9 Intriguing MLB Free Agents Nobody Is Talking About

If you enjoy Major League Baseball's offseason cycle but simply need a break from 'Juan Soto this,' 'Corbin Burnes that' and the constant speculating on nine-figure contracts, this one's for you. We've put together a list of nine intriguing free agents—16 if you include the honorable mentions—who could have sneaky good value even though nobody seems to be talking about them. Players who ranked in the top 50 in Joel Reuter's top 100 free agents list earlier this month were ineligible for this exercise, but everyone else who is presently on the market was fair game.

Players are presented in alphabetical order. There's "no one is talking about them" in Reuter's 51-100 range, and then there's "no, seriously, maybe we should remind our readers these players still exist" for the tier of guys outside that top 100 who are at least worth a flyer. You could easily go deeper than this, but here are seven to keep an eye on: Anthony DeSclafani, RHP —Missed the entire 2024 season after undergoing flexor tendon surgery, and wasn't anything special for the combined 118.



2 innings he was able to pitch between 2022-23. Might be something left in the tank, though. He turns 35 in April and did get a $36M contract three winters ago.

If Joe Ross could make a comeback in 2024, so could DeSclafani in 2025. Brandon Drury, UTIL —Drury had a nightmare of a 2024 campaign, posting an impossibly bad OPS of .469 in his 360 plate appearances.

Dating back to 2000, there have been 5,812 instances of a player making at least 350 plate appearances in a season, and Drury posted the worst OPS of them all. But he was north of .800 in each of 2022 and 2023 with a combined 54 home runs, including a Silver Slugger in 2022.

Someone is at the very least going to scoop him up for $1M, hoping he has a Jurickson Profar type of bounce back. Joey Gallo, 1B/DH —Despite a career strikeout rate of 38 percent and a sub-.180 batting average in each of the past three years, Gallo has hit at least 10 home runs in eight consecutive seasons.

Someone is going to sign him for even less than the $5M the Washington Nationals paid him in 2024, hoping for at least a couple of moonshots for their trouble. Eloy Jiménez, DH —Baltimore traded for, infrequently played and then released Jiménez. Is the not-quite-28-year-old, often injured, former Silver Slugger (2020) already washed up, or did he just have a tough time recalibrating his give-a-darn after going from the White Sox to a team actually trying to win games? Speaking of the Nationals giving Gallo $5M one year after giving Jeimer Candelario $5M, a Jiménez flyer would seem to be right up their DH-needing alley.

Yoán Moncada, 3B/DH —The past three years were rough, with Moncada seemingly trying to give Anthony Rendon a run for his money on the "third basemen who get paid the most money per game played" leaderboard, missing more games (278) than he played (208), and only appearing in 12 contests in 2024. That said, he was worth 4.0 bWAR four years ago, was an AL MVP vote recipient in 2019, and doesn't turn 30 until next May.

Surely a few teams that end up falling short in their pursuit of Alex Bregman will at least kick the tires on a Moncada Plan B. Kevin Pillar, OF —Fell apart in a hurry after hitting .409 in May for the Angels, but Pillar might still have some value as a versatile backup outfielder who did still accumulate eight home runs and 12 stolen bases in 2024.

Will Smith, LHP —If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Smith has pitched for a playoff team in five consecutive years, including three World Series champions. His 6.

53 ERA in 2024 did nothing to help the Kansas City Royals, yet they still had one of the more impressive single-year turnarounds ever. In the ever-superstitious world of baseball, he's worth an Opening Day roster spot to someone. 2024 Stats : .

249/.319/.405, 19 HR, 71 RBI, -0.

6 bWAR Reuter's Rank : No. 67 Josh Bell just finished up a two-year, $33M contract in which..

.well..

.he wasn't worth that. Both Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs put his wins above replacement between 2023 and 2024 at almost exactly nil.

A lot of that stems from the defensive component, though, where first basemen are pretty much always undervalued and where Bell is even less valuable than most first basemen. On offense, Bell was at least respectable, racking up 41 home runs and 145 RBI and average/better-than-average marks in OPS+ and wRC+. He was comparable to Lourdes Gurriel Jr.

in that regard. But Bell has been the completely forgotten member of this year's robust 1B/DH class of free agents, well behind the likes of Pete Alonso, Christian Walker, Paul Goldschmidt, Carlos Santana and probably Anthony Rizzo on the various wish lists around the league—which could transform Bell from a payroll albatross into a buy-low candidate. The switch hitter is still just 32 years old and clearly has a decent amount of pop left in his bat.

Making him the primary option at first base would probably be an unwise decision, but any team that has $5M to spend on a 1B/DH platoon type of guy could do much worse than Bell. 2024 Stats : 169.2 IP, 4.

