BEST IN CLASS
Who’s up next? Top targets in MLB’s 2025-26 free agent class
Mar 25, 2025, 1:59 pm
Framber Valdez expects to hit free agency after the season. Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images.
There almost certainly won't be a $700 million deal for any player in the baseball's next free agency class, nothing like the record contracts for two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani and four-time All-Star slugger Juan Soto the past two winters.
Still, plenty of talented players are going into their final seasons before potentially becoming free agents for the first time.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr., five-tool player Kyle Tucker and starting pitchers Dylan Cease, Framber Valdez and Zac Gallen could all become available to other teams after this season. Three-time batting champion Luis Arráez and Bo Bichette, who twice led the American League in hits, could also be first-time free agents.
Guerrero, like Soto already a four-time All-Star and Home Run Derby champion at age 26, had set a self-imposed deadline for negotiating a long-term agreement with Toronto. That passed at the start of spring training without a new deal, when he said he wanted to stay but would listen to other teams in free agency.
Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro remained optimistic going into the season that the team would eventually sign the first baseman to a contract extension.
Soto’s $765 million, 15-year contract with the New York Mets in December came after Ohtani got a $700 million, 10-year deal from the Los Angeles Dodgers the previous offseason. Guerrero told ESPN in an interview after his deadline passed that he was seeking a similar contract length as Soto but noted that his last offer was for less than $600 million.
Here are some of the players eligible for free agency after this year’s World Series:
1B Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Blue Jays
Guerrero, who will make $28.5 million this season, hit a career-best .323 last year with a .940 OPS, 30 homers and 103 RBIs in his fourth consecutive All-Star season. Over six seasons with the Blue Jays, he has a .288 average with 160 homers and 507 RBIs in 819 games. He finished second in the 2021 AL MVP voting behind unanimous choice Ohtani.
OF Kyle Tucker, Cubs
Houston clearly wasn't planning to pay the price to keep Tucker in free agency, so the Astros traded the three-time All-Star and Gold Glove-winning right fielder to Chicago in December for a third baseman, starting pitcher and top prospect outfielder that are all under team control for multiple seasons. The 28-year-old Tucker was limited to 78 games last year because of a fractured right shin, and still hit 23 homers. He had a combined 59 homers, 219 RBIs and 55 stolen bases in 2022-23.
RHP Dylan Cease, Padres
The 29-year-old Cease has 130 starts over the last four seasons, twice finishing in the top four in Cy Young Award voting. He was the AL runner-up behind unanimous winner Justin Verlander while with White Sox in 2022, and fourth in the NL last year when 14-11 with a 3.47 ERA in 33 starts after being traded to the playoff-bound Padres during spring training from a Chicago team that went on to lose 121 games. Cease has 1,016 career strikeouts in 847 1/3 innings.
LHP Framber Valdez, Astros
One of the game's best left-handed starters, the 31-year-old Valdez has a 68-41 career record and is Houston's opening-day starter for the fourth year in a row. He was 15-7 with a 2.91 ERA in 28 games last season, his fifth in a row to finish with a winning record. The workhorse threw a no-hitter in 2023 and averaged more than 191 innings the past three years.
RHP Zac Gallen, Diamondbacks
The 29-year-old Gallen, 14-6 last year, is 43-19 with a 3.20 ERA in 93 starts the past three seasons. Arizona got him his rookie season in 2019 when it traded Jazz Chisholm Jr. to Miami. The Diamondbacks just gave 2021 NL Cy Young Award winner and four-time All-Star right-hander Corbin Burnes a $210 million, six-year deal, the richest in franchise history. That could significantly impact whether they will also be able to keep Gallen, twice a top-five finisher in Cy Young voting.
1B Luis Arráez, Padres
Arráez has back-to-back 200-hit seasons, part of three batting titles in a row while finishing each of those seasons with a different team. The Padres acquired him last year in a midseason trade from Miami, which got him from Minnesota after his first batting title with the Twins in 2022. He goes into this season with a .323 career average and only 194 strikeouts in 2,858 career plate appearances.
SS Bo Bichette, Blue Jays
A calf injury and then a broken right middle finger limited Bichette to 81 games last season, and the 27-year-old two-time All-Star hit a career-low .225 with only four homers. Before that, he led the AL in hits in 2021 and 2022, and batted .306 in 2023 during his third consecutive 20-homer season.
