MLB Free Agency

Veteran quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo is reportedly seeking a contract that will pay him $25 million per year in free agency.

According to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated, Garoppolo may be willing to sign a contract with a lower base salary that includes incentives that could get him close to $25 million annually.

Jimmy G has spent the past six seasons with the San Francisco 49ers, but he is expected to sign elsewhere in free agency since the Niners have Trey Lance and Brock Purdy at quarterback.

If Garoppolo does sign a deal for $25 million per season, he would tie Geno Smith of the Seattle Seahawks as the 16th-highest-paid quarterback in the NFL, per Spotrac.

Garoppolo's value is difficult to put into financial terms since his numbers with San Francisco left plenty to be desired while the team's success did not.

He posted a 38-17 record as a starter during the regular season and also a 4-2 playoff record, as the Niners reached the NFC Championship Game three times and the Super Bowl once during his tenure.

The biggest issue with the 31-year-old is his inability to stay healthy. The 2019 season was the only one in which he played every regular-season contest.

He missed all but three games the year before that and all but six games in 2020. Garoppolo did rebound to start 15 games in 2021, and San Francisco excelled.

In each of the three seasons in which he started double-digit games, the 49ers made it to at least the NFC Championship Game.

Garoppolo began 2022 as the backup to Lance, but when Lance suffered a season-ending injury, Garoppolo took over and played well, going 7-3 as a starter.

He completed 67.2 percent of his passes for 2,437 yards and 16 touchdowns with four interceptions, and his quarterback rating of 103.0 was his best ever in a season in which he started more than two games.

Unfortunately for Garoppolo, a foot injury cut his season short, and Purdy, a rookie seventh-round pick, took over, leading San Francisco to the NFC Championship Game.

Jimmy G's best statistical season remains 2019 when he threw for a career-high 3,978 yards and 27 touchdowns and helped the 49ers reach the Super Bowl.

NFL Network's Ian Rapoport (h/t NFL.com's Grant Gordon) reported last week that the Carolina Panthers, Houston Texans and Las Vegas Raiders could have interest in Garoppolo.

The Panthers may no longer be part of that list, though, after trading with the Chicago Bears for the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 NFL draft to presumably pick their next quarterback.

Both the Texans and Raiders have links to Garoppolo. New Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans was the 49ers' defensive coordinator in 2021 and 2022 and joined the team when Garoppolo did in 2017. Raiders head coach Josh McDaniels was the New England Patriots' offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach when Garoppolo was Tom Brady's backup from 2014 to 2016.

The Texans are likely to draft their quarterback of the future at No. 2 overall, but Garoppolo could bridge the gap, whereas he would perhaps be a longer-term solution for Vegas.

There will be one fewer superstar available in free agency next offseason after Manny Machado reportedly agreed to a massive new deal with the San Diego Padres.

According to ESPN's Jeff Passan, the two sides are finalizing an 11-year, $350 million deal. Dennis Lin and Britt Ghiroli of The Athletic reported the new deal features no opt-outs and a full no-trade clause.

It's a major turnaround just over a week after Machado indicated he would opt out after the season and become a free agent.

"So far this year, I'm a Padre, but who knows next year," Machado told reporters earlier this month. "Obviously, the team knows where I stand, my situation, with the opt-out coming. I think I've expressed that I will be opting out after this year, but my focus is not about 2024."

Those looking to add a game-changer for next year, including potential landing spots like the San Francisco Giants, New York Mets and New York Yankees, will likely need to look elsewhere. There are a few big names available, but there might be limited depth for teams seeking a star in free agency.

---

Top 2024 Free Agents

Shohei Ohtani, SP/DH

Any list discussing upcoming free agency should start with Shohei Ohtani, who is both the best pitcher and the best hitter available.

The 28-year-old won the MVP in 2021 when he totaled 46 home runs and 100 RBI to go with his 3.18 ERA in 23 starts. He remained an elite hitter in 2022, totaling 34 home runs and a .273 average, while he was even better as a pitcher with a 2.33 ERA and a league-best 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings.

He finished second in MVP voting and fourth in Cy Young voting.

If he produces similar numbers in 2023, Ohtani could earn an unprecedented contract in free agency as teams try to account for his production in multiple phases of the game.

Teammate Mike Trout wants to keep the two-way player with the Angels as the team tries to move closer to playoff contention.

"I'm going to do everything I can to keep Shohei here for sure," Trout told reporters ahead of spring training.

However, the draw from top teams could be enough for Ohtani to test the market.