24 ERA, 1.35 WHIP, 8.0 K/9, 0.

9 bWAR Reuter's Rank : No. 54 At 37 years old with a sinker/fastball velocity that was never great and is only getting slower, Kyle Gibson—who has never started a postseason game in his 12-year career—can hardly be considered a legitimate No. 2 or No.

3 starter for a playoff team. What he can be considered, though, is reliable to take his turn through the rotation every fifth day, eating up a decent chunk of the roughly 1,450 innings you need from your pitching staff over the course of the season. Dating back to the start of 2018, Gibson ranks seventh in the majors in innings pitched, and he has made at least 30 starts in each of the past four seasons.

That has value. Sure, he has a 4.52 ERA for a career with one All-Star Game appearance and nary a Cy Young vote, but how many quality teams this past season were desperately searching for anyone who could give them five or six decent innings of work on a regular basis? At the very least, the Dodgers, Braves, Tigers, Orioles and Brewers spring to mind as teams who had "TBD" starting quite a few games during their playoff pushes.

St. Louis declined its one-year, $12M club option for Gibson, but his consistent availability at an above-replacement level over the years should be worth around that much on the open market. 2024 Stats : .

205/.309/.349, 9 HR, 24 RBI, 0.

7 bWAR Reuter's Rank : No. 69 From 2021-23, Danny Jansen was the best slugging catcher in the big leagues. No, really.

He was. Jansen's .487 slugging percentage ranked No.

1 among the 50 players with a primary position of catcher and at least 500 plate appearances. He didn't hit even half as many home runs during that window (43) as Salvador Perez did (94), but that's because he didn't play in anywhere near as many games, due to a combination of injuries and Toronto also having Alejandro Kirk at its disposal. Unfortunately, Jansen forgot how to mash in 2024, posting a .

349 slugging percentage that ranked 241st among the 286 players who made at least 300 plate appearances. Even so, he's arguably the best catcher available this winter. Jansen doesn't turn 30 until April, while just about every other catcher on the market is at least 34.

Despite the rough go in 2024, he should be able to fetch a multiyear deal. Continuing his journey around the AL East could make a lot of sense, too. With James McCann's contract running out, Baltimore needs a quality backup to Adley Rutschman.

Tampa Bay very much needs at least one catcher, too. 2024 Stats : .229/.

281/.373, 12 HR, 42 RBI, 1.3 bWAR Reuter's Rank : No.

71 With more than 200 career innings played at each of the non-pitcher/catcher positions on the diamond—he even has pitched on five occasions, too—Kiké Hernández might be the most versatile, plug-and-play fielder ever. If no one is talking about him, it's not because they can't find a spot for him. Nor is it because teams are unsure if he can deliver in the clutch, as Hernández boasts an .

874 OPS in 86 career postseason games played. Believe it or not, he is one of just 56 players in MLB history with at least 250 plate appearances in the postseason, and that OPS puts him in a tie with Jim Edmonds for 12th on that list, narrowly ahead of Chipper Jones, Carlos Correa, Corey Seager, Bernie Williams, Jose Altuve and Derek Jeter. Between all those innings played on defense and all those games played in October, you might think he's nearing the end of the line.

But Hernández just turned 33 in August and should have a few more years left of playing wherever he's needed—and not giving a you-know-what about language in televised postgame interviews. Over the past three years, he hasn't provided much value during the regular season, save for the inherent value of being able to give literally any of the regular starters a day off from time to time. That alone makes him worth adding, though, especially to a team like Atlanta, which has no positional depth whatsoever.

2024 Stats : .253/.302/.

380, 8 HR, 42 RBI, 1.0 bWAR Reuter's Rank : No. 61 It's a shame for Max Kepler's bank account that the Twins brought him back in 2024 on that $10M club option.

If he had hit free agency last winter, fresh off swatting 24 home runs and posting an .816 OPS, Kepler would've drawn a ton of interest—particularly in an offseason where the outfield market was pretty bleak. But now he's a year older (32 by the start of next season), with several more entries on what was already an extensive injury list, hoping to make the case that he can bounce back from a rough 2025 campaign while contending with a pool of available corner outfielders that includes Juan Soto, Anthony Santander, Teoscar Hernández, Tyler O'Neill, Jurickson Profar and Alex Verdugo.

There are plenty of teams who would love to make a buy-low investment in a guy like Kepler, though. Just in the Central divisions, Cleveland, Kansas City, Detroit, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh could all really use a right fielder. Seattle arguably tops the list of West/East teams who wouldn't mind penciling Kepler in at the 9 on a regular basis.

