Upcoming MLB Free Agents Boosting Their Stock the Most in 2023

In 2022, Aaron Judge had maybe the best "walk year" in Major League Baseball history, mashing 62 home runs before signing a nine-year, $360 million mega deal.

Most of the players on this year's list pale in comparison to that extravaganza, but there are quite a few guys putting together remarkable breakout/bounce-back campaigns at precisely the right time to cash in in a big way.

Just so we're clear up front, this isn't meant to be a ranking of the free agents who will sign the biggest contracts this offseason. (I wrote one of those two months ago, though, if that's what you want to read.) Rather, these are the 10 players (presented in alphabetical order) who have done the most this season to improve their forthcoming payday.

To hopefully help illustrate the difference, two noteworthy players who didn't make the cut here are Matt Chapman and Marcus Stroman. Both are having strong seasons and are destined for substantial pay bumps this offseason, but neither one has been markedly more valuable in 2023 than he was in 2021 or 2022.

They more or less just kept the status quo.

Conversely, these 10 players have stepped up their game when it mattered the most to their bank accounts.

Unless otherwise noted, statistics are current through the start of play Friday.

2023 Salary: $12 million (plus a $5.5 million buyout if and when the $12 million mutual option for 2024 is not exercised)

We get things started with Cody Bellinger, otherwise known as the biggest stock booster of them all.

After horrific campaigns in both 2021 and 2022, it looked like the 2019 NL MVP's career could be over at the age of 27.

The Los Angeles Dodgers could have kept him for one more year before he hit free agency, but they non-tendered him, effectively telling Bellinger, "No thanks. We'll take our chances with Jason Heyward, James Outman and David Peralta instead."

But the Cubs gambled on Bellinger and won the lottery, as he is batting .327 with 17 home runs and 17 stolen bases.

He missed too much of the season with a knee injury to have any realistic hope of winning NL MVP—also, Ronald Acuna Jr. is having too damn good a season to be caught—but there's no question Bellinger has been Chicago's MVP, posting a 1.152 OPS through their first 25 games of the second half as they turned a corner and became a trade deadline buyer.

There's no way Bellinger will agree to that mutual option for 2024. He's going to choose free agency and reasonably could sign one of the five biggest contracts of this offseason. He won't sniff "Shohei Ohtani money," but would a seven-year, $200 million contract surprise you at this point?

2023 Salary: $5 million

This will be Jeimer Candelario's second straight offseason as a free agent, but this one is going to be a whole heck of a lot more lucrative for him.

His 2022 campaign was brutal. Two years removed from batting .297 with a .872 OPS during the truncated 2020 season, Candelario hit .217 and .633, respectively, in his walk year. He also had career-worst fielding marks, committing 11 errors at the hot corner.

Baseball Reference regarded him as marginally above replacement level with a bWAR of 0.6. FanGraphs was even less forgiving at negative-0.1 fWAR. And his market reflected it, as he signed a one-year, $5 million deal with the Washington Nationals just five days after celebrating his 29th birthday.

It was a classic "prove it" deal, and goodness has he ever, worth at least 3.6 WAR this season according to both aforementioned sites.

With 17 home runs to date, he's all but certain to eclipse 20 for the first time in his career. He's also well on pace to set a career-high for doubles, this after leading the majors with 42 two-baggers in 2021. (He might get to 50.) Candelario has also stolen as many bases this season (seven) as he did in the previous seven seasons combined. And his value added on defense is as high as it has ever been.

Quality third basemen don't hit free agency very often, so it'll be an interesting market. The four-year, $64 million deal that Mike Moustakas got back in December 2019 could be a good comp here.

2023 Salary: $3.75 million

Aroldis Chapman turns 36 in February, and in the past four free agency cycles, the only relief pitcher over the age of 32 to sign at least a three-year deal was Will Harris. In January 2020, he got a three-year, $24 million contract from the Washington Nationals—and logged just 23.2 innings over the duration of the deal.

So, no, we're not expecting Chapman to get some sort of massive contract this winter. It'll be a one-year deal, perhaps with a club option for a second.

But with the way he has pitched this season—first with Kansas City, now with Texas—his salary should spike by roughly 200 percent.

Chapman simply didn't have it last year. Both his ERA and his strikeout rate were the worst of his career, and by a sizable margin. The four-seamer that used to hover in the triple digits was down to 97 MPH on a good day. And he missed two big chunks of the season due to an Achilles injury and later a tattoo infection.

No one seemed to want him until Kansas City got him on the cheap in mid-January.

But the seven-time All-Star is back up to his old tricks, striking out better than 44 percent of batters faced, keeping the ball in the yard (1 HR in 41.1 IP) and throwing absolute lasers. Many a sinker has clocked in at over 102 MPH, as well as the occasional 99+ MPH four-seamer.

