This winter’s free agent pitching market is headlined by a pair of generational talents that could challenge the $43.3-million AAV record Max Scherzer set last off-season. That’s extreme high-roller territory.
But there’s also plenty of depth in the market’s middle tier, where a mere $12-15-million per season can net a club one of several dependable, mid-rotation arms. Here are 11 of the best pitchers available.
Jacob deGrom
There’s immense reward in deGrom’s upside. The stuff he features as a starter is borderline unimaginable. A fastball that sits 99 m.p.h. and reaches 101. A slider at 92 that generates whiffs over half the time. A 90-m.p.h. changeup he’s allowed only 38 extra-base hits off of in a 209-start career. No one misses bats like deGrom, who’s struck out 42.4 per cent of the hitters he’s faced since 2020 while running a 4.5 per cent walk rate to boot. When healthy, he’s the best pitcher on the planet.
But there’s immense risk in his downside. DeGrom’s made only 26 starts over his last two seasons with the New York Mets, missing substantial time due to a series of injuries — discomfort in his elbow, a stress reaction in his shoulder — that are alarming to say the least. Any team agreeing to pay deGrom the massive salary he’ll command will have to come to terms with the possibility that, entering his age-35 season, the physiological limitations of aging muscle, tendon, and bone may be at odds with the extraordinary fashion in which he throws.
But whichever team accepts the risk also inherits the opportunity for the reward. And if deGrom can keep his arm going, he’ll be an extraordinarily impactful difference-maker. There’s no market comparable for this unique a pitcher, this unique a proposition. But if Scherzer could garner $43.3 million per season at 36, and Justin Verlander earned $25 million coming off Tommy John surgery at 39, deGrom could earn his own cartoon number on a short-term deal from a deep-pocketed club chasing his unparalleled upside.
Justin Verlander
What a difference a year makes. Last winter, absent from an MLB mound for 20 months, Verlander hit the market in a cloud of uncertainty, returning from Tommy John surgery for his age-39 season. Was he healthy? Did he still have premium stuff? Was he capable of performing at something close to the elite level he had for years prior to the procedure?
Yes, yes, and absolutely. Verlander signed a one-year, $25-million deal, pitched to an MLB-best 1.75 ERA over 175 innings with the Houston Astros, became baseball’s career active strikeouts leader, led AL starters with 6.1 fWAR, ran his fastball up to 98 in the postseason, positioned himself to win his third Cy Young award, and finished the year lifting the Commissioner’s Trophy over his head.
Now, Verlander re-enters free agency as one of the most coveted arms available. His market’s impossible to peg because doing what Verlander’s done never seemed possible before. Last winter, the Mets gave Scherzer a three-year, $130-million deal entering his age-37 season. Will a team give Verlander — turning 40 in February — a similar AAV on a two-year pact? Doubt him at your peril.
Carlos Rodon
Robbie Ray and Kevin Gausman defined a market for early-30’s, two-pitch, high-strikeout, late-career breakout starters last winter, each inking five-year guarantees of $22-23-million per season. And that’s likely the starting point for Rodon, who’s been one of the game’s most electric frontline arms since finally fulfilling his potential in 2021, pitching to a 2.67 ERA while striking out 34 per cent of the batters he’s faced over 310.2 innings since.
Rodon’s history of shoulder issues complicate matters, but he made 31 starts in 2022 with the San Francisco Giants, missing only a lone outing due to illness. You can question how Rodon will hold up over the long-term, but in the short-term he’s mixing an overpowering, mid-90’s fastball with a sharp slider that earns a whiff 40 per cent of the time. Of the 144 pitchers to throw at least 160 innings over the last two seasons — the deGrom cut-off — none have a higher strikeout rate or lower FIP than Rodon.
That’s why the left-hander can look at the deals Ray and Gausman signed last year as a floor. And why he’ll likely push the market for arms like theirs even higher.
Chris Bassitt
A late entrant to the market after declining a mutual option with the Mets, Bassitt ought to have plenty of interest coming off another typically durable, reliable, above-average campaign that culminated with a 3.42 ERA over 30 starts. Entering his age-34 season, Bassitt doesn’t feature the premium, bat-missing stuff of the top tier names ahead of him on the market. Rather, he leverages a deep, varied pitch mix to keep hitters guessing, utilizing strong command to suppress hard contact.
That approach plays best on a team that can put Bassitt in a large ballpark with a strong defence behind him. But even clubs lacking those elements ought to see the value in Bassitt’s dependability. And even with a qualifying offer weighing down his market, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see plenty of suitors for his services offering as many as three years and an AAV approaching $20 million.
Clayton Kershaw
The fastball’s closer to 90 these days than 95. The pitch mix leans heavier on breaking stuff than heat. And the innings total’s more likely to be in the 120-130’s than the 170-180’s. But Clayton Kershaw’s still Clayton Kershaw. And as the future hall-of-famer proved in 2022, pitching to a 2.28 ERA with sparkling peripherals over 22 starts with the Los Angeles Dodgers, he’s still capable of retiring big-league hitters in bunches with craft, guile, and surgical command.
