Hot Stove season is a time for boundless optimism. Last year's failures at in the past; every team is wiping the slate clean ahead of a new season, and it's all too easy to dream on a big free-agent signing or trade acquisition that will make all the difference.
Of course, we know that the baseball gods are rarely so kind. In reality, while you certainly can vault your franchise to World Series contention in one offseason, you're just as likely to set yourself back. Free agency is a treacherous time, with executives desperate to throw some cash around but a finite number of players to throw it toward. They can't all be Juan Soto, and sometimes, a signing that seems foolproof in the middle of December seems like a disaster in the cold light of a new season.
We're trying to get out ahead of those regrets here. Below are five free agents that feel particularly risky heading into the winter, as well as five teams that are particularly at risk of paying them anyway.
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1B Pete Alonso
Victim: Washington Nationals
It seems like every Hot Stove season features at least one deal that comes completely out of nowhere, and Alonso's free agency feels like the best candidate right now. Partly because it's hard to make heads or tails of it: On the one hand, all he does is play 160 games a year and hit 40 homers, and you can understand why his demands are in line with that sort of offensive production; on the other, playing a righty first baseman who's a downright brutal defender into his late 30s might strike teams as a bad idea.
Alonso will certainly remain one of the game's premier sluggers in 2026 and 2027. He wants to be paid into 2031 and 2032, though, and his is not a skill set that feels like it'll age particularly well. And once he goes from a great bat to an average or above-average bat, he goes from a legitimate asset to a liability in a heartbeat. The fact that he hits righties as well as he does lefties helps mitigate that somewhat, but still: This is not the sort of player you want to bet on over the long haul. Maybe he takes another short-term deal with a contender, but after two straight years of negotiations, I think he finally opts for some certainty even if it lands closer to $20 million per year than $30 million.
While the Washington Nationals have a new regime in town, it's long past time for this snail's-pace rebuild to start bearing fruit. The Nats aren't as far away from competing as you might think, but they need another big bat to put behind CJ Abrams and James Wood, and they need to improve their first-base situation as well. There's money to burn here, and if Alonso's free agency drags on, Washington could get desperate and talk themselves into an investment they might live to regret. Hey, at least it worked with Jayson Werth?
OF Cody Bellinger
Victim: San Francisco Giants
Bellinger is coming off an awesome season with the New York Yankees, and he has the sort of all-around profile that every team should be dying to add: He can make contact, he just hit 29 homers this year, he's a smart baserunner and he's an excellent defender no matter where you stick him in the outfield. He did just about everything well in New York in 2025, and he's about to enter just his age-30 season.
So, why is he a potential land mine? While Bellinger's top-line offensive numbers were great this season, it's not backed up by a particularly impressive batted-ball profile. Put simply, he doesn't hit the ball very hard (26th percentile in hard-hit rate, 24th percentile in average exit velocity), making up for it by making tons of contact (91st percentile in K rate) and pulling tons of fly balls (his 24.7% fly-ball rate was among the highest in baseball).
That formula worked for him in the Bronx, with a home ballpark tailor-made for lefty fly balls. But if you want to know what can happen in a less-hospitable offensive environment, just go back to 2024, when he only hit 18 homers and posted a 111 OPS+ for the Chicago Cubs. Which brings us to San Francisco: The Giants aren't likely to win the Kyle Tucker sweepstakes, but they're desperate to get back to the playoffs in year two of the Buster Posey regime and they're going to need to add at least one impact outfielder this winter.
Bellinger is the next best thing, at least on paper. He's a particularly bad fit in Oracle Park, though, which was one of the very worst parks for lefty hitters (and lefty power specifically) in 2025. It's not hard to imagine a world in which San Francisco gets desperate to make a splash and locks themselves into a player who isn't the hitter they bargained for. And it's only a matter of time before his defensive value starts declining as he enters his 30s.
OF Trent Grisham
Victim: Houston Astros
Talk about the perfect contract year. Grisham was thrust into regular playing time with the Yankees this year and took full advantage, hitting 34 homers with an .812 OPS while playing center field every day — and reminding everyone why he was a first-round pick way back in the day.
Of course, history is littered with teams that paid for the contract year and lived to regret it. Grisham genuinely tore the cover off the ball in 2025, but he was also in a very friendly home park, and how much do you trust that he's going to repeat a season that seems like such an outlier in his seven-year career? Plus, he was well below average in center and would probably be best in a corner as early as next year, putting even more pressure on the bat.
Unfortunately, the Astros aren't in the position to be picky. This team needs outfield help, and they need left-handed hitters around Yordan Alvarez. They could also use some more patience: This was the most aggressive lineup in the league last season, and Grisham's ability to work counts and take walks (96th percentile walk rate) would be a godsend. Tucker is obviously not an option, and winning the Bellinger sweepstakes might be too rich for Jim Crane's blood. Grisham is one of the only other options available that might potentially move the needle, even if he comes with very obvious red flags.
SP Michael King
Victim: Toronto Blue Jays
This one pains me. When he's on, King is a blast to watch, one of the funkiest and most effective pitchers in the game. The problem is that he's had a hard time staying healthy as a starter: He's crossed 105 innings exactly once in his career, and he managed only 73.1 frames in 2025 as he battled multiple injuries.
There simply aren't a ton of front-end rotation options available this winter, especially if you don't have the sort of prospect haul that might lure a Joe Ryan or Sandy Alcantara. The Blue Jays are going to be in the market for at least one of them; Chris Bassitt, Max Scherzer and potentially Shane Bieber are all hitting the market, leaving little beyond Kevin Gausman (himself a free agent after 2026) and Trey Yesavage. Desperate is never a good thing to be this time of year, and if the bidding for Dylan Cease, Framber Valdez and Ranger Suarez gets out of control, King might be the next best thing.
Maybe it works out. It's entirely possible that King comes back next spring healthy and proves durable enough over the next few years to establish himself as a legitimate, All-Star-caliber No. 2. That's a very risky to bet to make though, and he'll be turning 32 next May. It's also possible that he just never finds a way to churn out 150-175 innings and leaves whichever team pays him on the hook for $25 million or so a year.
1B/3B Munetaka Murakami
Victim: New York Mets
Murakami is set to be posted this winter, and he comes to the States with quite the track record of power production in Japan: Since breaking in with the NPB's Yakult Swallows back in 2018, Munetaka has hit 246 homers in 892 games — including a whopping 56 in 2022 alone. In a market thin on power and even thinner on infielders beyond Alonso, Bo Bichette and Alex Bregman, that's awfully enticing, and he figures to have several suitors. In fact, Mets president David Stearns crossed the Pacific to scout the slugger back in August, in attendance at a game in which Murakami hit a walk-off homer.
If the Mets balk at Alonso's price tag (an outcome that seems increasingly likely), they could pivot to Murakami as they look to rebuild an offense that got way too top-heavy at times in 2025. But they should tread very carefully, because while his raw power isn't in question, his ability to access it in games against big-league pitching still is. Murakami has also struck out 977 times in Japan, raising swing-and-miss concerns against tougher competition.
He's also destined for first base defensively, and even then he might struggle with the glove. There's huge variance here: If Murakami makes enough contact, he'll become a 30-homer hitter at least; if he can't, though, he'll be virtually unplayable.