The 2025 free agent class earned 11% more than we thought

Feb 17, 2025

“Wisdom of the crowd” is the idea that the collective opinion of a diverse, independent group of individuals will come to a better decision than that of even the most well-informed individual expert. While it doesn’t always bear out, where would we be without the wisdom of crowdsources like Reddit, Quora, Wikipedia… or Fangraphs?

We here at Fangraphs engage in an annual free agent crowdsource prediction for lots of reasons – it’s fun, it engages readers, and, I suppose, it represents a good test of the theory behind the “wisdom of the crowd.” In this case, the crowd is pitted against Ben and, of course, reality to see if our collective wisdom can predict how MLB free agents will fare.

I wanted to test our wisdom, so, on February 17th, I downloaded the excel file of the 2025 Free Agent Tracker. I then selected for every free agent who signed for a total contract value of at least $2 million, resulting in 103 cases (John Berti and Amed Rosario just made the cut with 1 year/$2mil; Mike Tauchman and Michael A. Taylor just missed the cut at 1 year/$1.95mil). I then sorted out the players who didn’t receive a crowdsource estimate, reducing the pool to 65 players.

Collectively, these 65 players were predicted by us to receive a collective 150 years of contracts (an average of 2.31 years per player), for a collective total of $2,853,520,000 and an average contract of $43,900,308.

However, this was an overall good year for free agents – just ask Juan Soto (LFGM!) or Max Fried – and they ended up collectively out-earning our expectations by just over 11%. These 65 free agents signed for a collective 148 years of contracts (we were 98.7% accurate in cumulative contract length!!!), a collective $3,175,075,000 with an average contract of $48,847,308 (an AAV of just over $19m).

Our collective wisdom was pretty good, but we underestimated the market by 11%.

Analyzing Under- and Over-Estimates

Another interesting little investigation I performed was looking at the differences between what the Fangraphs crowd predicted and the actual signings. Again, I compared total contract value to the median crowdsourced prediction (I know this is an over-simplificantion. I couldn’t think of an elegant way to include things like the “value” of opt-outs, etc.)

The Fangraphs crowd was within $2 million of the actual contract value for twenty of the free agents and got two exactly right (Justin Verlander and Caleb Ferguson on one-year deals).

Some free agents signed for considerably more than we expected. In terms of total amounts, Juan Soto, Max Fried, Blake Snell, Tanner Scott, Willy Adames, and Corbin Burnes signed for $180 million, $93 million, $62 million, $36 million, $32 million, and $30 million more than predicted (no one else was above our prediction by more than $20 million). In terms of percentage, some free agents had a bonanza, with A.J. Minter, Andrew Kittredge, Yimi García, Blake Treinen, andTanner Scott all signing for more than double what the crowd predicted (A.J. Minter’s 2 year/$22 million contract was more than 4 times what we predicted!). It was a VERY good year to be a high-upside relief arm.

Many free agents signed contracts below our predictions, most notably veterans who settled for short-term deals. In terms of total value, Pete Alonso, Jack Flaherty, Ha-Seong Kim, Alex Bregman, and Gleyber Torres signed for $71 million, $53 million, $44.5 million, $42 million, and $39 Million less than expected (no one else was below our prediction by more than $14 million). In terms of percentage, Max Kepler, Pete Alonso, Jack Flaherty, Ha-Seong Kim, and Gleyber Torres were the only free agents to receive less than 50% of what the Fangraphs crowd predicted.

Eyeballing the data, a pattern seemed to emerge in which the “top of the market” did as well or better than expected, while the middle-to-bottom of the market fared worse (this would be consistent with many author and reader hypotheses of how the market would shake out). So I ran a quick correlation between the rank of the size of the signed contract and the difference between prediction and actual total contract value. The correlation coefficient was -.53, indicating that indeed those who signed the smaller contracts signed for less than predicted moreso than those who signed larger total contracts.

The Implications of Signing Late

Thinking specifically about Pete Alonso’ late signing for far less than we expected, I hypothesized that those who sign late in free agency sign for less than expected relative to those who sign early. After all, late signees usually do so after their options have dwindled. However, the dataset does not include the date of signing, so I could not directly test this proposition (I suppose if I really wanted to spend the time to do this, I could have but, you know, this is community notes and not my full-time job). However, I did find the list of players who signed in February as opposed to earlier in the offseason and ran some quick comparisons.

Of the players in the main sample, 7 signed after February 1st. Nick Pivetta,Enrique Hernández, and Tommy Pham all signed for more than expected, although Hernandez and Pham signed one-year deals worth $1.5 million and $1 million over modest one-year expectations.Nick Pivetta signed for an additional year and $10 million over expected (5/$55 million as opposed to our 4/$45 Million crowdsource projection). Kanley Jansen signed a one-year $10 million contract, not far from the 1 year/$12 million we projected.

The remaining three free agents demonstrate the downside of signing near the end of hot stove season. Alex Bregman signed a hefty 3-year contract worth $120 million – less than his 6-year, $162 million projection (although he made up for it with a much higher AAV, so his contract should net out as a win for him in the long run).

Jack Flaherty and Pete Alonso were the big losers of free agency relative to our expectations. Flaherty signed for 2 years/$35 million, well short of our crowd estaimate of 4 years/$88 million – in fact, his contract represents just under 40% of what we projected. Pete Alonso signed for 2 years/$54 million – well short of the 5 year/$125 million we crowdsourced for him. A very cold stove for the polar bear, at just 42% of projection.

Comparison to 6 Years Ago

Back in 2019, I performed a similar analysis that was published here in community notes. That year’s free agent class, led by Bryce Harper and Manny Machado, did not fare as well and came in under our expectations. Recall 2019 was a very cold “hot stove” with major signings not ocurring until late in the off-season (Harper wasn’t signed until Feb 28th!).

We predicted that the sample of 47 free agents that year would receive a collective 123 years of contracts (an average of 2.61 years per player), for a collective total of $1,801,000,000 and an average contract of $38,320,000. However, they collectively received 91.4% of expectation – a collective 109 years of contracts (an average of 2.32 years per player), for a collective total of $1,619,500,000 and an average contract of $34,460,000.

Our 2019 collective wisdom was pretty good, but back then we overestimated the market for free agents by just about the same margin as we underestimated this year.

Conclusion?

In conclusion, the crowd here at Fangraphs is pretty wise. Yay, us!

I don’t think we can take any major lessons from this analysis – perhaps just two small ones. 1. relief pitchers with upside did well, 2. prominent free agents shouldn’t wait too long to sign. That said, running the numbers was fun and I hope you enjoyed the article. If so, I’ll be back next year at this time with another update. Until then, let the wisdom of crowds protect you from the madness of crowds.

– Scott Behson