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2025-26 MLB Free Agent Power Rankings: May Edition

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We’re just over one-third of the way through the 2025 regular season, and it’s been about six weeks since MLBTR’s initial ranking of the upcoming members of the 2025-26 MLB free agent class. It’s a good time for a refresh, although many of the same names will populate the list (albeit in a different order). There are two new entrants, however, and the bottom of the list has shuffled around particularly.

As a reminder, our power rankings at MLB Trade Rumors are not a straight ranking of the best free agents in the upcoming class. There are plenty of older veterans who can make significant impact on short-term deals. However, our rankings are based on total earning power, which means older vets like Paul Goldschmidt are rarely going to crack the top 10, regardless of how strong their performance is. Their age will simply limit them to a shorter-term pact that caps their earning power and leaves them with smaller guarantees than less-productive (but still quality) contributors who can more plausibly push for a long-term deal.

As we’ve seen with recent mega-deals for Juan Soto and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., age is king when it comes to unlocking the richest deals MLB has to offer. The best way a player can position himself for a monster contract is to get to free agency at as young an age as possible — and, of course, do so while turning in excellent results at the plate or on the mound.

One notable and somewhat enigmatic name that’s dropped off our list entirely, for now, is NPB slugger Munetaka Murakami. The 25-year-old corner infielder has played in only one game so far in 2025 due to an oblique strain. Reports dating all the way back to Dec. 2022 indicated that Murakami would be posted following the 2025 season. At the time, he was fresh off a 56-homer MVP campaign, wherein he hit .318/.458/.710 as a 22-year-old. The sky is the limit for that blend of power production and youth. Murakami’s numbers slipped in 2023-24, however. He still popped a combined 64 homers but did so with mounting strikeout rates and increasing struggles against higher-end velocity. Now with an injury that’s sidelined him effectively all season and minimal clarity as to a potential return date — or even whether he still plans to pursue MLB opportunities this winter — he’s been dropped to our honorable mention section. If Murakami returns in June and bashes 20 to 30 homers with strong rate stats over the final few months of the NPB season, he’ll jump right back onto this list — probably onto the top half. For now, he’s something of an unknown, and we’re choosing to focus on more known commodities with a surefire path to the open market.

Onto the updated rankings!

1. Kyle Tucker, OF, Cubs

Stats since last edition: .268/.365/.479, seven home runs, 12 steals, 13.8 BB%, 12 K%

No change here. Tucker fell into a brief slump in mid-May where he tallied just six hits in 11 games, but broke out of that funk with consecutive three-hit games that included a home run. The 28-year-old Tucker is batting .281/.388/.525 with a dozen homers and 15 stolen bases at the one-third mark of the Cubs’ season. He’s on pace for about 35 homers and 45 steals — all while walking more than he’s struck out (15.1% versus 12%) — and is also on pace to top the century mark in both runs and RBIs.

The only possible dings on Tucker’s season so far is that defensive metrics like DRS and OAA both feel he’s been a bit below average. You could point out that he’s not playing at quite as torrid a pace last year in terms of his rate stats, but if we’re resorting to “he’s only 51% better than average rather than 80% better like last year,” that’s officially grasping at straws territory. Tucker is a bona fide superstar who won’t turn 29 until January. He’ll have a qualifying offer hanging over him, but interested parties won’t care about sacrificing a draft pick and international funds if Tucker holds this pace and finishes the season around his current seven- to eight-WAR pace. Nothing Tucker has done this season should dissuade fans from thinking his next contract will at least start with a 4, and it very well could top the half-billion threshold.

2. Dylan Cease, RHP, Padres

Stats since last edition: 44 1/3 innings, 3.45 ERA, 29.8 K%, 7.7 BB%

Cease is still lugging a 4.58 ERA in late May, but that’s due almost entirely to an April 8 bludgeoning at the hands of the A’s. He hasn’t given up more than three runs in any of his other starts, and his production since that regrettable outing is exactly the type you’d expect from a pitcher of this caliber. The 29-year-old righty has done his best work of late, holding opponents to nine runs with a 33-to-5 K/BB ratio over his past four starts (at Yankee Stadium, home versus the Angels, at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, at Atlanta’s Truist Park). He’s pitched into the seventh inning in three of those four starts. Metrics like FIP (3.24) and SIERA (3.20) feel that Cease’s ERA should be at least a full run lower.

He’s had a few shorter outings this season — none more so than that A’s hiccup — but Cease has taken the ball 11 times and continued to pitch like the sport’s most durable starter. He’s never been on the major league injured list and leads MLB in games started dating back to 2020. Assuming he continues to distance himself from that A’s meltdown, this would be Cease’s third sub-4.00 ERA in four seasons, including a Cy Young runner-up effort back in 2022. His 96.8 mph average fastball is as strong as ever. This year’s gaudy 15.7% swinging-strike rate would actually be a career-high, as would his 33.8% opponents’ chase rate. Cease won’t turn 30 until December. He’s a lock to reject a qualifying offer, and he’ll have a real chance at surpassing $200MM in free agency based on his age, power repertoire, swing-and-miss ability and unrivaled durability.

3. Alex Bregman, 3B, Red Sox

Stats since last update: .305/.407/.602, nine homers, 11 doubles, 17.3 K%, 12 BB%

Bregman was on one of the hottest streaks of his career prior to a recent quadriceps strain that will sideline him for more than a month — possibly close to two. It’s awful timing given just how excellent Bregman was prior to the injury, but the strength of that performance still puts a substantial payday on the table in a way it may not have been just this past offseason.

Bregman had to shake off the stink of an early slump last year — one of the worst six-week stretches of his career. When he finally did so, he did it in a way that still raised some red flags. Namely, Bregman’s walk rate even during his good stretch over the final four months of the 2024 campaign was about half what it’d been in prior seasons. There were genuine questions about his approach at the plate, and he carried a career-worst (in a full season) .315 on-base percentage into free agency.

This year’s walk rate is just shy of 10%, and as noted already, it was up to 12% during his recent run of excellence. Bregman has never hit the ball as hard as he has in 2025. He’s averaging 92 mph off the bat — up from his previous career-high of 89.4 mph — and sporting a 48.1% hard-hit rate that’s a career-best by more than eight percentage points.

If Bregman returns from his quad injury and struggles, it will unquestionably impact his earning power. If he returns and looks like the hitter he’s been through his first 226 plate appearances, he might have a case to top the precedent-setting contracts secured by Freddie Freeman (six years, $162MM) and Matt Chapman (six years, $151MM) ahead of their age-32 campaigns (the same age Bregman will be in free agency). He won’t have a qualifying offer this time around, and this type of offensive performance, coupled with Bregman’s glove and the type of clubhouse demeanor and leadership teams covet, could push him past $175MM and might even have $200MM in play.

Injury notwithstanding, there might not be a player in baseball who’s helped his free agent case as much as Bregman with his blistering start.

