Top 25 MLB Free Agent Starting Pitchers For 2025
Image credit: Corbin Burnes (Photo by Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
October baseball is in the air, meaning the offseason isn’t far behind. We’re identifying the top MLB free agents teams could target this winter by taking a data-driven approach to this year’s crop of players. We will release new position groups in the coming days.
Below, you can find our breakdown of the top 10 free agent first basemen and designated hitters in the 2025 class, including three-year season averages in several key metrics.
Our list leverages work from MLB Trade Rumors for the list of free agents, as well as FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Reference for player win values above baseline, Baseball Savant and Baseball Prospectus for defensive data and FanGraphs for all other data. We encourage our readers and subscribers to consider subscribing to FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus, as well.
1. Corbin Burnes
While no pitcher is immune to injury risk, Burnes represents the ideal front-of-the-rotation starter in almost every aspect. He throws his primary pitch, a hard cutter, with excellent velocity, averaging 95 mph. More importantly, it’s a very good pitch by results and pure stuff, preventing roughly 1.4 runs per 100 pitches more than an average pitch. When your primary pitch is that good, you’re going to be able to throw a lot of high quality innings.
This year, Baltimore optimized Burnes’ slider usage, as it grades out as a better pitch than the cutter as per StuffPro and Stuff+, doubling the pitch usage with good results. His third-best pitch, a curveball, also grades out as plus. He changeup does, too, though neither pitch performed as well on a per-pitch basis in 2024 as they did the prior season. He mixes in a sinker 8% of the time, which is also roughly an average pitch and is a useful tool to use when the situation would benefit from a ground ball.
Burnes is about as close as it gets to the ideal pitcher, and he looks likely to land himself a hefty contract.
2. Gerrit Cole
If not for the injury scare early this year, Cole might have been No. 1 on this list, though he is approaching the back half of his 30s. Cole has 4-year/$144M player option which becomes a 5-year $180M club option if he decides to opt out. It’s very likely that Cole opts out, as he should be able to get at least 4/144 in free agency. The question becomes how willing the Yankees are to pay Cole $36 million in his age 38 season. My guess is he declines the option, and the club picks up the extra year. His stuff numbers this year were down, but he still remains an elite pitcher. Given the success of many older pitchers, even those approaching 40, there’s a very good chance he’s a top-tier starter throughout the life of the contract.
3. Blake Snell
If you visit Snell’s FanGraphs page and go to the career splits, we get something delightfully unique:
From March to June, Snell is a mediocre pitcher. But from July onwards, he is an all-time great. This year, Snell’s 34.7% K% marked a career high, while his BB% held around his career norm of 10-11%, leading to an exceptional 24% K-BB% that was good for seventh among MLB starters with at least 100 IP.
All four of his pitches grade out as above-average in both Stuff+ and StuffPro, with the changeup taking a big jump in quality per Stuff+ (StuffPro has always been a fan). The biggest difference year-to–year with Snell was that he upped his usage of the curveball, which was more than 2.5 runs/100 pitches better than average according to FanGraphs. StuffPro heartily agrees, rating the pitch as 1.3 to 1.5 runs/100 better than average for three consecutive seasons. This is a pitcher with three swing-and-miss secondaries and a plus fastball. If he has a season where he starts off strong, he’ll likely win another Cy Young award.
4. Max Fried
Fried is a model of consistency, posting an ERA of 3.25 or lower in five consecutive seasons, with a career ERA of 3.07 through 885 career innings. A lot of success relies on his FIP skills of preventing walks and home runs He ranked 12th among starters with 100+ IP in home run prevention this season, and is fourth overall since 2020, behind Jose Soriano, Logan Webb and Drew Rasmussen.
Fried is a kitchen sink pitcher, and while his fastball won’t grade out very well in stuff models, it’s consistently above average as he continues to lower his usage of the pitch. This is one of those situations where I think stuff models would benefit from modeling fastballs based on usage and the pitcher’s complete arsenal, but I digress. His slider, sweeper and curveball are all plus pitches from a stuff perspective, and though the changeup doesn’t grade out very well, it’s clearly his best pitch, operating at a 1.7 runs/100 pitches better than average rate over the last three years.
Fried is the prototype for how to succeed without an elite primary. All you need is four plus secondaries with command, and, voila, an ace! Pitchers like Fried are a good bet to be very good for as long as they pitch, as they aren’t reliant on velocity to make everything work.