DH Marcell Ozuna, Braves
Ozuna, who turns 35 next November, played in all 162 games for the first time last year and was an All-Star for the third time — first since 2016. He has 79 homers and 204 RBIs over the past two years.
RHP Shane Bieber, Guardians
Bieber had 20 strikeouts in 12 scoreless innings last season before Tommy John surgery and becoming a free agent for the first time. Cleveland re-signed the 2020 AL Cy Young winner even though he won’t pitch until later this season, during which the pitcher with a 62-32 career record turns 30. He does have a $16 million player option for 2026.
A few Phillies
34-year-old catcher J.T. Realmuto, 32-year-old slugger Kyle Schwarber and 29-year-old left-handed starter Ranger Suárez are going into the final seasons of their contracts with the Phillies after being key figures for three consecutive playoff seasons. That began with that 2022 NL pennant that ended a decade-long postseason drought. Schwarber has 131 homers and 302 RBIs in that three-season span, along with 318 walks and 612 strikeouts.
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A lockout appears unavoidable! Photo via: Wiki Commons.
Looming over baseball is a likely lockout in December 2026, a possible management push for a salary cap and perhaps lost regular-season games for the first time since 1995.
“No one’s talking about it, but we all know that they’re going to lock us out for it, and then we’re going to miss time,” New York Mets All-Star first baseman Pete Alonso said Monday at the All-Star Game. “We’re definitely going to fight to not have a salary cap and the league’s obviously not going to like that.”
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and some owners have cited payroll disparity as a problem, while at the same time MLB is working to address a revenue decline from regional sports networks. Unlike the NFL, NBA and NHL, baseball has never had a salary cap because its players staunchly oppose one.
Despite higher levels of luxury tax that started in 2022, the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Mets have pushed payrolls to record levels. The last small-market MLB club to win a World Series was the Kansas City Royals in 2015.
After signing outfielder Juan Soto to a record $765 million contract, New York opened this season with an industry-high $326 million payroll, nearly five times Miami’s $69 million, according to Major League Baseball’s figures. Using luxury tax payrolls, based on average annual values that account for future commitments and include benefits, the Dodgers were first at $400 million and on track to owe a record luxury tax of about $151 million — shattering the previous tax record of $103 million set by Los Angeles last year.
“When I talk to the players, I don’t try to convince them that a salary cap system would be a good thing,” Manfred told the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Tuesday. “I identify a problem in the media business and explain to them that owners need to change to address that problem. I then identify a second problem that we need to work together and that is that there are fans in a lot of our markets who feel like we have a competitive balance problem.”
Baseball’s collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1, 2026, and management lockouts have become the norm, which shifts the start of a stoppage to the offseason. During the last negotiations, the sides reached a five-year deal on March 10 after a 99-day lockout, salvaging a 162-game 2022 season.
“A cap is not about a partnership. A cap isn’t about growing the game,” union head Tony Clark said Tuesday. “A cap is about franchise values and profits. ... A salary cap historically has limited contract guarantees associated with it, literally pits one player against another and is often what we share with players as the definitive non-competitive system. It doesn’t reward excellence. It undermines it from an organizational standpoint. That’s why this is not about competitive balance. It’s not about a fair versus not. This is institutionalized collusion.”
The union’s opposition to a cap has paved the way for record-breaking salaries for star players. Soto’s deal is believed to be the richest in pro sports history, eclipsing Shohei Ohtani’s $700 million deal with the Dodgers signed a year earlier. By comparison, the biggest guaranteed contract in the NFL is $250 million for Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
Manfred cites that 10% of players earn 72% of salaries.
“I never use the word `salary’ within one of `cap,’” he said. “What I do say to them is in addressing this competitive issue that’s real we should think about whether this system is the perfect system from a players’ perspective.”
A management salary cap proposal could contain a salary floor and a guaranteed percentage of revenue to players. Baseball players have endured nine work stoppages, including a 7 1/2-month strike in 1994-95 that fought off a cap proposal.
Agent Scott Boras likens a cap plan to attracting kids to a “gingerbread house.”
“We’ve heard it for 20 years. It’s almost like the childhood fable,” he said. “This very traditional, same approach is not something that would lead the younger players to the gingerbread house.”