4. Framber Valdez, LHP, Astros

Stats since last update: 51 innings, 3.71 ERA, 20.8 K%, 7.7 BB%, 57.2 GB%

Valdez’s stats since the publish of our initial rankings are skewed by one awful start the night those rankings were released. He was torched for seven runs in St. Louis but has rebounded tremendously, as one would expect for a top-tier starter. Anyone looks better when you sweep their worst performance under the rug, but Valdez has a 2.68 ERA, 21.7% strikeout rate and 59% ground-ball rate across his past 47 innings.

Valdez might not come to mind right away when MLB fans try to rattle off the league’s best pitchers, but he’s a hard-throwing, durable lefty who misses bats and limits walks at strong rates and is perhaps the sport’s premier ground-ball pitcher (at least in regard to starting pitchers). Virtually no one in MLB can be relied upon for as many innings per start as Valdez, who’s completed six or more frames in eight of his 11 outings. He’s ninth in the majors in innings pitched despite six of the eight names ahead of him having an extra start under their belts. In an era where pitchers increasingly depart the game after five frames, Valdez has averaged 6 1/3 innings per start since 2021 — and done so with a pristine 3.11 ERA, roughly average strikeout and walk rates, and the second-highest ground-ball rate of any starter in baseball (61.9% to Andre Pallante’s 62%).

The only thing holding Valdez back is his age. He’ll turn 32 in November. As shown in MLBTR’s Contract Tracker, there have only been four starting pitchers in the past 15 years to land a free-agent contract of five years or more beginning in their age-32 campaign (or later): Cliff Lee (five years, $125MM in 2010), Zack Greinke (six years, $206.5MM in 2015), Jacob deGrom (five years, $185MM in 2022) and Blake Snell (five years, $182MM just this past offseason).

If Valdez were a year younger, we might realistically be talking about a six-year contract. Most teams will probably be pushing for him on a high-AAV four-year deal instead, but Valdez is (somewhat quietly) so good that he’ll have a real chance to follow Snell as a recent exception to that rule about long-term deals for 32-year-old pitchers.

5. Bo Bichette, SS, Blue Jays

Stats since last update: .261/.310/.427, five homers, four steals, 16.7 K%, 6.5 BB%

On the last set of rankings, we noted that while Bichette’s general batting line was fairly pedestrian, he was back to making loud contact and putting the ball in play with great frequency. All of the ingredients for an uptick in power seemed to be in place, and if Bichette can hit like he did from 2019-23, most will overlook a down year at the plate during a 2024 season in which he was clearly hobbled by injury. Twenty-eight-year-old shortstops with plus hit tools, above-average power and above-average speed don’t come around all that often on the open market.

Since that writing, the power has indeed begun to manifest. Bichette has homered five times in his past 168 plate appearances and cracked another 11 doubles. He’s still not producing at an elite rate, but he’s averaging 91.3 mph off the bat with a 49.7% hard-hit rate. Those are very strong numbers that fall right in line with his 2019-23 batted-ball metrics. Bichette is hitting more line drives, fewer grounders and has popped up at a much lower rate. He’s still “only” about 8% better than average at the plate, but Statcast credits him with an “expected” batting average of .310, nearly 40 points higher than his current mark, and an “expected” slugging percentage of .495 — almost 90 points north of his current level.

In reality, Bichette is probably going to either position himself for a huge contract in free agency or follow the path taken by Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman and others over the years: sign an opt-out-laden, short-term deal that can get him back to market as soon as possible. At least for the time being, all of the arrows on his batted-ball profile are pointing up. If he can put together a big summer, then as recently laid out by MLBTR’s Darragh McDonald, there’s no reason to think he can’t push for a contract somewhere in the Dansby Swanson ($177MM) to Carlos Correa ($200MM) range.

6. Michael King, RHP, Padres

Stats since last update: 33 1/3 innings, 2.70 ERA, 29.9 K%, 6.7 BB%

King seemingly bolsters his case every time he takes the mound. He’s currently unable to do so, sitting on the 15-day IL due to inflammation in his right shoulder, but there’s no indication it’s a serious injury. The Padres called it a pinched nerve, which has an uncertain timeline, but said there’s nothing wrong structurally (link via AJ Cassavell of MLB.com). If he returns in short order and keeps up his prior pace, he’s going to cash in handsomely.

King is still relatively new to starting. This is only his second full season in a rotation, but he’s been borderline elite ever since moving into the role. He’s averaging 5 2/3 innings per start this season — same as in 2024 — and currently boasts a 2.95 ERA with a 28.4% strikeout rate and 7.6% walk rate. Both are slight improvements over his strikeout and walk rates from 2024, and both (the strikeout rate in particular) are better than the league average.

Since the Yankees put King into the rotation late in 2023, he’s started 49 games with a 2.70 ERA, 28.4% strikeout rate and 7.5% walk rate — a near-mirror image of what he’s done in this season’s 10 starts. It’s not the most conventional path to top-of-the-rotation status, but King increasingly looks the part of a genuine Game 1 or Game 2 playoff starter. He’s not necessarily flashy, averaging 93.7 mph on his heater and sporting good-but-not-elite rate stats. It doesn’t matter, though. The end results are excellent and appear sustainable.

King turned 30 last weekend. That makes the 2026 season technically his age-31 campaign, though the age gap between him and Zac Gallen is only a matter of about three months. It’s a bit misleading to call next season King’s age-31 season and Gallen’s age-30 season; they’re both right on the cusp of the arbitrary July 1 cutoff that’s generally accepted for that designation.

Because King started his big league career in the bullpen, his camp can argue that he has lesser mileage on his arm than most of the other pitchers on this list — while rivaling virtually any of them in quality. If he keeps this pace up, he’s a slam dunk to reject a qualifying offer, and a five-year deal seems like the floor. Six years and an annual value in the $25MM vicinity would very likely be on the table.

7. Cody Bellinger, 1B/OF, Yankees

Stats since last update: .279/.356/.507, seven homers, nine doubles, 14.4 K%, 11.3 BB%

Here we go again. The near perennial conundrum that is Bellinger’s free agent status is again being thrust into the spotlight. Bellinger has shaken off a terrible start to his season and looks well on his way to a better season at the plate than the good-not-great performance he turned in last year in his final season as a Cub.

At present, Bellinger’s .258/.329/.457 slash checks in 20% better than average, according to the wRC+ metric (which weights for a hitter-friendly home setting in the Bronx). The recent hot streak, however, suggests that his season batting line will end up a good bit north of that rate still.

Bellinger will have several things going for him in this bite at the free-agent apple that he didn’t in the past. He was a non-tender coming off two terrible years in the 2022-23 offseason, when he signed a one-year deal with the Cubs. He turned in a brilliant 2023 season, but his market that winter was clouded by skepticism regarding his performance in 2021-22 and a pretty lackluster batted-ball profile that pointed to regression. He also had a qualifying offer with which to contend. After returning to the Cubs on a three-year, $80MM deal with a pair of opt-outs, he had a decent but not great year at the plate in 2024. He chose to forgo an opt-out last winter, recognizing that he could pocket $32.5MM more on his current deal and opt out again if he hit well in 2025.