Both Craig Kimbrel and David Robertson got one-year, $10 million deals this past offseason. Hard to imagine Chapman doing any worse than that.

2023 Salary: $1.8375 million

During Jordan Hicks' first two seasons in the big leagues, he looked like the potential "next big thing." Then just 21-22 years old, he routinely threw over 100 MPH from 2018-19 and racked up 20 saves.

However, he sat out the 2020 season and wasn't anywhere near the same dominant force in 2021 or 2022. Hicks missed most of the former with elbow inflammation and struggled to the tune of a 4.84 ERA in the latter after a lackluster attempt to return as a starter instead of a reliever.

And after a rough first few weeks of this season, he has gotten back into his former ninth inning groove.

Dating back to April 18, Hicks has a 2.43 ERA in 40.2 innings of work. He didn't get his first save until June 17th, but he has converted 11 of 12 chances since then, locking down the closer gig for the Cardinals before at least temporarily holding down that fort for the injured Jordan Romano in Toronto.

Hicks' year-to-date strikeout rate (11.8 K/9) is by far the best of his career, and he notably doesn't turn 27 for another few weeks.

Listen, he's not going to come anywhere close to fetching what Josh Hader does in free agency. But after making a grand total of $4.12 million since being drafted in 2015, Hicks has pitched well enough this season to get at least a four-year deal with an average salary north of $4 million.

2023 Salary: $1.25 million

From 2019-22, Travis Jankowski played for five different teams, amassing a grand total of just 262 plate appearances. He was the definition of replacement level, rarely getting starts and often just getting into games as a pinch runner.

After a 2022 season in which he both batted and slugged .164, he was still a free agent until late January when the Rangers signed him to a minor league deal.

Despite a .470 OPS in spring training, Jankowski narrowly cracked Texas' Opening Day roster, thanks to Leody Taveras being sidelined with an oblique strain. And when Taveras was able to return two weeks into the season, it was anyone's guess whether it would be Jankowski or Bubba Thompson losing their roster spot.

But the veteran managed to hang around and made the most of his opportunity, batting .356 through his first 17 games and still sitting at .331 shortly after the All-Star Break.

Now, there's virtually no power in Jankowski's bat. He hit one home run on July 3, but that's it. And he has been mired in quite the slump over the past three weeks, bringing his average back down below .300. But he has stolen 16 bases in what has still been the best season of his entire career.

That bodes quite well for a 32-year-old who has yet to make more than $1.25 million in a season.

Unless he continues to fall apart down the stretch, Jankowski should get something on par with the one-year, $6-$7 million deals that Tommy Pham, A.J. Pollock, David Peralta and Adam Duvall signed this past offseason. And what a windfall that will be for a guy who almost didn't crack an MLB roster this year.

2023 Salary: $8.92 million

Who knew Kevin Kiermaier could still hit?

When Toronto signed the centerfielder who had spent the past decade in Tampa Bay, it did so for his three-time Gold Glove, desperately wanting to improve what had been a considerably below-average outfield defense in 2022. And to that end, he has been as good as advertised, if not more so. His 13 defensive runs saved leads all players with at least 100 innings of work in center.

But after he hit .232/.296/.382 from 2018-22, the Blue Jays took a calculated risk that Kiermaier's value added on defense would more than make up for his value subtracted on offense.

Lo and behold, he's triple-slashing .274/.336/.415 and has been maybe the best 9-hole hitter in the majors this season.

Unfortunately, Kiermaier is currently on the IL with an elbow injury, which was another calculated risk the Blue Jays took. He hasn't played in at least 82 percent of his team's games in a season since 2015, but there's still a reasonable chance he'll do so this year. (Should be a short IL stint while he recovers from gashing his arm crashing into a fence making a catch.)

Kiermaier's age (he turns 34 in April) might keep him from getting anything more than a two-year deal in which the second season is a club option. But among centerfielders hitting free agency, he should be more highly coveted than both Harrison Bader and Michael A. Taylor. Not sure that would have been the case five months ago.

2023 Salary: $8.5 million

When you toss a no-hitter a few months before hitting free agency, people tend to notice.

But even before Michael Lorenzen's magical Wednesday night in Philadelphia, he was well on his way to a substantial pay bump.

After spending the vast majority of 2016-21 as a relief pitcher (and an occasional pinch hitter) for the Cincinnati Reds, Lorenzen hit free agency in 2021 with a desire to return to the starting rotation. But he had to prove he could do it before anyone would consider giving him a multi-year deal.

