As I did last year, I’ve taken the liberty to compile Fangraphs leaderboards for the most notable players that will be eligible for free agency following the season. Those who enjoy playing GM — and if you read this site with any regularity, you presumably do — can filter each leaderboard to their liking to see which potential free agents are the best fits with a club’s specific needs.
Fangraphs leaderboards will allow you to sort hitters both by position and by statistics. Everything from basic stats like average and homers, advanced metrics like wRC+ and wOBA, or batted-ball metrics like line-drive rate and HR/FB is available. If you click the “Fielding” tab near the top of the page, you can check out sortable defensive metrics as well. On the pitching side of things, everything from ERA to FIP to swinging-strike rate to fastball velocity can be found. You can also set each leaderboard to include data from previous seasons to increase the sample size.
For the purposes of this post, I’ve created four leaderboards (Note: These are not MLBTR’s rankings of free agents. They are sorted by Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement but can be sorted by any stat under any tab on the leaderboard simply by clicking that stat. MLBTR’s Top 50 Free Agent rankings will be published after the season, and the latest version of our Free Agent Power Rankings was published earlier in the month):
- Free agent position player leaderboard
- Free agent starting pitcher leaderboard
- Free agent right-handed relief pitcher leaderboard
- Free agent left-handed relief pitcher leaderboard
It’s also worth noting that I included any player who is eligible to become a free agent following the season. Though club options for players such as Johnny Cueto, Ben Zobrist, Hisashi Iwakuma and others are locks to be exercised, I thought it best to simply include all players rather than make judgement calls on more borderline cases. If you’d like any such players removed, you can simply highlight their name under the “Custom Players” section near the bottom of the page and click the X to the right of the column, then generate a new, updated list.
If you see any notable omissions, please, of course, let us know. The cutoff used for these leaderboards is the same that we typically use for our Free Agent list here at MLBTR: 50 plate appearances for hitters or 20 innings pitched for pitchers. These lists also include significant players that did not take the field in 2014 such as Josh Johnson and Luke Hochevar. Their stats will be available if you expand the leaderboards to include seasons prior to 2014.
Thanks to Fangraphs.com for the ease of use that led to creating these leaderboards!
Just think it’s worth keeping an eye out for Dan Haren, whose 2015 option I believe either vests or becomes a player option with 6 IP. I can understand keeping it here if it’s a player option, but I think it’s vesting.
You forgot Pat Neshek under RH Relief
Can we put WAR into a time capsule and bury it for twenty years. If any manager used this stat as a major indicator of decision making they would last one year. WAR is an example of a stat where comparing apples to apples does not work.