He’s not just hitting well this year, he’s eliminating the red flags that plagued him previously. The ugly 87.9 mph average exit velocity and 31.4% hard-hit rate he showed in ’23 have been replaced by marks of 90 mph and 40.5%. Below-average walk rates in 2023-24 have been swapped out for a hearty 10.3% mark this year. Is he selling out for power and improved batted-ball contact at the expense of contact? Nope. His 17.8% strikeout rate is up from the 15.6% mark he posted in 2022-23, but his swinging-strike rate is actually down to a career-low 8.8%. As noted already, his strikeout rate since the last MLBTR Power Rankings is just over 14%.

Bellinger won’t have a qualifying offer. It’s crazy to think he’s still only 29, since we’ve been talking about him as a free agent for three years now. His return to free agency will come ahead of his age-30 season, and all the arrows are pointing up. A nine-figure deal will be in play if this keeps up, and it’s easy to imagine Bellinger and Scott Boras taking aim at George Springer’s $150MM guarantee or Brandon Nimmo’s $162MM guarantee.

8. Ranger Suarez, LHP, Phillies

Stats since last update: 30 1/3 innings, 2.97 ERA, 24.6 K%, 7.9 BB%, 47.6 GB%

Suarez missed the first five weeks of the season with a back injury — a concerning start to his platform season even before considering that this is now his second straight year missing a month or more due to back troubles. In 2023, he was limited to just 22 starts by a hamstring strain and an elbow strain.

That’s a whole lot of ominous injury history, but Suarez’s performance when he’s on the mound rarely disappoints. That’s eminently true in 2025, when he’s roared out of the gates with a sub-3.00 ERA and better-than-average strikeout, walk and ground-ball rates. His average fastball, which dipped to a career-low 91.8 mph last year, is back up to 92.3 mph. It’s not quite to the 93.4 mph he averaged in 2023, but it’s still a positive trend.

Whenever Suarez is healthy, he’s a good bet to average about 5 2/3 innings per start while turning in strikeout, walk and ground-ball rates that are comfortably better than average. He’s rarely posted elite marks in any of those categories (save, perhaps, for 2022’s grounder rate of 55.4%), but Suarez consistently performs like a No. 2-3 starter. He’s a legitimate option for a postseason rotation and has been deployed as such by the Phils dating back to 2022. Oh, and his results in those playoff starts? Suarez has 37 2/3 postseason frames in his career, all coming as a starter with the Phillies, and he’s logged an immaculate 1.43 ERA with a 26.1% strikeout rate and 7.8% walk rate.

Suarez might not be the first name that springs to mind when thinking about $100MM starters, but he won’t turn 30 until August and should have a chance to land in the $110-115MM range achieved by Robbie Ray and Kevin Gausman a few years back. If he keeps up his current pace, he could even top the AAV on those five-year deals by a few million.

9. Pete Alonso, 1B, Mets

Stats since last update: .279/.376/.500, seven homers, 11 doubles, 24.3 K%, 11.6 BB%

Alonso opened the 2025 season on one of the most epic slugging binges of any hitter in recent memory. His April stats look like something out of Rookie mode from MLB: The Show. The Polar Bear slashed .343/.474/.657 through the end of April (214 wRC+) — and he did it with a near 17% walk rate and a strikeout rate shy of 15%.

That carried into the first few days of May, but Alonso has cooled considerably over his past 20 games, hitting .192/.244/.321. Worse yet, that incredible K-BB profile has gone up in flames. He’s punched out in 33.7% of his plate appearances during this slump against just a 5.8% walk rate. Alonso has two multi-hit games in this stretch compared to seven hitless performances. His 93.1 mph average exit velocity and 49% hard-hit rate are still great, but they’re nowhere near the 95.3 mph and 59.4% marks he carried through May 5.

Alonso’s early heroics still carry some weight, and if he can break out of these May doldrums and continue onward near his composite .290/.391/.541 batting line, he’s going to be compensated very nicely in free agency. His ultimate payday hinges on whether he’s closer to April’s Dr. Jekyll or May’s Mr. Hyde, but Alonso won’t have a qualifying offer hanging over him in free agency this time around and could top $100MM with another four months of mostly productive slugging.

10. Kyle Schwarber, DH/OF, Phillies

Stats since last update: .250/.390/.549, 13 homers, 17.5% BB%, 23.7% K%

While many of the other hitters in the class have struggled and/or battled injury, Schwarber has remained an impact power presence in the middle of Philadelphia’s lineup. He’s tied for second in the majors with 19 home runs and owns a massive .252/.394/.569 slash line across 249 plate appearances. He’s trending towards a career season, leveling up from an already excellent first three years with the Phils.

Schwarber carries a .224/.349/.496 slash over the course of his four-year, $79MM free agent deal. He’s one of three players (joining Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani) with at least 150 homers since the start of the 2022 season. Schwarber may not provide much value outside the batter’s box, but he’s on the shortlist of the sport’s best sluggers right now.

If this list were based solely on the player’s platform year performance, Schwarber would be in the top five. He’s off that pace in a list based on earning power. As MLBTR’s Darragh McDonald covered in much greater detail last week, the market generally doesn’t look kindly on designated hitters or position players approaching their mid-30s. Schwarber will be entering his age-33 season — a time at which hitters almost never get to five years or $25MM annually. He’ll probably buck the latter trend, with a four-year deal around $25MM per season giving him the best chance to reach nine figures. A higher AAV over three years that results in an $80-90MM guarantee isn’t out of the question.

The Phillies will make an effort to keep him around. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported in April that Schwarber had rejected an offseason extension proposal. Talks didn’t progress at the time. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski told Jon Heyman and Joel Sherman of The New York Post this week that the Phils “would love to keep him as part of the organization for the long term, no doubt.” At the very least, they’ll make him a qualifying offer to ensure they get draft compensation if he walks.

Honorable Mentions (listed alphabetically): Shane Bieber, Zach Eflin, Jack Flaherty, Zac Gallen, Paul Goldschmidt, Trent Grisham, Ryan Helsley, Rhys Hoskins, Tyler Mahle, Munetaka Murakami, Cedric Mullins, Josh Naylor, Ryan O’Hearn, Robert Suarez, Gleyber Torres, Luke Weaver

Poll: Can Willy Adames Turn Things Around?

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2025 has been a good time to be a Giants fan so far. Buster Posey’s turn at the helm of baseball operations has helped push the club to a solid 31-25 start, putting them just one game back of the Cardinals for the final NL Wild Card spot and three games back of the Dodgers for the NL West crown. While San Francisco would surely prefer to be in playoff position right now, it’s been a very encouraging start for a club that was projected by Fangraphs for an 81-81 record and a 28.5% chance of making the postseason prior to the start of the 2025 campaign. Strong as the club’s start has been, however, that’s been almost entirely without contribution from their marquee free agent signing of the 2024-25 offseason.