He got $6.75 million from the Angels for his first season, logging 97.2 IP with a 4.24 ERA. Not exactly a full workload or a great showing, but it was enough for Detroit to up the ante to $8.5 million on another one-year deal. This time around, he logged 105.2 IP with a 3.58 ERA before the trade deadline and became a hot commodity in a market with very little supply.

We shall see how his arm responds to throwing 124 pitches in that no-hitter—his previous career high was 107 more than eight years ago—but he has up until this point silenced any doubts about his durability, going at least five full innings in all but one start and not missing a start this season.

If he continues to pitch even remotely well the rest of the way, Lorenzen (who turns 32 in January) should strike a deal at least on par with the three-year, $39 million contract that Tyler Anderson signed this past winter.

2023 Salary: $10 million

After back-to-back summers as one of the top arms on the trade block, Jordan Montgomery will finally get to enter the driver's seat in the bidding war for his services.

Montgomery has quietly put together an impressive three-year run with a 3.57 ERA. He hasn't been named an All-Star. He has never received a Cy Young vote. But more and more people seem to be noticing how reliable he has been with the Yankees, the Cardinals and now the Rangers.

Only once in those three seasons did he pitch into the eighth inning of a start, but he has logged 14 quality starts thus far this season, nine of which have come in his last 11 appearances.

Even as St. Louis' season was collapsing around him, Montgomery just kept going out there every fifth day and doing what he could to get a W.

There are quite a few good starting pitchers hitting free agency this offseason. Guys like Aaron Nola, Julio Urías, Lucas Giolito, Blake Snell, Marcus Stroman and, of course, Shohei Ohtani. But Montgomery has cemented himself as no worse than the top of the next tier of available pitchers, and would perhaps even be a bit ahead of both Giolito and Urías at this point were it not for the age difference. (Montgomery turns 31 in December, while Giolito just turned 29 last month and Urías turned 27 on Saturday.)

Montgomery won't come close to matching the six-year, $162 million deal that Carlos Rodón got from the Yankees. But if Chris Bassitt was deemed worthy of a three-year, $63 million contract this past winter, Montgomery should be somewhere in that same ballpark. Maybe he gets a four-year, $80 million deal from one of the teams that misses out on the Ohtani sweepstakes.

2023 Salary: $30 million

It is abundantly clear from the $30 million Shohei Ohtani got in his final year of arbitration eligibility that he was going to make a preposterous amount of money this offseason regardless of how the 2023 campaign played out.

Before the season even began, there were speculations that he would fetch at least $500 million, perhaps even $600 million on the open market.

But could that be a lowball estimate now that he is 72 percent of the way through the most absurd season in MLB history?

Among qualified American League hitters, Ohtani ranks first in home runs, third in RBI and third in batting average. And among qualified American League pitchers, Ohtani ranks third in strikeouts, fourth in ERA and is in a four-way tie for sixth place in wins.

It's unlikely that he'll win both the hitting triple crown and the pitching triple crown, but by Jove, it's still possible.

The man entered Friday with an overall bWAR of 9.0.

No one else was even at 6.0.

He is lapping the field with reckless abandon, and some owner is going to shell out a mind-blowing amount of money to make sure that Ohtani is the face of that franchise for the next decade.

If he was worth $50 million per year before this season, he's got to be approaching (and maybe eclipsing) $60 million by now.

2023 Salary: $15.4 million (has a three-year, $49 million player option)

Coming into this season, Eduardo Rodriguez had a career ERA of 4.15 and a career WHIP of 1.32, and he was fresh off arguably his worst campaign to date, posting career-worst walk and strikeout rates in 2022.

After seven seasons in the big leagues, he seemed to be locked in as a low No. 3/high No. 4 starter, and looked like a safe bet to opt in on the three years and $49 million left on his five-year contract.

But Rodriguez has had a sensational 2023 season, entering Sunday's start against Boston with a 2.75 ERA, a 1.05 WHIP and a K/BB ratio just north of 4.0.

Prior to rupturing a tendon in his finger in late May and missing five weeks of action, he had a 2.13 ERA and was a legitimate candidate to start the All-Star Game for the American League.

At this point, opting out and getting a new contract in excess of three years and/or $16.3 million per season doesn't seem so far-fetched for Rodriguez.

Taijuan Walker got a four-year, $72 million deal last offseason. Jameson Taillon was in the same ballpark with a four-year, $68 million contract. And aside from both being former first-round draft picks, neither of those similarly aged pitchers had amounted to much (if any) more in their careers than Rodriguez has.

He does seem happy in Detroit, though. Happy enough to invoke his no-trade clause to block the Tigers' attempt to deal him to the Dodgers, at any rate. But even if he does want to stay in Detroit, he might opt out before renegotiating a better deal—i.e. what Boston fans were hoping Xander Bogaerts would do last offseason.