With MLB free agency open for business, we're ranking all the players on the open market. These free agents are ranked based on the guaranteed money I expect each player will be offered. I say offered rather than each player's projected contract only because of Trevor Bauer, who I'm betting will get offered more than $50 million, perhaps well more than $50 million guaranteed, but I'm thinking he will opt for a one-year deal. I'm sure some other players will make decisions of this sort, but those will be more random and market-driven (hence harder to project now) and much lower-stakes decisions, such as choosing a one-year, $8 million offer instead of two years, $13 million.
As you'll notice in reading the comments on each player, this market is almost impossible to predict, even more so than most years, and the recent contract options declined by clubs have served to set the market in a way, though I expect it to improve after the holidays. The top of the market (i.e., unique players without substitutions of comparable quality) should be something like what we've come to expect. The bigger-money deals should all happen later in the offseason, so it might be months before we see anything constituting market-setting deals rather than settling primarily for cheap one-year deals. There are also some new additions from the non-tenders in early December, adding to the free-agent pool and bringing our list past 100 players.