---

Aaron Nola, SP

After an up-and-down 2021, Aaron Nola bounced back last year and proved he is once again one of the sport's best pitchers.

The Philadelphia Phillies star finished last year with a 3.25 ERA across 205 innings, the third time topping 200 innings in the last five seasons. He also added 235 strikeouts and led the league with an 8.1 strikeout-to-walk ratio.

Though he wasn't at his best during the playoffs—he had a 4.91 ERA across five starts—Nola showed last year he can be a true ace for a World Series contender. It could lead to a huge new contract for the 29-year-old.

---

Julio Urías, SP

A breakout 2022 season will have Julio Urías high on most wish lists heading into free agency.

The left-hander went 17-7 with a 2.16 ERA and 0.96 WHIP last year, and he was a key part of a Los Angeles Dodgers team that went 111-51 during the regular season. He was a finalist for the NL Cy Young award, and he even earned votes for MVP.

At just 26 years old, Urías could be looking at the type of long-term deal not often seen with pitchers.

---

Matt Chapman, 3B

This is where the market starts to get bare thanks to the lack of elite hitters available.

Machado is staying in San Diego, and Rafael Devers signed an 11-year, $331 million extension, leaving few legitimate stars at the plate. It means Matt Chapman, just a .240 career hitter, could be the best player left.

Chapman is best known for his defensive work, earning three Gold Glove awards at third base. He has 80 defensive runs saved at the position since entering the league in 2017, per FanGraphs.

Adding his power at the plate with 27 home runs in each of the last two years, Chapman could provide a significant boost to any team. Of course, the 29-year-old is unlikely to excite a fanbase as much as a perennial MVP candidate like Machado.

When Aaron Judge signed his massive $360 million contract this past December—and when Shohei Ohtani signs an even bigger one next winter—there was/will be arguments about whether the price was too high, too low or just right.

But to decide whether a player lives up to the cost of his contract, we need to first figure out how much a win (above replacement) actually costs these days.

A decade ago, the math conducted by FanGraphs' Matt Swartz suggested the cost of one win above replacement in free agency was just under $5 million.

But teams aren't exactly spending like they did a decade ago, are they?

Back in 2013, the average payroll was around $106 million per team.

Last year, it was $150.7 million.

Heck, five teams are spending at least $106 million just on pitching in 2023.

During the 2020-21 offseason, teams spent a grand total of $1.36 billion in free agency, per Spotrac. The average annual value of those contracts was $7.3 million.

Last offseason, that average was $12.7 million.

This offseason, we're at a staggering $15.7 million, though, that number figures to decrease as any remaining free agents who sign will surely do so for less than $15 million per year. But even if that average drops by $1.1 million, that'd still be a 100 percent increase from just two years ago.

Even the inflation rate on a dozen eggs at your local grocery store probably hasn't been that extreme.

As MLB contracts continue to skyrocket, though, the number of wins available in any given season remains the same: 2,430.

Same goes for the FanGraphs sum of Wins Above Replacement, which has been 570.0 WAR for batters and 430.0 WAR for pitchers in every season except 2020 since MLB expanded to 30 teams before the 1998 campaign.

(Did you know Baseball Reference instead sums to 590 for hitters and 410 for pitchers? We'll be solely focused on FanGraphs WAR for the remainder of this article, but we might need a follow-up article someday on why the two sites differ on that fundamental baseline.)

At a macro, bird's-eye-view level, that combined total of 1,000 WAR in a season makes it quite easy to calculate the average $/WAR ratio.

In 2022, the total payroll of all 30 teams was $4.52 billion. Divide by 1,000, change that 'b' to an 'm' and you get $4.52 million per 1.0 WAR. And in 2021, total payroll was $3.95 billion, for a $/WAR ratio of $3.95 million.

Boom.

End of article, right?

Well, no.

We can't really use those numbers to determine whether a free agent lived up to his contract, because a substantial chunk of the 1,000 WAR comes from pre-arbitration players on league-minimum salaries or arbitration-eligible players who simply aren't making as much money as they would on the open market.

See: Julio Rodríguez producing 5.3 WAR on a $700,000 salary or Shane McClanahan getting paid $711,400 for 3.5 WAR. A pre-arbitration player putting up All-Star numbers is a budgetary cheat code.

So, to come up with a more legitimate number for the current cost of 1.0 WAR in free agency, we need to weed out all of the pre-arbitration and arbitration-eligible players from both payrolls and WAR from 2021 and 2022, which we did using Spotrac's "Veteran" designation.