It’s been a rough first year in San Francisco for Willy Adames, to put it mildly. Long viewed as an excellent two-way shortstop, Adames has yet to post on either side of the ball for the Giants. Advanced defensive metrics are notoriously finicky and take quite a long time to stabilize, but Adames’s -3 Outs Above Average and -2 Fielding Run Value are both worrying figures for a player who was a Gold Glove candidate as recently as 2023, while his -8 DRS this year stands dead last among all qualifying shortstops. Errors are hardly the best way to measure defensive value, but only Manny Machado and Elly De La Cruz have committed more of them in 2025. No matter how you slice it, Adames has started his stay in the Bay Area off with lackluster defense.

Perhaps that would be easy enough to look past if Adames was putting up strong numbers at the plate. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. He’s hitting just .208/.288/.333 with a wRC+ of 77. His 26.2% strikeout rate and 9.8% walk rate aren’t out of the ordinary relative to his career numbers, but they are the worst figures he’s posted in both categories since 2022. The primary red flag in Adames’s profile this year is his vanishing power, however. After averaging 28 homers a season from 2021 to 2024, the shortstop has hit just five in his first 56 games as a Giant.

At least some of that can be blamed on his ballpark, and Statcast suggests that Adames would have as many as eight homers if he played all of his games at a friendlier ballpark like Dodger Stadium. Park factors aren’t the only thing to blame for Adames’s power-outage, however. While his barrel rate of 11% is more or less in line with what he’s done throughout his career, Adames is pulling the ball less often than he ever did with the Brewers and hitting the ball softly more frequently than ever before. The fact that Adames has stopped pulling the ball as much and is hitting it the other way more is surely a big reason for his drop in power, particularly combined with the aforementioned unforgiving park factors at Oracle Park, which are especially harsh on right-handed oppo hitters.

That leaves Adames with an altered batted ball profile that works in tandem with his new environment to create some of the worst results of his career. That means his struggles aren’t likely to end so long as he keeps going the other way, but the good news is that Adames can get back to the approach he demonstrated in 2023 and ’24, when he pulled 45.8% of his batted balls and went the other way just 19.5% of the time, it’s not hard to imagine his results improving considerably. While it may be too late in the season at this point to expect Adames to match his 119 wRC+ from last year, getting back up around league average or even matching the 107 wRC+ he posted over the last four years could be a much more realistic target.

How do MLBTR readers think the rest of Adames’s season will play out from here? Will he be able to make the adjustments necessary to hit well in Oracle Park and turn his season around, or will he remain a below-average hitter this season? Have your say in the poll below:

Can Willy Adames Turn Things Around In 2025?
No, he'll continue to struggle and post a below-average season. 51.21% (1,677 votes)
Yes, he'll finish the year as an average or better hitter. 48.79% (1,598 votes)
Total Votes: 3,275

The Yankees’ Outfielders Raising Their Free Agent Stocks

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For the second straight season, the Yankees have the best outfield in baseball. Having the best hitter on the planet is an excellent starting point. This level of dominance can't all come from Aaron Judge, though. Last season, Juan Soto paired with Judge as an all-time 1-2 offensive punch. It seemed almost impossible for the outfield to match last year's .266/.377/.516 line after losing Soto to free agency.

They've instead improved upon that monster production through this season's first two months. Yankee outfielders carry a .293/.380/.533 slash. They lead MLB with 37 home runs and trail only the Cubs with 113 runs batted in. They're handily above the rest of the league in all three slash stats. The Cubs are the only team that is particularly close in terms of FanGraphs' Wins Above Replacement.

Judge somehow elevating from a .322/.458/.701 performance is the biggest factor. Yet the Yankees have largely offset the loss of production from Soto -- at least so far -- by not having anyone close to last season's weak link, Alex Verdugo. That's a testament mostly to Cody Bellinger and Trent Grisham, each of whom have gotten out to excellent starts. (Jasson Domínguez has decent numbers overall as well, though most of that comes from a three-homer barrage in Sacramento on May 9.) The early paces from Bellinger and Grisham provide the Yankees needed lineup depth around Judge and Paul Goldschmidt. They're also significant factors for what looks to be a shallow upcoming free agent class behind Kyle Tucker.

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Poll: Should The Rangers Shake Up The Lineup?

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The Rangers have had a rough go of it so far in the month of May. They’ve gone just 11-15 on the month entering play today, including an embarrassing sweep at the hands of the White Sox last week, and three of those 11 wins came at the expense of a hapless Rockies club that has still not yet won its tenth game of the season. That’s left the team three games under .500, four games back in the AL Wild Card race, and 4.5 games back of the Mariners in the AL West. Those struggles have come in spite of a rotation so dominant that a fully healthy and effective Jacob deGrom is arguably the #3 starter this year by the results.

To find the culprit of the Rangers’ struggles, one need look no further than the starting lineup. The club’s hitters have posted a collective .219/.281/.354 slash line this year with a wRC+ of 80 that’s better than only that of the Pirates and Rockies. Texas has the lowest on-base percentage in the majors and the fewest runs scored in the AL. Going position-by-position, they have been in the bottom half of the league in wRC+ at almost every position in the majors with below-average production everywhere except third base and left field. Those positions are salvaged by standout performances from Josh Jung and Wyatt Langford, but the rest of the lineup is faltering.

That’s not to say there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, however. Josh Smith remains an above average hitter overall on the year, and perhaps he can shake his current cold stretch (.233/.295/.337 in May) once he’s relieved of the defensive rigors of serving as the club’s everyday shortstop. Smith took that role up in the absence of Corey Seager, who has been his typical excellent self when healthy but has appeared in just 27 games this season due to injuries. Seager’s recent return and the likely impending return of Evan Carter from the injured list leaves the Rangers with some decisions to make about their lineup, as discussed recently by Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News.

Seager’s return yesterday (albeit as a DH) pushed Sam Haggerty out of the lineup, but that leaves no room for Carter unless the club is willing to pull the plug on outfielder Alejandro Osuna despite him having looked good in his first cup of coffee as a big leaguer. Once Carter returns, Grant suggests that it could mean a shift in playing time for second baseman Marcus Semien and/or right fielder Adolis Garcia. Both veterans were key pieces of the club’s 2023 World Series championship but struggled through below-average (99 wRC+ for Semien, 92 for Garcia) seasons last year. 2025 has been far worse for both hitters, with Semien slashing just .173/.260/.224 (42 wRC+) on the year while Garcia has posted a lackluster .208/.256/.371 (74 wRC+) line.

