Zach Eflin: 1 year, $17 million
Lewin Díaz: 2 years, $16 million
Ryan Helsley: 1 year, $16 million
Victor Caratini: 2 years, $15 million
Max Scherzer: 1 year, $14 million
Marcell Ozuna: 1 year, $14 million
Cedric Mullins: 1 year, $11 million
Mike Yastrzemski: 1 year, $11 million
Kenley Jansen: 1 year, $10 million
Rhys Hoskins: 1 year, $10 million
Emilio Pagan: 1 year, $9.5 million
Danny Jansen: 1 year, $8 million
Willi Castro: 1 year, $8 million
Josh Bell: 1 year, $8 million
Spot the pattern. Connect the terms
Find the hidden link between sports terms
Play today's puzzle