Three free agents to invest in -- and three to avoid

Now that we've projected contracts for the top 50 free agents in this winter's class, let's take a look at which players could provide the most -- and least -- bang for their expected buck.

Over the past two years, I've done pretty well -- investing in Sonny Gray, Shane Bieber and Shota Imanaga as free agents while avoiding the end of Justin Turner's career and megadeals for players the market also avoided going long-term with that offseason, like Blake Snell, Pete Alonso, and Cody Bellinger. And now I'm back again to try to hit the bull's-eye a few more times.

The projected contracts in my rankings provide important context for this exercise, as my choices are based on return on investment -- how I expect the players to perform over the length of their deals at their projected prices.

The rules for this edition are the same I set out for myself last winter: Each group of three players must have one player projected to land more than $50 million, one projected for a one-year deal and at least one pitcher and one position player.

Here are my three free agents to invest in and three to avoid for the 2025-26 MLB offseason.

Free agents to invest in

Michael King, RHP

Projected contract: 3 years, $57 million

King looked to be in line for one of the biggest deals in this free agent pitching class entering 2025, coming off of a breakout 2024 where he threw 173.2 innings with a 2.95 ERA and peripherals not that much behind, with predictive ERA figures in the low-to-mid 3s, good for 3.9 WAR.

His 2025 season was somewhat lost though, as shoulder and knee issues cost him half the season, his strikeout rate dipped from 28% to 25% and he gave up more damage on contact. You could read that platform season as a setup for a make-good one-year deal with incentives, but there are enough unique qualities to King that I think he'll land a multi-year deal.

Michael King, 93mph Sinker and 83mph Sweeper, Overlay. pic.twitter.com/8peVFu9zVU

That's a good visual representation of what King does well: Wiffleball-level raw stuff. When he got hit around more in 2025, it was concentrated mostly in his four-seam fastball and sweeper. What changed? His zone rate on his heater dropped from 54% to 48%, and on his sweeper it dropped from 44% to 38%. The runs saved on those two pitches combined was +2 on over 1200 pitches in 2024 and -13 on 528 pitches in 2025. The rest of his arsenal played basically the same and all had steady to rising zone rates last season.

An eight-figure decision isn't as simple as "he should just throw more strikes," but King looked like a nine-figure free agent before some injuries that now seem behind him, stuff that was the same throughout it, and some location tweaks. That seems like a nice gamble in a world where a No. 3/No. 4 starter goes for $15-20 million per year.

Ha-Seong Kim, SS

Projected contract: 1 year, $16 million

The sales pitch for this former Padre isn't that different from King. Kim was really good -- from 2022 to 2024, he posted a combined 10.5 WAR, which is more than what Pete Alonso and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. posted in that period, despite` more plate appearances than Kim.

Then Kim tore the labrum in his shoulder in August 2024, which led to offseason surgery that caused him to miss roughly half of the 2025 season. Kim also had lower back and hamstring issues last season, while his sprint speed and arm strength were objectively not the same. The Braves claimed him off of waivers in September from the Rays, who paid him roughly $11 million for 24 games and 0.1 WAR. Kim turned down a $16 million player option earlier this offseason to hit the open market, and I'm guessing that's roughly what he'll end up with, though maybe with more incentives and maybe an option.

There isn't a ton to look at in 2025 to give hope, but you can also look at Kim's 2025 season as he wasn't fully back and may have rushed a bit, then caused other injuries by overcompensating. I don't have access to his medicals, but if my medical team clears him, it would appear 2026 is the season to bet on him looking something like his old self, the first full season after a major surgery. His track record of being a 3-win player that is solid average in all aspects is enough for me to gamble here, even though the downside is the 30-year-old is actually closer to his 2025 self going forward.

Brad Keller, RHP

Projected Contract: 2 years, $22 million

Every November, media reports start to trickle out about which free agent relievers teams are considering converting into starters. Reynaldo Lopez, Jordan Hicks, and Clay Holmes are some recent examples, and Keller actually has some similarities to Holmes. That's one reason Keller's contract could end up with similar terms to Holmes' three-year, $38 million deal from last winter.

Keller found some success as a big league starter for Kansas City from 2018 to 2022, then had a bout with thoracic outlet syndrome, leading to up-and-down performances for the Royals, White Sox and Red Sox in various roles in 2023 and 2024, before his breakout role as a setup man for the Cubs in 2025.

One big reason for that change is Keller's velocity jumped by about 3.5 mph in 2025, helped a bit by the shorter stints, as well. With that added bump, Keller threw his heater in the zone a lot more, jumping his zone rate from 53% to 60%. His lively sinker, slider, sweeper, and changeup are all located to tunnel off of that center-cut 95-99 mph heater. The cutter shape of his fastball is a favorite for pitch design-focused teams due to this movement inclination giving a chance for a seam-shifted sinker, kick changeup and multiple standout breaking pitches. I wrote more about this supinator type of arm in reference to Max Fried and Corbin Burnes here.

You can see why teams look at this situation and think that stretching Keller out to longer outings like he has in the past, giving back some velocity and whiffs, and getting a 150-inning starter with No. 3/No. 4 starter upside is worth a gamble, with a late-inning reliever as the fallback option. If a couple teams really believe he could find success in either role, the bidding could jump to three years at an eight-figure AAV.