The pair’s expected numbers are better than their current production, leaving the door cracked open to optimism for a rebound, but even those numbers would be good for merely average offensive production. As things stand, neither of those performances are acceptable for a big league regular. With the first two months of the season in the books and other hitters starting to get healthy, the leash for both veterans may be shortening. It’s hard to imagine the Rangers cutting either player (particularly with three years and $72MM left on Semien’s deal after 2025), but some sort of change appears to be necessary.

On paper, using lefty hitters on the club like Smith and Osuna as platoon partners for the righty-swinging Semien and Garcia could make some sense. A look under the hood reveals that may not be as helpful as it might seem, however; Garcia is actually roughly average (99 wRC+) against right-handed pitching this year but has gone just 7-for-48 with one walk and one double against southpaws. Semien, meanwhile, is hitting lefties better than righties but is striking out at a 30.8% clip against southpaws with a 51 wRC+. Whatever advantage he has against opposite-handed pitching is more of a commentary on his struggles against fellow righties than a sign of actual success.

If neither player makes sense as a candidate for a platoon role, then perhaps the Rangers’ best option would simply be to decrease the playing time of both hitters slightly. A reduction in playing time could be tough to stomach for the veterans, particularly in the case of an iron man like Semien who last played less than 159 games in a full season back in 2017, but it seems clear that something needs to change for the Rangers moving forward. The club could also consider benching either one for the time being to offer a physical breather and mental reset, but Semien’s solid defense at second base would be missed and, as previously mentioned, Garcia has performed decently enough at least against right-handed pitching.

How would MLBTR readers handle the situation? Would you fully bench one of the two struggling veterans, continue sticking with them as regulars in the lineup, or try to work out a timeshare between all of the Rangers’ bats? Have your say in the poll below:

What Should The Rangers Do About Their Lineup?
Garcia and Semien should both have their playing time reduced slightly, but not so much that either becomes a bench player. 61.58% (1,016 votes)
Marcus Semien should be benched for the time being. 14.85% (245 votes)
Alejandro Osuna should be sent to Triple-A so both Semien and Garcia can remain in the lineup full-time. 12.97% (214 votes)
Adolis Garcia should be benched for the time being. 10.61% (175 votes)
Total Votes: 1,650

Poll: Can The Guardians Hang Onto A Playoff Spot?

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The Guardians made it all the way to the ALCS last year while dominating an AL Central division that sent three teams to the playoffs, and over the offseason they augmented their lineup with players like Carlos Santana, Nolan Jones, and Luis Ortiz. While that hasn’t been enough to prevent the Tigers from becoming the kings of the hill in the division, it’s still been more than enough to keep the Guardians firmly in the AL playoff picture throughout the year. They currently sport a solid 29-25 record, which leaves them tied with the Astros in the standings for the second of three AL Wild Card spots.

Cracks have begun to show in Cleveland’s armor, however. Their 93 wRC+ as a team gives them the eighth-worst offense in the majors this year, down from last year’s 100 wRC+ that was dead-on average and good for a median 8th in the AL. The rotation, similarly, is in the bottom eight in baseball by measure of both ERA (4.21) and FIP (4.52) this year. That’s actually one spot better than last year’s team, which ranked seventh from the bottom in rotation ERA (4.40) and FIP (4.51), but the pitching has deteriorated overall thanks to a massive step back for the club’s once-impenetrable bullpen.

Relievers have always been fickle when it comes to year-to-year performance, and evidently even a group as dominant as the Guardians’ 2024 bullpen is subject to variance. After leading baseball in both ERA (2.57) and FIP (3.30) out of the pen by a substantial margin last year, this year’s relief corps is actually below average by ERA (4.01), and has fallen to eighth in the majors (3.58) by measure of FIP. For a team that leaned so heavily on elite performances from pieces like Emmanuel Clase and Cade Smith last year, a leaky bullpen is a major concern.

On some level, it’s impressive that the Guards have been able to win even this much given their backsliding offense and much weaker contributions from the bullpen. With that being said, those flaws have made them the only team presently in playoff position in either league with a negative run differential; they’ve allowed 20 more runs than they’ve scored entering play today, and the next weakest mark among that group is held by a Padres club that has done the inverse, with 20 more runs scored than allowed.

Will Cleveland be able to either improve those underlying numbers, or continue winning in spite of them? One thing that should benefit them is that their bullpen’s underlying metrics remain strong. As previously mentioned, they remain a top-ten club by bullpen FIP, and their relief corps’s 3.39 SIERA is good for an even better sixth in the majors. There’s some positive signs on offense, too, with Jones significantly under-performing his expected metrics and Lane Thomas likely to improve his performance the longer he’s back from the injured list. The rotation should get reinforcements eventually, as well, with longtime ace Shane Bieber expected back from Tommy John surgery at some point this year.

Even if those players don’t manage to turn things around, the Guardians could still benefit from a weak AL playoff field. While no team within even six games of a playoff spot in the NL has a negative run differential entering play today, the Royals, Rangers, and Blue Jays all have negative run differentials and make up three of the four teams within three games of an AL Wild Card spot. Unlike the Guardians, those clubs haven’t been so fortunate as to substantially outperform their expected records in the early going, with Texas and Toronto in particular both underwater at present. Each of those teams have their own flaws and challenges that could make it hard for them to catch the Guardians, while a more well-constructed club like the Red Sox just lost Alex Bregman and is currently on a four-game skid that leaves them 3.5 games behind Cleveland.

How do MLBTR readers view the Guardians’ playoff situation? Will they be able to hold onto their position in the playoff race for the long haul in spite of the early red flags? Or will another team emerge to push them out of the conversation? Have your say in the poll below:

Will The Guardians Make The Playoffs In 2025?
Yes, they'll be able to hold on despite some shaky underlying numbers. 55.35% (1,008 votes)
No, they'll regress going forward and be overtaken by another club. 44.65% (813 votes)
Total Votes: 1,821

Can The Marlins’ Top Slugger Keep This Up?

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Marlins fans don’t have much to root for this year, especially given the disastrous results Sandy Alcantara has gotten in his first ten starts back from Tommy John surgery. Miami’s 21-31 record is already enough to put them nine games out of a Wild Card spot and 12.5 games back of the Phillies in the NL East. Given the fact that the Fish are already buried in the standings and Alcantara is struggling, it would be easy to expect this season to be little more than waiting for Eury Perez to get healthy and watching Max Meyer develop at the big league level.

Kyle Stowers has changed that with a phenomenal start to the season. Acquired from the Orioles alongside infielder Connor Norby at the trade deadline last year in exchange for lefty Trevor Rogers, Stowers showed very little in his first 50 games with the Marlins. In 172 plate appearances with Miami last year, he hit a paltry .186/.262/.295 (56 wRC+) with minimal power and a massive 35.5% strikeout rate. That left him with a lot to prove headed into 2025, especially given that he celebrated his 27th birthday back in January.