With Kershaw, you know exactly what you’re getting. That includes the time he’ll likely miss due to injury, like the elbow ailment that limited him in 2021, and the hip and back issues that arose in 2022. But 120 innings of sub-3.00 ERA don’t grow on trees, and Kershaw continues providing culture and clubhouse intangibles even when he’s unable to take the mound and contribute his customary six innings of one-run ball.
Of course, it’s probably moot to even consider him if you aren’t working within the Dodgers front office. Kershaw’s never pitched for another team, and the Dodgers just went through this process with him last winter, ultimately inking the franchise icon to a one-year, $17-million deal amid retirement rumours. The only question this time around may be if it takes that long again.
Nathan Eovaldi
MLB’s ever-increasing average fastball velocity — it hit a record 93.9-m.p.h. in 2022 — has made pitchers like Eovaldi, who sits 95-96 as a starter, less exceptional over time. Modern hitters are getting better at catching up to that velocity, too, which helps explain why Eovaldi ran among MLB’s worst hard-hit and barrel rates in 2022. Stuff like his isn’t as uncommon as it was in the mid-to-late 2010’s.
But what’s allowing Eovaldi to remain successful into his mid-30’s is elite control and an ability to produce sub-five per cent walk rates year over year. He walks so few, and strikes out just enough, that he can be awfully effective when his stuff is located to the edges of the strike zone. The trouble comes when his fastball leaks out over the middle. See: a .306 batting average and .522 slugging percentage against his four-seamer in 2022 with the Boston Red Sox.
As hitters continue seeing velocity better and better, Eovaldi will need to continue relying on his secondary stuff more and more. He’ll also need to continue avoiding the more severe end of the injury spectrum, as he’s averaging an IL trip per season over his last four. Those factors will put a hard cap on the offers he’ll garner in free agency. But he’s still an above-average arm with a solid, mid-rotation floor and relatively high ceiling if he can remain healthy and avoid barrels. That’s worth a deal somewhere in the three-year, $15-million AAV range Bassitt’s looking at.
Kodai Senga
A wild card entering the fray makes any free agent market that much more interesting — and this year it’s Senga. The 29-year-old right-hander spent his last 11 seasons pitching to a 2.59 ERA for NPB’s Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks, and is coming off of his best campaign yet with a 1.94 ERA and 27.5-per-cent strikeout rate over 144 innings against Japan’s best hitters. After exercising an opt-out in his deal with the Hawks following the season, Senga’s an international free agent and free to sign with an MLB club without the burden of a posting fee.
How Senga’s game could translate to North America is anyone’s guess, but his raw stuff appears to be very real. His fastball sits 96 and reaches 99; his diving, mid-80’s splitter has been a devasting swing-and-miss weapon. The lack of a plus pitch beyond those two could give some teams pause when considering Senga as a rotation option. But as Ray, Gausman, and Rodon have proven over the last several seasons, starters can turn lineups over a couple times if their best two pitches are dominant enough.
And there would still be plenty of value in Senga if he ultimately settled into a high-leverage relief role. He certainly has the stuff to be successful at it. Whether he has the conditioning and mentality to pitch in more frequent, pressure-packed, higher-intensity bouts is another unknown. But it’s those questions and intrigue that will make Senga’s market so fascinating to watch this winter.
Tyler Anderson
When Anderson signs a two- or three-year pact this winter worth around $15 million per season, he’ll thank his family, his teammates, his agent. But he ought to thank the venerated Dodgers pitching department, too, for helping him reinvent himself from a back-end innings-eater to a viable mid-rotation starter flirting with a No. 2 ceiling thanks to a revamped pitch mix, reworked release point, and reimagined changeup.
Those were only some of the many adjustments Anderson utilized this year to put up a 2.57 ERA over 178.2 innings, a run of success that stands in stark contrast to the 4.62 career ERA he carried into the season. The tweaks created all kinds of deception and made his deep repertoire much more difficult for hitters to pick up, which is how he finished with 98th percentile rankings in hard-hit rate and average exit velocity allowed. Combined with exceptional control (91st percentile walk rate) and a knack for getting hitters to expand their zones (95th percentile chase rate), it all came together to fuel Anderson’s late-career breakout.
Any team that signs him would of course be betting that the adjustments will stick and continue to help Anderson produce results with low-90’s velocity for seasons to come. But Anderson’s extensive track record as a league-average innings-eater provides a decent safety net in case his numbers revert to their career norms in his age-33 season. That’d be a palatable outcome for what he’ll cost on the open market. And if he can replicate his 2022 results, he could be one of this off-season’s bigger bargains.
Jameson Taillon
Taillon hasn’t yet fulfilled the frontline potential many saw in him when he was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2010 draft and a top-15 staple on prospect lists industry-wide leading up to his 2016 MLB debut. And maybe he never will. But through a winding path that’s included two Tommy John surgeries, a cancer scare, and a trade to the Bronx last off-season, Taillon’s settled in as a perfectly serviceable mid-rotation starter. And there ought to be plenty of pitching-needy clubs in the market for those services as he hits free agency for the first time.
