Free agency is just around the corner, which means it’s about that time for mass public speculation as to which players will end up with which team. Part of the fun of the offseason is, of course, playing GM from home and trying to figure out which players will either push your favorite club into contention or ensure that they stay in the thick of the playoff hunt next year. For those who enjoy playing GM — which, I assume, encompasses most regular MLBTR readers — I’ve created a set of Fangraphs leaderboards for this year’s class of free agents, as I did in both 2014 and 2013.
Fangraphs’ leaderboards will allow you to filter hitters both position and/or sort them by statistics. These lists can be sorted by everything from traditional stats like batting average, RBIs and homers; to sabermetric stats like wRC+, wOBA and baserunning runs above average; and batted-ball metrics like line-drive rate, homer-to-flyball ratio and hard-contact percentage. 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, or set minimums in plate appearances/innings pitched in order to narrow the field.
It should be noted that these leaderboard are sorted by Fangraphs’ version of wins above replacement and should not be confused with our annual Top 50 Free Agent rankings (which, I might add, will be released in early November). Our Top 50 is a completely separate exercise; this is done solely to give our readers an easier tool to break down the upcoming free agent class. All that said, onto the leaderboards:
Free agent position player leaderboard
Free agent starting pitcher leaderboard
Wow guys this is some great stuff. Thanks for the hard work, this is easily the best site for everything baseball. I think some of the things I was surprised by was how good Cespedes season was. Also surprised how nice a season Fowler had, I have been under rating him as a player. I think all 5 of the 5+ war players will surpass 150 million.
If someone wants to take a chance on Crush Davis. Boom or bust with him. Would be perfect fit with Astros. He could platoon first with Carter, or they could trade Carter and let Davis take over.