Fortunately for both Stowers and the Marlins, he’s gone well beyond looking like an everyday player in the majors in the early part of the year. In 204 plate appearances, Stowers has recorded a terrific .300/.369/.528 slash with ten home runs and a wRC+ of 145. That’s a top-25 offensive performance in the majors this year, on par with stars like Corbin Carroll and Jose Ramirez. That sort of offensive firepower would provide a much-needed boost to the Marlins’ lineup as they try to push through this latest rebuild — if Stowers can sustain it.

When looking at Stowers’ underlying metrics, the results are a mixed bag with some surface level peripherals telling different stories than others. The slugger’s .396 xwOBA is actually better than his .387 wOBA, which typically suggests that a player is more than earning his production. On the other hand, Stowers has undeniably benefited from a .379 BABIP, the seventh-highest figure in the majors so far this year and nine points higher than Seiya Suzuki’s 2024 performance, which led all qualified hitters. Stowers has tended toward high BABIP figures throughout his young MLB career, but that figure is almost certain to come down. That means he’s unlikely to remain a .300 hitter, particularly given his improved but still elevated 27.5% strikeout rate.

An explanation for Stowers’ impressive numbers can be found, to some extent, in one simple fact: he hits the ball hard very frequently. The outfielder’s 53.5% hard-hit rate this year is good for 16th in the majors among qualified hitters. His 91.5 mph average exit velocity is within the top 50, and perhaps most impressively, his 20.5% barrel rate is topped by just four players in baseball this year: Oneil Cruz, Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, and Cal Raleigh. You can’t keep much better company than that in the power department, and as long as Stowers is barreling up one out of every five batted balls, he should be a productive player.

A comparison to Ohtani and Judge might make it seem as though Stowers is a guaranteed budding All-Star, but the reality isn’t quite that simple. That’s because the 27-year-old’s plate discipline is nearly as weak as his batted-ball profile is strong. Stowers swings at virtually everything, with the 12th-highest swing rate (55.7%) in the majors. Most of the players ahead of him on that leaderboard hit the ball incredibly hard, which Stowers does as well, but they also make contact at a solid rate, which Stowers does not. In fact, Stowers’ 69.4% contact rate is the tenth-lowest in baseball this year; only Guardians infielder Gabriel Arias swings more frequently while making contact less often, and his 91 wRC+ isn’t exactly something Stowers should be looking to emulate.

Between his high swing rate and low contact rate, Stowers is left tied for second in baseball behind Arias in swinging-strike rate this year. There’s some room for optimism, as the player he’s tied with is Bryce Harper. Harper has made his high swinging-strike rate work by mostly whiffing at pitches outside of he zone while still laying off those pitches often enough to draw a healthy number of walks. Stowers makes less contact on pitches in the zone than Harper, swings more often, and has a walk rate five percentage points lower than that of the star Phillies slugger.

Taking Stowers’ poor discipline and elite power potential together, it’s easy to see how he could have struggled so badly in his first 50 games with the Marlins while excelling so impressively through his next 50 games. When Stowers is getting his bat on the ball often enough for his power potential to carry his profile, like he is this season, he will likely excel. When that’s not happening and his strikeout rate is closer to the 35.5% clip he posted with the Fish last year, he’s likely to face some serious struggles without the discipline to lay off bad pitches and draw more walks.

How do MLBTR readers think Stowers will fare going forward? Have your say in the poll below:

What does the future hold for Kyle Stowers?
He's an average or better regular, but not quite a star. 66.85% (1,333 votes)
This is a legitimate breakout. He's an All-Star-caliber slugger. 19.46% (388 votes)
He'll be a below-average/part-time role player, at best. 13.69% (273 votes)
Total Votes: 1,994

Poll: Can The Cardinals Keep This Up?

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Today is Memorial Day, and the conventional wisdom in baseball suggests that means the current standings now have more signal than noise moving forward. Perhaps that means it’s time to take the Cardinals, who have been white-hot in recent weeks, more seriously despite the narratives surrounding their quiet offseason and slow start to the year last month. A nine-game win streak earlier this month has helped propel them to a 16-4 record over their past 20 games and a 30-23 record overall. That’s put them in a statistical tie with the Padres for the final NL Wild Card spot as things stand and just two games back of the Cubs in the NL Central.

When looking at the eight teams that have won 30+ games entering Memorial Day, it’s hard to deny that the Cardinals are the most surprising. As previously mentioned, they made virtually no additions this winter as they signed Phil Maton late in the offseason but otherwise stood pat while players like Paul Goldschmidt and Kyle Gibson departed the organization. Perhaps even more surprising is the fact that players who appeared likely to be a big part of any success the Cardinals may have had this year, like youngsters Jordan Walker and Nolan Gorman, are struggling badly. Willson Contreras was a standout at the plate last year but has been merely league average this season and is currently day-to-day with a back injury, while Nolan Arenado is hitting at a below-average clip after the Cards failed to trade him this winter. Even on-paper ace Sonny Gray has a middling 4.06 ERA through 11 starts, and closer Ryan Helsley’s 3.50 ERA is his weakest since 2021.

Instead of the usual suspects, the Cardinals’ successes have come from unlikely places. The best hitter on the team is Brendan Donovan, who has long been a steady piece for St. Louis but now appears to be in the midst of a breakout season in his age-28 campaign with a 140 wRC+ and 2.0 fWAR across 51 games. The ace of the rotation is Matthew Liberatore, who has a 2.73 ERA in ten starts so far despite having never posted an ERA below 4.40 in the big leagues before and not even being assured of a rotation role entering camp this year. Behind Liberatore, Miles Mikolas has turned back the clock in his age-36 season to post a solid 3.51 ERA in his first ten starts and fellow veteran Steven Matz has been brilliant in a swing role with a 1.99 ERA in 31 2/3 innings of work.

All of this surprising performances beg the question: how sustainable can this be? Mikolas, Andre Pallante, and Erick Fedde are all pitching well above their peripherals so far this year. Impressive as he’s been, Ivan Herrera won’t finish the year with a wRC+ above 200. Even Donovan’s .360 BABIP must be looked at with at least some skepticism, as should the league average performance the Cards have gotten out of Victor Scott II and his .368 BABIP. On the other hand, many of the club’s more established players should be expected to improve. Gray and Contreras have both performed to their usual All-Star caliber levels when looking at the underlying metrics, Arenado’s .245 BABIP would be the lowest of his career in a full season, and Lars Nootbaar’s solid 112 wRC+ may be just the tip of the iceberg with his discipline and power potential. There’s also some players, such as Liberatore and Donovan, whose breakouts are fairly convincing even if they aren’t locks to stay quite as good as they have been so far.

