Projecting what Kyle Tucker, Bo Bichette, Dylan Cease and other free agents will make this winter

In the 1976 classic “Network,” executive Arthur Jensen dims the lights in a conference room to lecture Howard Beale on how the world really works.

“There are no nations. There are no peoples. … There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immune, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars,” he roars. “The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.”

Welcome to the Baseball Offseason!

Baseball is a business, you hear at various junctures of the season. But late July and winter are the two times that dynamic becomes most explicit.

Now’s the time to talk about money.

This is the fourth winter I’m projecting MLB free-agent contracts for The Athletic. I’ve got a big Excel spreadsheet with a bunch of free-agent and extension contracts in it (dating mostly to 2014, but with some landmark contracts from earlier), as well as players’ performance in the years leading up to those contracts, as defined by FanGraphs’ wins above replacement. Whereas players get paid for home runs and saves in arbitration, I’ve found fWAR to be a solid (though not all-knowing) predictor of earnings on the open market. When I use WAR in this story, it’s referring to FanGraphs’ version of it.

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:

• I used to look at fWAR in samples from each of the last five seasons. Now I concentrate heavily on the most recent season and the combined production over the past three for starting pitchers and position players.
• For relievers, I look at one- and two-year samples. What happened five years ago isn’t really relevant for such a volatile position, and I’ve found more of a recency bias in contracts here than elsewhere.
• I’ve used the U.S. Bureau of Labor’s inflation calculator to translate contracts into “today’s money.”
• There remains a decent amount of subjective judgment that goes into creating the comparisons, and factors beyond fWAR play into that.
• These are not necessarily deals I’d advocate the player sign or the team sign the player to. I’m trying to peg fair value.
• The values I’m proposing here are in present-day money. It’s possible players here sign for amounts that look larger before deferrals bring them back down (i.e., Shohei Ohtani’s deal two winters ago).
• The ages listed for the player are their ages on June 30, 2026.
• Some players have “spring projections,” culled from the extension projections I did back in March.
• For players coming from Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) in Japan or the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), I compare their performance in that league to that of other players who have come to MLB.
• In general, these projections feel a little high. That’s in response to last year, when I (and most other people who try their hand at this) was low on several big-name players. As a result, I’m aiming to err more on the high side than in the past.

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Kyle Tucker, 29

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.

Projection: 12 years, $460 million

Bo Bichette, 28

For Bichette, Willy Adames’ seven-year, $182 million deal with the Giants last winter is particularly helpful.

While Adames’ overall production outstrips Bichette’s, the latter has been a better offensive player, and offense gets paid more than defense. (Furthermore, Adames’ once sturdy defensive value had plunged heading into free agency, to the point that he, like Bichette, now faces questions about his long-term future at short.) Bichette is also a year younger, which could mitigate some of his injury concerns. That’s where the comp to Seager comes in; Seager was a fellow shortstop who performed when healthy but missed plenty of time, and he was paid off his peak performance. Bichette won’t reach those heights, but he should be able to surpass Adames’ deal.

Projection: 8 years, $212 million

Framber Valdez, 32

Spring projection: 4 years, $116 million

Valdez has pretty clearly been the most productive starting pitcher on this free-agent market — a metronome of consistency that is second in the majors in innings and fourth in ERA since the start of the 2022 season. However, a few things work against him in free agency: He’s already entering his age-32 season, unusually late for a first-time free agent. His 94 mph fastball velocity is pedestrian in today’s game. His postseason track record is mixed. And whatever this was happened late this season.

It’s possible that those concerns accrete to diminish Valdez’s value. While his age is the likeliest thing to hold down his next deal in some capacity, he’s put himself in excellent company. And he’s the beneficiary of down seasons for his chief competition in this market, including Dylan Cease, Michael King and Zac Gallen.

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

Tatsuya Imai, 28

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

Cody Bellinger, 30

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

Dylan Cease, 30

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

Alex Bregman, 32

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

Ranger Suárez, 30

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

Kyle Schwarber, 33

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.)

One that feels more proper? The in-his-prime deal that J.D. Martínez signed with the Red Sox in 2018 for that aforementioned $22 million per year. Like Schwarber, Martínez was coming off the best stretch of his career — 29 homers in 62 games with the Diamondbacks. Updating that contract for 2026 pushes the money close to $29 million per season. Schwarber could surpass $30 million on a shorter-term deal, but I think he can get to five years at the Martínez money.

Projection: 5 years, $145 million

Pete Alonso

Since I cover the Mets, I’ve been doing Alonso contract projections for years.

Spring 2022: 8 years, $160 million
Spring 2023: 9 years, $207 million
Spring 2024: 7 years, $190 million
Fall 2024: 5 years, $140 million

And of course, what did he sign for last winter? Two years and $54 million, with an opt-out allowing him to hit the market again this winter.

Like his former high school teammate Tucker, Alonso benefits from the massive deal Guerrero signed in the spring. Guerrero’s extension revived a first-base market that had been stagnant for a decade.

However, Alonso will be 31 next year, hasn’t delivered the kind of peak, near-MVP performance Guerrero had before his extension, and still sits a rung below the production level of other first basemen who signed big-time contracts.

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

Josh Naylor

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

Munetaka Murakami, 26
Kazuma Okamoto, 30

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

Edwin Díaz

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

Jack Flaherty, 30

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

Michael King, 31

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

Eugenio Suárez, 34

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

Shane Bieber, 31

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

Lucas Giolito, 31

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

Merrill Kelly, 38
Chris Bassitt, 37

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

J.T. Realmuto, 35

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

Zac Gallen, 30

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

Ryan O’Hearn, 32

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

Luis Arraez, 29

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

Other Projections

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