5. Jack Flaherty
K-BB% is an extremely potent indicator of pitcher skill, and Flaherty was eighth among all starters with a minimum of 100 IP this year. It wasn’t that long ago that Flaherty was one of the best young pitchers in the game, striking out 231 batters in his second full season before a long stretch where he was never really healthy.
Public stuff models don’t love Flaherty’s arsenal, but when you have a full-season sample and all the peripheral ERA models agree with the performance, we tend to lean with the on-field results. When you factor in the pedigree and early-season success, it strengthens the notion even more. He’s on the right side of 30, and, health permitting, should be a very good No. 2 starter for many years.
6. Walker Buehler
Buehler was originally off this list, which now feels like an oversight. At the time of writing, he looked like a shell of his former self, but under the brightest of lights, he finally recaptured the form he showed early in his career, with a bevy of plus pitches. How much will teams bank on 10 fantastic playoff innings? Hard to say, but if a team believes he’s all the way back, he has true ace upside, which you can’t say about many pitchers on this list.
7. Yusei Kikuchi
Kikuchi is an enigma wrapped in a resplendent coat of stuff shrouded in a mystery of performance that doesn’t quite match what the models predict. By raw stuff, he has a great fastball. However, his execution of the pitch has always been suspect, and it’s been a below-average pitch over his career according to FanGraphs’ pitch run values. His curveball and changeup grade out as about average pitches, giving him two plus pitches and two average pitches: the classic vertical fastball, gyro slider, with a curve and change profile.
If we look at just the surface ERA, it might lead you to believe that Kikuchi has finally figured things out a little. However, all of his peripheral measures showed a very tight range of performance, from an xFIP of 3.20 to a DRA and FIP of 3.46, suggesting he was somewhat unlucky in 2024. Teams that value Stuff models will surely prioritize Kikuchi, hoping to capture the performance that his raw stuff suggests he’s capable of.
8. Nathan Eovaldi
Eovaldi has a $20M player option, which he will probably decline given his stellar track record over the past few seasons. Stuff models see a worrying trend in Eovaldi’s fastball quality, dipping to a 75 in Stuff+, and 0.5 runs/100 pitches worse than average according to StuffPro, whereas it was above average in both models in 2020-2022.
Fortunately for Eovaldi, he’s transitioned from the fabled “thrower” to the mythical “pitcher”, mostly on the back of a plus-plus splitter, as well as a plus slider and curveball. His approach of keeping his fastball usage in the 37% range with 30% splitter usage has allowed the otherwise-mediocre fastball to play up. It’s important to note that while Stuff models always incorporate fastball metrics into secondaries, they typically don’t do the reverse. It’s quite likely that Eovaldi’s splitter helps the fastball play up, beyond what the current generation of stuff models suggest.
Eovaldi still has plenty of gas on the fastball, and he looks like a solid bet to continue racking up quality seasons as a reliable No. 2 or No. 3 innings eater.
9. Nick Pivetta
It’s hard to believe that Pivetta has never posted an ERA below four in his entire career, despite a K-BB% that ranks as 10th-best among starting pitchers in baseball over the last two seasons. That’s mostly due to his propensity to give up home runs, as he has a 1.71 HR/9 over the last two seasons as a starter. That’s why his FIP, which gives the pitcher credit for HR prevention, tracks his ERA very closely, whereas the other metrics paint a rosier picture.
For teams evaluating Pivetta, the question will revolve around whether they believe Pivetta’s struggles are due to Fenway Park or are intrinsic to the way he pitches. Let’s take a look at his home/road splits over the past few seasons:
| ERA | HOME | ROAD |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 5.40 | 3.75 |
| 2022 | 4.80 | 4.32 |
| 2023 | 4.54 | 3.56 |
| 2024 | 3.86 | 4.42 |
| HR/9 | HOME | ROAD |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2.09 | 0.77 |
| 2022 | 1.50 | 1.20 |
| 2023 | 1.43 | 1.47 |
| 2024 | 1.00 | 2.45 |
It doesn’t appear that the home run issues Pivetta has are due to his home park, as he still gives up a lot of dingers no matter where he pitches. However, despite all the home runs, his ability to limit walks and rack up strikeouts gives him an incredibly high floor. He might be an ideal fit for a team with a ballpark that suppresses home runs.