Since joining the Yankees, Taillon’s embraced the depth of his pitch mix. Earlier in his career, he’d try to overpower hitters with his fastball and curveball. Now, he’s trying to fool them, throwing as many as six different pitches depending on the day, working up in the zone and towards the edges to limit walks and induce gobs of weak contact.
It isn’t the profile many were imagining when Taillon was a can’t-miss prospect a decade ago. But it is one teams can depend upon to churn through innings and reliably position them to win ballgames. Which is why any club seeking high-quality pitching help for a mid-range price will be calling Taillon’s representation this winter.
Taylor Rogers
This winter’s free agent relief pool was shallow to begin with and drained even further when Edwin Diaz, Robert Suarez, and Rafael Montero all re-signed with their 2022 employers. Kenley Jansen, Chris Martin, and David Robertson are still out there. Craig Kimbrel or Zack Britton could have one last gasp of dominance in them. And the nature of the position means that every season sees at least a few relatively unheralded relievers sign modest free agent deals and end up thriving in leverage.
But Rogers presents as much upside as any reliever on the market. He mixes a heavy, mid-90’s sinker with a frisbee slider that breaks three inches more than average and generates a whiff 38 per cent of the time; he vaporizes lefties (.196/.260/.276 career line against); and he carries a 47-per-cent career groundball rate. He has two 30-save seasons on his resume to go with two 90th percentile strikeout rate finishes. And he pitched to a 2.91 ERA with spectacular strikeout (31.2 per cent) and walk (4.9) rates over 193 appearances in a high-leverage role from 2018 through his all-star 2021 campaign.
Of course, there’s a reason that sample stops short of including 2022, which Rogers finished with a career-high 4.76 ERA. It all started so well, as Rogers carried a 2.84 ERA into July with the San Diego Padres. But he allowed runs in seven of 10 outings that month before being traded to the Milwaukee Brewers as part of the Josh Hader blockbuster. And matters only worsened in new environs, as Rogers allowed six home runs over his final 21 appearances of the season, limping across the finish line with a 5.48 ERA in 23 innings as a Brewer.
And yet, despite all that damage, Rogers’ peripherals held steady. He finished the year with a 30.7-per-cent strikeout rate, including 36 per cent of the batters he faced with Milwaukee; even with all the homers, he allowed only 23 extra-base hits across 66 appearances; and he ended up with an 84th percentile whiff rate. Neither the .486 BABIP he ran in July, nor the 27.3 per cent HR/FB rate he posted with Milwaukee, ought to be sustainable. Everything about his miserable second half stands out as a hard-luck, fluky outlier in the context of his greater track record.
That’s why there could be so much value here for whichever team signs him. The way Rogers finished 2022 will likely depress his market, making him attainable for only a two- or three-year commitment around a $10-milllion AAV rather than the four or five years at $12-14-million per season he might’ve been looking at if he hadn’t imploded. There’s plenty of reason to believe Rogers will bounce back and carry on as the lights-out leverage reliever he’s been for most of his career. But whoever takes the plunge likely won’t have to pay him like one.
Andrew Heaney
You could make a case at the end of this list for a number of established, mid-rotation, five-and-dive types such as Mike Clevinger, Corey Kluber, Sean Manaea, Martin Perez, Jose Quintana, Drew Smyly, Ross Stripling, Noah Syndergaard, Michael Wacha, and Taijuan Walker. They’re all perfectly fine. They’ll likely put up league-average numbers in seasons to come. And that’s why they’ll all find pacts between one and three years with AAV’s anywhere from $10-15-million and make teams better for it.
But they’ll be boring. Dependable, predictable, boring. They won’t lead the league in strikeout rate. They won’t flash ace-like stuff. And if you want to really win in this league you need to chase that kind of upside. You need to try to be the organization that can solve the puzzle that is Andrew Heaney.
To that end, progressive clubs are either going to help Heaney unlock his obvious potential or die trying — and this winter we’ll learn who’s signing up for the next kick at the can. The 31-year-old’s high-spin fastball zips over bats up in the zone; his sweeping slider generates a swinging strike 44 per cent of the time; he finished 2022 with 96th percentile or better marks in strikeout, whiff, and chase rates. His off-charts potential and upside drive analysts and data strategists loopy.
But Heaney’s difficulty limiting home runs and staying healthy drives managers and pitching coaches loopier. He allowed 1.73 HR/9 through his 72.2 innings pitched this season, only a slight improvement on the enormous 2.01 rate he ran over 129.2 in 2021. The left-hander is a tantalizing, maddening, promising, frustrating project that the Yankees and Dodgers were unable to figure out over the last 15 months. And it’s a good bet that another club with a deep R&D staff will give Heaney some dough to try their luck next year.
