Outside of the week where the Los Angeles Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and traded for Tyler Glasnow, making them the new villains of baseball, there really hasn’t been much going on this MLB off-season.
Sure, the New York Yankees also acquired Juan Soto, but they still have work to do to be a real World Series threat. In terms of free agent spending, even the Oakland A’s have spent more than the Yankees and Chicago Cubs, and that’s because Oakland signed all of one player, Trevor Gott, for $1.5 million.
With so much inaction, there are still a number of big-name free agents left on the market. Four of the five we’re going to talk about today are Scott Boras clients. Teams seem unwilling to meet the player’s asking prices at the moment, which has led to this stalemate. For those four players in particular, there are questions about which version of the player they’ll be in the future.
Let’s discuss some of those qualms and try to figure out where each player will end up signing.
Blake Snell is headed to Los Angeles
Snell is the top free agent pitcher left on the market. He also won the 2023 NL Cy Young award to go along with the AL version he earned back in 2018. In those two seasons he totaled 180 innings in each, but he hasn’t surpassed 130 innings in the other four full seasons he’s pitched. He debuted in 2016 and reached 89 innings, and then in 2020 there wasn’t a full season’s worth of innings to collect. He has pitched in a total of eight seasons, and in two of them he was won the Cy Young. Snell has a career 3.20 ERA, which is solid. It’s also helped by his two outlier Cy seasons.
Part of the concern with Snell is that sometimes he’s a shutdown ace and other times he’s more of a No. 2, maybe even a No. 3 starter. If he’s looking for ace money, then that’s how the stalemate happens. The other big worry for teams is his walk rate from 2023, which ranked in the 4th percentile. Snell walked 13.3% of the batters he faced last year, the worst of his career. But he also won the Cy Young. It’s not easy to figure out what type of pitcher he’ll be in 2024 and beyond.
Snell just feels like a Los Angeles Angels signing. They could always use more pitching, and they tend to overlook some flaws in order to get their guy. After losing Ohtani, they’ll be in a battle with the Dodgers for people’s attention in Southern California, and they’ll need to spend money to get that attention. Snell just seems like he fits. The Angels also have a knack for handing out big contracts that don’t work out (see: Josh Hamilton, Albert Pujols, Anthony Rendon), and signing Snell at big money has that same risk.
For Angels’ fans sake, if they do sign him, let’s hope that Snell plays great and that the big contract curse can be a thing of the past.
One team really needs to sign Cody Bellinger
Since Bellinger’s NL MVP in 2019 he has been a bit of a question mark. He struggled in 2020, but will still securely above league average. Then in ’21 he fell off big time, putting up a 47 wRC+, which is 53% below league average. His strikeout rate spiked to 26.9% and he hit just .165. It wasn’t a great year. He bounced back a bit in ’22, but was still below league average by 17%, and his strikeout rate was a career-worst 27.3%. That led to the Dodgers non-tendering Bellinger after the season.
The Cubs swooped in and offered Belli a one-year deal, and the former MVP responded by batting .307, cutting his strikeout rate to 15.6% while putting up a 134 wRC+ and becoming the best hitter on the free agent market.
This is part of the reason why teams are a little unsure of how to value Bellinger moving forward. He has MVP potential, but he also completely fell apart for a couple of seasons. The other reason is that he ranked in the 10th percentile in hard hit rate, 27th percentile in barrel%, and 22nd in average exit velocity. How much of his power was he sacrificing to cut down on strikeouts? That’s a big question. One thing that he has going for him is that his defense in center was excellent, and that should stay consistent.
The Cubs haven’t done anything this winter, spending as much money as I have on free agents, and losing that production from Belliger would really set them back. The Giants need to show their fan base that they can sign a couple more players. The Angels could pair Bellinger and Snell, which is actually a suggestion Sportsnaut made just last week. There are a number of teams in on Bellinger, and it will come down to which team blinks first and decides to pay him the money he’s asking for.