Not all of Spotrac's "Veteran" players actually reached free agency. That designation also includes players who signed contracts that effectively bought them out of their arbitration years. For instance, 22-year-olds Michael Harris II and Rodríguez both qualify as veterans in 2023 after signing long-term deals in the middle of last season as rookies. But they deserve to be included in this mix moving forward, as they've already more or less agreed upon what they would be worth in free agency.

The veteran designation also appears to include players who settled on their salaries via arbitration as opposed to reaching an agreement without arbitration.

After all the weeding and calculating, what we found is that over the past two seasons, the single-season free-agency cost of one WAR among batters is $5.7 million, and the cost of one WAR among pitchers is $6.9 million.

It should come as no surprise that pitching is more expensive, since high-priced pitchers have been more likely to either underperform or miss most/all of a season with an injury.

There were 33 batter salaries of at least $23 million between 2021 and 2022, and even with Miguel Cabrera's brutal negative-0.6 WAR and negative-1.5 WAR campaigns in the mix, the average WAR for those 33 batters was 3.44. 17-of-33 produced a WAR north of 4.0.

Conversely, there were 24 instances of a pitcher making at least $23 million in one of the past two seasons, and their average WAR was just 2.09. No negative numbers in that bunch, but 11 of the 24 produced 0.8 WAR or less, including a pair of $35 million goose eggs from Stephen Strasburg. Only six of those 24 pitchers had a WAR north of 4.0.

But, great, what should we do with all those numbers?

Well, they tell you that, for example, Aaron Judge needs to produce 7.0 WAR in 2023 to be "worth" his $40 million salary, while fellow pricy Yankee Gerrit Cole has a break-even point of around 5.2 WAR on his $36 million salary.

(I put "worth" in quotations marks, because I can appreciate that a good chunk of what the Yankees are paying for with Judge—and what many teams are paying for with their high-priced stars—is marketing. If he produces 3.5 WAR but every game is a sellout and his jersey keeps flying off the racks in the team store, it's probably still a win for New York.)

Those numbers also tell you that Xander Bogaerts merely needs to produce 4.5 WAR per year to be worthy of his 11-year, $280 million contract in San Diego, and he has averaged 5.2 WAR over the course of the past four 162-game seasons.

And the beauty of those sorts of long-term, same-salary-every-season contracts we've seen handed out in recent years is that the cost of one WAR just keeps going up.

We gave you the combined average for 2021 and 2022, but the price for batters went from $4.90 million in 2021 to $6.68 million in 2022 (a 36 percent increase), while pitching had a less-drastic-but-still-substantial bump from $6.26 million to $7.55 million (a 21 percent increase).

The total salaries for veterans didn't go up by that much ($3.18 billion in 2021 to $3.37 billion in 2022), but non-veterans took home a bigger piece of the WAR pie in 2022 than they did in 2021. That WAR denominator will fluctuate from year to year, but as long as the veteran salaries numerator continues to climb, so, too, will the general trajectory of the $/WAR ratio.

By the time Judge reaches the end of his nine-year deal in 2031 and Bogaerts plays his final season in 2033, who knows? The going rate for one batting WAR might be $10 million, at which point they would only need to produce 4.0 WAR and 2.5 WAR, respectively, for the juice to still be worth the squeeze.

As things currently stand, however, $5.7 million for one batting WAR and $6.9 million for one pitching WAR are our baselines for determining return on investment among veterans in 2023.

Let's close with a fun little theoretical question: How much would it cost to outright buy a 100-win season via free agency?

Like, starting over from scratch, no farm system whatsoever, open up the checkbook and hope for the best?

Well, there are 2,430 wins available per season and 1,000 WAR. That equates to a theoretical 0.4115 WAR per win, or 41.15 WAR for 100 wins.

In reality, though, it's more like 0.5425 WAR per win for the top teams. The Astros, Braves, Dodgers, Mets and Yankees all ended 2022 in the 0.51-0.575 range. So, let's call it 54.25 instead of 41.15.

If we split the difference between the $5.7 million for one batting WAR and $6.9 million for one pitching WAR and call it $6.3 million, that amount multiplied by the 54.25 for WAR gets us $341.8 million—which isn't far off from what the Mets are spending this season.

Of course, that's assuming you actually get what you pay for and don't end up giving, say, Stephen Strasburg $35 million to make one appearance or Nick Castellanos $20 million for a negative-0.7 WAR campaign.

Long story short, this whole exercise has enhanced our appreciation for the Tampa Bay Rays making the postseason in eight of the past 15 seasons while never taking their payroll north of $100 million.

---

Kerry Miller covers Major League Baseball and men's college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @KerranceJames.