I also seriously considered Kazuma Okamoto (more here) and Kyle Finnegan (more here), but the parameters of the exercise pushed me to Kim (due to his projected one-year deal) and Keller (the upside of a potential starter).

Free agents to avoid

Eugenio Suarez, 3B

Projected Contract: 2 years, $45 million

I'm going to cheat a bit here and use Suarez as my $50 million-plus contract since I don't see a clear big-money guy to bet against, particularly because I picked Pete Alonso last year and he had a nice bounceback year on a prove-it deal, and Kyle Schwarber, an even older DH-only hitter, was even better. I think they'll both be good for a few more years, then fall off, but that's true of every giant hitter deal for a player in their 30s. I could even stretch and make a case for Kyle Tucker on those same grounds if he gets a 10-year-plus deal.

On to Suarez: There are a lot of blinking red lights here. He's 34 years old, and his defensive metrics at third base have gone from +8 to +3 to -3 in the past three seasons. He has played six regular-season innings at first base in his big league career, so you're either dealing with an aging, below-average defensive third baseman who you're hoping to move somewhere else, paying big money for him to learn a new position on the fly, or you're signing a designated hitter.

At the plate, his pitch selection and high-end exit velos are just OK, so you're basically buying Suarez's elite ability to slug with little else to back it up. His isolated slugging in 2025 was his best since 2019 and just a hair off of a career best, so I'd bet on that backing up to some degree, but possibly a lot if Suarez's bat speed also dips.

Zach Eflin, SP

Projected contract: 1 year, $8.5 million

Normally, I'd look at Eflin's dominating 2023 season (177.2 innings, 3.50 ERA, 4.9 WAR), slightly lesser 2024 (2.8 WAR) then disastrous 2025 season (-0.3 WAR) and see him as a nice bounceback option for some bulk innings. It's hard picking someone to avoid in the low-risk one-year deal bucket, but I don't like the indicators I'm seeing in Eflin's data.

His four-seam fastball velocity has slipped two years in a row and his secondary pitches are getting less crisp. Eflin's best offspeed pitch in 2023 was his curveball, saving +9 runs. Since then, the pitch has lost 1 mph and went to -7 runs in 2024, then -12 runs in 2025. His primary fastball is a sinker, and it has gone from +13 to +4 to -3 runs from 2023 to 2025. Eflin's changeup has emerged to save the day as his only run-saving pitch (+4) in 2025.

It seems like Eflin is becoming a pitch-to-contact guy and holding his breath on roughly two-thirds of his pitches. If he can get his velo to hold and then also locate well, he could still end up being a useful backend starter in 2026, but this set of facts also can result in an unconditional release before the All-Star break.

J.T. Realmuto, C

Projected Contract: 2 years, $32 million

Marcell Ozuna, DH

Projected Contract: 2 years, $30 million

Harrison Bader, OF

Projected Contract: 2 years, $25 million

I'm going to cheat a little bit again here, because the cases to avoid all three of these players are similar but focus on slightly different parts of their games. And I also had trouble picking just one, so this is easier.

Realmuto, 34, is still a standout athlete for a catcher and an excellent controller of the running game. The rest of his game has been regressing, and at his age as a catcher, things can sometimes fall off a cliff if you have to count on multiple years of performance.

We can sum up his offensive contributions pretty well with expected wOBA, which strips out ball in play luck and predicts his offensive production based on the exit velo, launch angle, etc.: .351 in 2022, .334 in 2023, .339 in 2024, .315 in 2025. His isolated power (slugging minus batting average, so stripping out the singles to focus on extra bases) in that same span: .202, then .200, then .163, then .127. Realmuto's bat speed dropped 23 percentile points, to below average, in 2025: You get the idea. His framing numbers went from positive in 2022 to a combined -30 over the past three years, negative each year. I think he's still a solid starter next year, but it's hard to be confident after that given these trends.

Ozuna is a right-handed-hitting designated hitter who just turned 35, so he's already generically in the danger zone when it comes to multiyear deals. He also battled a hip issue starting in roughly May of last season, and if you split his season in half on June 1, you get a stark contrast: .284/.427/.474, 155 wRC+ (55% better than league average as a hitter) in 241 PA before, .199/.306/.354, 86 wRC+ (14% worse than average) in 351 PA after. He might be fully recovered from this in 2026, but I'm not willing to bet much on something like that not happening again, or his decline (.402 xwOBA in 2024, .351 in 2025) accelerating in a fully healthy season when there's no defensive or baserunning value to protect against it.

Bader had a huge 2025, with his WAR jumping from 1.2 in 2024 to 3.2. This was driven almost entirely by what he did at the plate, with his wOBA jumping from .285 to .346. Here's where expected wOBA can tell a predictive story: His xwOBA was an identical .295 in both seasons. Bader's 2.0 WAR jump was entirely created by his hitting, but his underlying performance was exactly the same in both seasons.

He's 31 years old now and has long been considered a standout defender in center field, but those numbers also dipped last season. Bader is still a championship-level fourth outfielder who can start for certain teams, but that's what he was last year when Minnesota signed him for one year, $6.25 million plus incentives. He shouldn't get much more than that, but I think he will.