Right now, it feels like the Cubs have the most to lose by not signing him, so Bellinger lands in Chicago.
Jordan Montgomery returns to…
Montgomery was drafted by the Yankees, played parts of six seasons for the Yankees, was traded by the Yankees, and when all is said and done, he may sign as a free agent with the Yankees after posting a 2.90 ERA in 31 postseason innings for the Texas Rangers en route to their first World Series title. This comes after the Yankees traded him because they didn’t feel he was good enough to start a postseason game for them.
We’ll see how things play out, but that could be a tough sell for New York. “Hey we didn’t think you were good enough but now we do” would have to be supported by a lot of financial backing.
Montgomery is a solid innings eater the past three seasons, making at least 30 starts in each, and he also holds a career 3.68 ERA which has trended downward the past three seasons, landing at 3.20 in 2023. He’s a solid pitcher, and there are a number of teams that need reliable (and good) starters. The Boston Red Sox signed a reliable (and maybe good) starter in Lucas Giolito, and the Atlanta Braves traded for a good (and maybe reliable) starter in Chris Sale. Monty offers both. He’ll also cost a bit to sign.
With all that said, it would make the most sense for him to end up back with the Rangers. They could use a reliable starter to pair with Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer who will miss some time in 2024, and he also just won a title with the club. They also let him start a whole bunch of postseason games.
Matt Chapman reunites with Bob Melvin across the Bay
Chapman has been known for his glove since his debut with the Oakland A’s, but he can also provide some pop with his bat. How much pop he’ll provide is the question that’s holding up his free agency.
Last season with the Toronto Blue Jays, Chapman hit .240 with a .330 OBP and a 110 wRC+, good for a 3.5 fWAR season. That wRC+ was just outside of the top 10 third basemen in baseball. The issue here is that his splits weren’t great in 2023. He hit .307 against lefties with a 147 wRC+, which is 47% above league average, and just .223 with a 101 wRC+ against right-handers. He was also much better in the first half (123 wRC+) than the second (88).
Over the entirety of his career those splits don’t hold up, as Chapman has actually been a better second half performer overall and hit righties and lefties roughly the same, but he’s also entering his age 31 season, so how much will last year’s stats inform what’s to come?
The Blue Jays could certainly use Chapman back to keep the band together, but again, the Giants are a team that needs to make some moves as well. With Chappy’s former manager Bob Melvin in San Francisco, it feels like he could be returning to the Bay Area, and with a new contract in hand, he may even be able to afford a house out there.
Marcus Stroman may end up on the best MLB team
The lone non-Boras client on the list. Not only are the Cubs currently without Bellinger on their roster, but Marcus Stroman is also sitting out there on the free agent market, too. Chicago finished with an 83-79 record, just one game behind the Arizona Diamondbacks as the final NL Wild Card. If they don’t make some moves soon, they’ll likely be moving down in the standings.
Stroman was one of the best starters in the NL during the first half, posting a 2.96 ERA, but injuries slowed him down in the second half as he missed the month of August and posted an 8.63 ERA in 24 innings. The 32-year-old righty holds a career 3.65 ERA and has been remarkably consistent in his nine big-league seasons. Honestly, any team would want to add him at his modest projection of three years and $66 million.
Here’s the thing: Stroman hasn’t been mentioned in many rumors this winter, so he could feasibly end up just about anywhere. This is likely due to him being many team’s third option behind Snell and Montgomery, and maybe even lower than that if they’re targeting either Dylan Cease or Shane Bieber in a trade. Until those dominoes fall, there could be a number of teams that wait on offering a deal to Stroman.
One club that likely won’t be involved in the mix for those other four pitchers and that can pounce at any time is the Baltimore Orioles. They’re a young team without many long-term financial commitments and an estimated payroll of $85 million for the upcoming season. The O’s could also use a veteran to add to their starting staff, making Stroman a pretty nice fit for the suddenly scary Orioles.
Jason Burke covers MLB for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.