MLB free agency rankings by OPS: Which hitters are really worth the money?

The offseason hasn't even begun yet, and already the debate is raging about how much each of the top hitters set to hit the market are going to — or deserve to — earn in free agency. There may not be another Juan Soto in this year's class, but on the whole it might be even deeper than last year, as second-tier stars like Kyle Schwarber and Bo Bichette join Kyle Tucker, Alex Bregman, Cody Bellinger, Josh Naylor and other intriguing players.

But just who deserves to cash in, and for how much? Which player(s) should your team target, and which should it steer clear from? To help answer those questions, we figured it might be helpful to create a little visual aid. Below are the top 15 free agent hitters, sorted by their OPS during the 2025 regular season. Overall it shakes out more or less how you'd expect, although there are a few surprising results that are worth making note of.

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Top 15 pending free agents by 2025 OPS

You can talk about his age, and how ill-advised it is to pay a player for his mid-to-late 30s. You can talk about his lack of any fielding or base-running value, and how one-dimensional sluggers more often than not prove to be poor investments. But at the end of the day, Kyle Schwarber is going to get paid handsomely this winter, and this simple table shows why: He's simply too good not to, especially in this market.

Schwarber is coming off far and away the best offensive season of any free agent-to-be, launching an NL-leading 56 homers for the Phillies in 2025. Heck, he's coming off the best offesnsive season of any National League player not named Shohei Ohtani. And this is hardly a fluke: He's got a 136 OPS+ over the last four years, and he seems to be becoming a more complete hitter with each passing year. The thought of adding an easy 40-homer bat to the lineup will be too hard for any would-be contender to turn down.

From there, the warts start showing up. Tucker's overall resume is easily the best of any hitter in this class: Since the start of 2021, his wRC+ is tied with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. for the ninth-best in baseball, behind only Aaron Judge, Ohtani, Yordan Alvarez, Juan Soto, Ronald Acuña Jr., Mike Trout, Freddie Freeman and Bryce Harper. Then again, he ranks third on this list because of how badly he struggled in the second half this season, and who knows how that affect what could be a historic bidding war?

Part of the reason Schwarber and Tucker can be so confident in getting the bag this winter is that the options dry up pretty quickly after them. Pete Alonso had another Pete Alonso season, but he's also a huge defensive negative who saw a steep decline in his in-zone contact rate; it's not hard to see the bottom falling out pretty quickly, and once it does, the floor is in the basement. That floor may already be arriving for Suarez, who was miserable with Seattle after the trade deadline (lowering his OPS by more than 70 points in the process), while guys like Bellinger, Grisham, O'Hearn and Ozuna all have red flags in their profiles and poor seasons in their not-so-recent past.

Weirdly, if there's a sure thing here outside Schwarber and Tucker, someone else you'd bet your life on continuing to hit, it's probably Bichette, who boucned back in a major way in 2025. He's not a shortstop moving forward, but he could hopefully be at least passable at third or second, and his elite ability to get the barrel on the ball (and his age at 27) are working in his favor. At this point, he might be a bit underrated as a hitter.