Where does that leave the Cardinals? If you look at the playoff odds over at Fangraphs, the answer is likely outside of the final playoff picture. The club is projected by the site for an 84-win season with a 39.1% chance of making the playoffs. If you gave fans in St. Louis those odds at the start of the 2025 season, the vast majority would’ve surely taken that happily. As it stands, however, winning a touch under half their games for the rest of the season would surely be a disappointing outcome after this exciting start to the season. At the same time, it’s not hard to see why projection systems might doubt the Cardinals. The NL Wild Card race has been extremely competitive so far, even with strong teams like the Diamondbacks and Braves struggling to find their footing so far. That could make St. Louis’s best path to the postseason through the NL Central, where the Cubs are projected to win 90 games and have the NL’s easiest schedule the rest of the way.

Where do MLBTR readers believe the Cardinals will end up? Is postseason baseball returning to St. Louis this October, or will this team wind up at home like they did the past two seasons? Have your say in the poll below:

What's In Store For The Cardinals?
The Cardinals will fail to make the postseason in 2025. 62.82% (2,930 votes)
The Cardinals will successfully make the postseason in 2025. 37.18% (1,734 votes)
Total Votes: 4,664

Poll: Can Jeremy Pena Keep This Up?

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It’s been a struggle for the Astros to even keep their heads above water this year thanks to the substantial losses they suffered over the offseason and a large number of lackluster in-season performances. Justin Verlander, Alex Bregman, and Kyle Tucker are all playing elsewhere. Yordan Alvarez is hurt. Jose Altuve, Yainer Diaz, and new addition Christian Walker have all been disappointing so far. And the rotation has virtually no certainty behind Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown. All of that makes staying just 2.5 games back in the AL West an impressive feat in its own right, even if the days of the dynasty that brought home two World Series championships appear to be over.

The development of shortstop Jeremy Pena is a major reason why they’re still in the hunt for the playoffs at all at this point. A third-rounder in the 2018 draft who debuted in 2022 with a brilliant season that earned him a Gold Glove award, Pena has always been a valuable player thanks to his excellent work at shortstop but has never been more than a league average performer at the plate. Entering 2025, the 27-year-old had slashed .261/.307/.399 with a wRC+ of exactly 100 during his MLB career.

As the Cubs demonstrated when they offered Dansby Swanson $177MM to become their starting shortstop, a league average bat with an excellent glove at shortstop is already incredibly valuable. Pena has seemingly taken his game to another level so far this year, however. He’s hitting an excellent .298/.362/.447 with six homers, six steals, and a wRC+ of 132 this season. Those numbers aren’t exactly appearing at the top of any leaderboards this early in the season, when relatively small sample sizes allow baseball’s most fearsome hitters to flirt with a .400 batting average or a 60-homer season virtually every year. But could Pena’s step forward be more sustainable than the typical hot start to a season?

There’s plenty of reason to believe that’s the case. One of the most positive changes in Pena’s profile is his substantially improved plate discipline. After striking out at a 20.4% clip and posting the third-lowest walk rate in the majors among hitters with at least 1500 plate appearances over the past three years, Pena is now one of just 19 qualified hitters with a strikeout rate under 14% this year (13.7%). He’s even walking a bit more frequently, with a 6.2% rate that grades out as merely below average rather than in the conversation for lowest in the league. Those improvements in plate discipline appear to be largely sustainable. Pena is swinging less often than ever (49.0%), and while that’s come with a decrease in swing rate inside the strike zone it’s also allowed him to cut down his swinging strike rate by nearly three points relative to his career norms.

While Pena’s increased passivity in the strike zone could be a cause for concern down the line, for now it seems as though swinging less often is doing wonders for his plate discipline. That willingness to take strikes inside the zone has been offset so far by increased power production. Pena’s .149 ISO to this point in the season doesn’t quite match his rookie campaign, when he launched 22 homers and 20 doubles, but it’s still ten points above his career norms and leaves room for him to flirt with a second 20-homer season after combining for just 25 long balls in 2023 and ’24. If this newfound power proves to be sustainable, that could help Pena avoid opposing pitchers challenging him in the zone more often to exploit the fact that he’s begun to swing less often.

The underlying metrics on Pena’s power output are mixed, however. He’s hitting the ball hard more often than ever before with a 40.1% hard-hit rate that would be the best of his career, but his 6.8% barrel rate is not substantially different from his career 6.2% mark, his average exit velocity is virtually unchanged, and his max exit velocity is actually lower than ever before. His bat speed has actually come down slightly as well. It’s not all bad news, however: in addition to his aforementioned hard-hit rate improvements, Pena is squaring the ball up more often than ever before (28.9%). In all, Pena’s xwOBA (.349) is more or less in line with his wOBA of .355, which suggests that he’s more or less earned his production to this point.

How do MLBTR readers feel about Pena’s strong start to the season? Is it a sustainable step forward for the young hitter, or will he revert back to average with time? Have your say in the poll below:

Will Jeremy Pena be an above average hitter going forward?
Yes, Pena's improved discipline and power output are sustainable enough for him to remain an above average hitter. 58.65% (1,010 votes)
No, Pena's questionable power metrics and passivity at the plate will cause him to regress back to average with time. 41.35% (712 votes)
Total Votes: 1,722

Poll: Did The White Sox Find A Gem In The Rule 5?

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There’s not been much for fans on the South Side of Chicago to get excited about of late. The club’s lengthy rebuild in the 2010s assembled a core that included well-regarded pieces like Lucas Giolito, Dylan Cease, Eloy Jimenez, Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, and Luis Robert Jr. but did not translate to much success on the field; the group ultimately made it to the playoffs in 2020 and ’21 but lost in the first round both years before regressing to an 81-81 record in 2022 and kicking off the latest rebuild.

Since then, White Sox fans have watched that core get dismantled, whether via trades or declined club options, and breakout ace Garrett Crochet followed them out the door over the offseason. Crochet’s excellent pitching performances were the one highlight of the White Sox season this side of the Campfire Milkshake, so that left fans with little to look forward to in 2025… or so we thought. In reality, the White Sox seem to have replaced their dominant ace with another potential front-of-the-rotation arm who came from the most unlikely of places: the Rule 5 draft.

Righty Shane Smith was plucked from the Brewers’ organization and made Chicago’s Opening Day rotation out of Spring Training. It was difficult to know what to expect from Smith, given that an organization as well-regarded for its pitching development as Milwaukee was comfortable leaving the righty unprotected this past winter. That’s quickly proving to have been a mistake. Through his first ten starts of the season, Smith has posted a sterling 2.36 ERA that stands as the eleventh-best figure among qualified starters this year, just ahead of Paul Skenes.

ERA is an imperfect estimator of talent, of course, and Smith’s personal figure is deflated by the fact that a six-run, five-inning outing against the Cubs saw five of those runs scored as unearned. Even setting ERA aside, however, his season has been an impressive one so far: a 3.32 FIP (26th) and 3.57 xERA (t-29th) lend credence to the idea of Smith as a potential front-end arm, even if he isn’t quite in the Cy Young conversation based on those more advanced metrics. Have the White Sox truly found a diamond in the rough, or is Smith’s hot start to his career just a flash in the pan?