2024 Stats : 66.2 IP, 4.32 ERA, 1.

32 WHIP, 12.0 K/9, 0.0 bWAR Reuter's Rank : No.

82 José Leclerc played a massive role in Texas' 2023 World Series title, both giving the Rangers a 2.68 ERA during the regular season and pitching in each of their first 12 wins of that postseason run. At that point, he had a career ERA of 3.

03 in nearly 300 innings pitched, and Texas exercised its $6.25M club option to bring him back for one more year. At least initially, it did not go well.

Leclerc allowed eight earned runs in his first five innings pitched, losing the closer job to Kirby Yates barely two weeks into the season. By the time Texas fell below .500 after 49 games—never to return to a winning record—Leclerc had a 6.

75 ERA and was being used exclusively in low-leverage situations. But the former closer did at least turn things around from there, with a 3.38 ERA and 12 holds over his final 48 innings pitched as the primary seventh-inning arm.

Basically, he was solid for the past three seasons, save for the first seven or so weeks of the most recent campaign. The reliever who turns 31 next month could be a budget option for a team in need of a potential closer. 2024 Stats : .

213/.296/.355, 16 HR, 45 RBI, 1.

4 bWAR Reuter's Rank : No. 75 After appearing in at least one MLB game for the 11th consecutive season, Jorge Polanco is finally a free agent for the first time. (He signed a five-year extension in 2019 which also included club options.

) Like so many others on this list, though, his walk year was easily one of the worst of his career. Out of nowhere, Polanco lost the ability to hit offspeed pitches. Per Baseball Savant , he went from a .

322 batting average and 31.6 percent whiff rate on offspeed pitches in 2023 to marks of .145 and 48.

4 this past season. In turn, his strikeout rate increased for the fourth consecutive year, and he posted the worst batting average and on-base percentage marks of his career. Despite that Pedro Cerrano impersonation, Polanco was still a good bit better than replacement level, hit an impressive number of home runs for a second baseman (who only made 469 plate appearances) and had been good enough from 2019-23 that Seattle was willing to give up four players and $8M cash to acquire him this past January.

Gleyber Torres and Ha-Seong Kim are the top two options among free-agent second basemen, but Polanco is a strong No. 3 on that list. 2024 Stats : 170.

1 IP, 3.75 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, 7.

1 K/9, 2.5 bWAR Reuter's Rank : No. 63 By the time Jose Quintana returned from his rib injury and made his New York Mets debut in July 2023, all hope was already lost for that team that year.

They were days away from burning it all down, trading away Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander and just about everyone who was going to be a free agent by now—except for Quintana, who gave them a 3.57 ERA in his 13 starts in the second half. He proceeded to play a massive role for them in 2024, including allowing just one unearned run across his first two starts of the postseason.

He'll turn 36 in January and had an ERA north of 4.00 every year from 2017-21, but Quintana has found some sort of fountain of youth with a 3.39 ERA dating back to the beginning of 2022.

That puts him one-hundredth of a point behind Logan Gilbert; one-hundredth of a point ahead of Dylan Cease. It's hard to imagine he'll get a $25M AAV on a three-year deal like Sonny Gray got last winter, but Quintana should fare better than similarly aged Lance Lynn, Kyle Gibson and Kenta Maeda did, each taking deals in the $11M-$13M AAV range after entering free agency at nowhere near the level of recent production that Quintana has operated at. Spotrac's market value says two years for a total of $16.

6M, but that feels really low. Two years at $16.6M per year might be more like it.

2024 Stats : 54.1 IP, 2.65 ERA, 1.

05 WHIP, 9.6 K/9, 1.2 bWAR Reuter's Rank : No.

76 Remember when Spencer Turnbull threw a no-hitter? It wasn't this past season. It was back in May 2021, as the former second-round draft pick was finally figuring things out. But three starts later, he left with the dreaded 'forearm strain,' needed Tommy John surgery and was not seen again for 22 months.

When he finally returned as the No. 2 starter in Detroit's rotation at the start of the 2023 campaign, he just was not the same, making seven starts with a 7.26 ERA before getting sent back down to Triple-A and missing more than two months with a neck injury.

Turnbull was back in a big way after latching on with the Phillies, though, making six starts in April with a 1.67 ERA before transitioning to the bullpen. But a lat strain ended his season in late June, and we are now talking about a 32-year-old starting pitcher who has logged at least 60 innings pitched in a season just once—back in 2019 when he suffered 17 losses for the Tigers.

Someone is absolutely taking a flyer on him, though. Someone might plan on using Turnbull in a 'swing' role, similar to what Nick Martinez did for Cincinnati this season, but he could thrive as either a No. 5 starter or a long reliever.

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