Overall, Smith’s profile is a solid one, but there are signs that it’s closer to that of a league average starter than anything else. His 22.0% strikeout rate and 8.1% walk rate are both middle of the pack, and a 45.3% ground ball rate is above-average but not exactly elite. His .259 BABIP and 5.9% home run to fly ball ratio are both top-of-the-scale, but neither of those figures are particularly skill-interactive or sustainable, particularly for a hurler who rarely generates soft contact. If anything, those figures are potential red flags that indicate risk of future regression. Smith’s 3.96 SIERA and 97 xFIP- paint him as a roughly average MLB starter as well, offering all the more reason to think he might regress.

There are reasons for optimism as well, however. Smith generates swinging strikes at a well above average clip, which could be a sign for strikeout potential beyond the average rates that he’s shown to this point. An uptick in strikeouts would raise the floor on his whole profile in a way that could allow him to keep producing at this level. Even without that, however, it’s fair to point out that there have certainly been pitchers who have found consistent MLB success over the years despite mediocre underlying data. Smith’s metrics are better than, as one example, those of Javier Assad on the other side of town. Assad has a career 3.40 ERA across nearly 300 innings in the majors despite lackluster metrics, and that’s a figure any team would happily take from a Rule 5 pick.

How do MLBTR readers think Smith will pan out going forward? Will he be able to find another gear and keep producing like a front-half of the rotation arm, will he settle in as more of a reliable back-end starter, or will this hot start prove to be a total mirage? Have your say in the poll below:

What's next for Shane Smith?
Smith was a savvy addition by the White Sox, but he'll be more of a solidly average starter going forward than anyting else. 63.48% (1,742 votes)
The White Sox pulled off a coup over the winter and Smith will remain a quality, front-half of the rotation arm going forward. 24.93% (684 votes)
Smith's early success is a mirage; like most Rule 5 picks, he won't amount to much going forward. 11.59% (318 votes)
Total Votes: 2,744

Rhys Hoskins’ Offensive Resurgence

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Rhys Hoskins’ first season in Milwaukee was a disappointment. The Brewers signed the veteran slugger to a two-year, $34MM free agent contract over the 2023-24 offseason. Hoskins had missed his entire walk year because of a Spring Training ACL tear. He entered the offseason healthy, and Milwaukee placed a sizable bet — especially by their standards — that he’d look no worse for wear in 2024.

The deal included an opt-out after the first season. The ideal outcome for everyone involved was Hoskins would mash for one year, opt out, potentially receive and reject a qualifying offer, then sign elsewhere on a longer-term contract. That isn’t how things played out. Hoskins started the season well enough, but he hit .203/.285/.395 from the start of June through season’s end. He decided not to opt out, leaving the Brew Crew with a $22MM commitment for a first baseman coming off the worst season of his career. The contract meant they couldn’t drum up trade interest, leaving them to retain Hoskins as the team’s second highest-paid player.

While it wasn’t what the front office had planned, that investment looks a lot better now than it did two months ago. Hoskins has been one of the best hitters in baseball. He’ll take a .300/.402/.500 batting line into tonight’s series opener in Pittsburgh. He joins Aaron Judge, Freddie Freeman and Will Smith as the only four hitters with at least 100 plate appearances and the rare .300/.400/.500+ triple slash.

Hoskins looks like the impact bat he was throughout his tenure in Philadelphia. He’s taking walks at a characteristically excellent 14% rate while striking out at a manageable 22.3% clip. He has hit seven home runs while averaging 91.4 MPH on batted balls. It’s an across the board improvement relative to his first season in Milwaukee. He’s taking more free passes, striking out less often, and making more authoritative contact. This has been a better start than his strong first two months of last season. He carried a .239/.342/.471 slash with fewer walks and hard-hit balls through the end of May 2024.

It’s true that Hoskins has benefitted from a career-high .362 average on balls in play. That’s going to come down, and Hoskins is highly unlikely to hit above .300 all year. He was more reliably a .245 hitter for the Phillies. That’s a fairer baseline. That’s also sufficient for a player with 25-30 home run pop and an extremely disciplined plate approach. Hoskins was consistently around 25-30 percent better than an average hitter during his time in Philadelphia, as measured by wRC+. That was enough to make him a top 40 or so hitter in MLB.

Hoskins’ rebound also figures to make him an interesting trade candidate. The Brewers are out to a 24-26 start, putting them fourth in the NL Central. They’re six games back in the division and 4.5 out of the Wild Card race with five teams to jump. They’re certainly not out of it with more than 110 games to make up the gap, yet they’re also not clear-cut contenders as they were every season between 2018-24.

Even if the Brewers don’t find themselves as true “sellers,” they could try to move Hoskins. Like many small-market contenders, Milwaukee tends to take a more flexible trade approach — shopping expensive veterans with dwindling club control windows while targeting cheaper players who could immediately contribute to the MLB team. Hoskins would be a candidate for that kind of move even if the Brewers are at or slightly above .500 in July.

On the one hand, Hoskins would be a straightforward trade candidate as one of the best available rental bats. The Red Sox need first base help after the Triston Casas injury. The Giants have gotten a dismal .193/.294/.339 line from their first basemen and could use a short-term bridge before calling upon top prospect Bryce Eldridge. (That Hoskins is a Sacramento native who attended Sacramento State would be an added bonus.) The Mariners, Twins and Reds are other teams that could upgrade at first base.

That’s complicated by the contract, which could be onerous for some teams. Hoskins is living up to his salary in a vacuum, but many clubs are reluctant to take on significant money midseason. There will still be roughly $5.6MM of his $18MM salary to be paid from the deadline through the end of the regular season. More notably, there’s a $4MM buyout on an $18MM mutual option for 2026. The option is going to be declined — quite likely by Hoskins — and the team will need to pay the buyout on February 1, 2026. That might be a bigger stumbling block for an acquiring club. It’s possible teams will want the Brewers to cover a portion of the buyout to facilitate a trade.

Teams may negotiate conditional cash considerations for option buyouts in trade talks; last summer’s trade of Eloy Jiménez from the White Sox to Baltimore is one recent example. That’s not an option on waivers, however. Hypothetically, say the Brewers hold Hoskins past the deadline but fall firmly out of contention in August. It’s possible they’d take the increasingly common approach of trying to dump his salary by placing him on outright waivers before the September 1 deadline for playoff eligibility. There’s a decent chance Hoskins would clear in that scenario, as a claiming team would become responsible for the entire option buyout for what amounts to one regular season month (plus a hopeful playoff run).

Perhaps the Brewers will catch fire over the next two months and make that all a moot point. If Hoskins rakes all season and helps Milwaukee back to the postseason, they could hold him and even consider a qualifying offer to potentially recoup a draft choice if he walks as a free agent.

Image courtesy of Klement Neitzel, Imagn Images.

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