10. Sean Manaea
Perhaps we’ve been watching too much playoff baseball, but can you really blame us? Manaea looks like an ace again, with a unique delivery that befuddles hitters. Stuff+ and StuffPro do not like the fastball, nor the sinker, but the results and the eye test paint an entirely different story. He’s overly reliant on the fastball and hasn’t had a sustained, multi-year run of success or he’d be higher on this list.
11. Luis Severino
I wanted to have Severino higher, but despite making a tremendous comeback, he hasn’t recaptured his early-career excellence… yet. I feel like this was a bridge year for Severino where he was finally healthy, and next year will be the year he recaptures some of his early-career magic. That’s what my gut is telling me. The data, however, suggest that Severino is more likely a reliable mid-rotation arm. His sweeper grades out very well, but he doesn’t miss enough bats to truly dominate.
12. Michael Wacha – Signed for 3 years / $51 Million
What should we believe with Wacha? His stellar ERA over the last three seasons or his middle-of-the-road SIERAs, DRAs and K-BB%? Wacha doesn’t fit the typical pitcher archetype, throwing his changeup more than any other pitch in his arsenal, with good reason. StuffPro adores the pitch, rating is as 1.6 runs better than average in each of the past two seasons, which is backed up by the run values on the pitch.
It’s plausible that his 30%+ usage on the changeup makes it very difficult for batters to be on time for the fastball, and there’s some evidence to suggest that hitters are sitting changeup, as he’s given up more home runs on the changeup than the fastball in each of the past two seasons. I would say it’s more than likely that the changeup makes the fastball play way above what the stuff models suggest.
How long can he continue to defy his peripherals using a changeup-first approach? It’s hard to say. Given that he’s pitched for six different teams over the past six seasons, it would appear that many teams are skeptical of how sustainable the approach is. It will be very instructive to see which teams value his results and how his market plays out.
13. Shane Bieber
We could have put Bieber in the upper tier of this list, but he’s coming off of Tommy John surgery, which makes him somewhat of a question mark. Health has been a big question for Bieber over the last couple of seasons, and 2025 will likely be at most a half-year as he ramps back up. However, he has a track record of elite performance that would put him just behind Snell and Burnes, and there’s always the chance that the TJ reset will allow him to come back fully healthy.
Let’s take a look at Bieber’s StuffPro numbers going back a few years. Negative numbers are good as they represent run prevention per 100 pitches. This is the opposite of how FanGraphs presents pitcher run values, but we’d like to present the data in the way they are in the source system.
You can read all about StuffPro here.
| year | Fastball | slider | curve | change | cutter |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | -0.8 | -0.7 | -1.7 | 0.5 | 0.3 |
| 2021 | -0.4 | -0.8 | -1.1 | 1.5 | 0.2 |
| 2022 | 0.4 | -0.4 | -0.7 | 1.1 | 0.5 |
| 2023 | 0.7 | -0.2 | -0.4 | 1.4 | 0.6 |
| 2024 | 0.7 | 0.1 | -0.7 | 1.6 | 0.7 |
StuffPro has seen a steep decline in Bieber’s fastball quality, from about 0.8 runs per 100 pitches better than average, to about 0.7 runs worse than average in his last couple of seasons, including the abbreviated 2024. While fastball quality isn’t just about velocity, in Bieber’s case, a lot of it is tied to whether he can get back to averaging 94 mph, which is where he sat in 2020. More importantly, fastball velocity positively impacts secondary pitches, so the big question around Bieber will be how hard does he throw when he comes back? If he’s at 94, he’s probably an ace again. If he’s sitting 91-92, he’s still a very good pitcher, but more like a reliable No. 2 or 3 starter.
14. Jordan Montgomery – OPTED IN
From 2021-2023, Montgomery pitched 524 inning with a 3.48 ERA, 3.62 FIP and a 16.2% K-BB%. This year, Montgomery had a delayed start due to him signing late and never got on track. The biggest issue was his sinker, which went from a reliable pitch to a terrible one. When your primary fastball deserts you, the results are usually atrocious. The pitch retained its shape characteristics, but lost about 1.5 mph of velo. That strongly suggests a pitcher who just couldn’t ramp up properly.
Montgomery has a $22.5 million player option, which puts him in an interesting position. He could pick up the option and hope he has a healthy, proper offseason, but be somewhat underpaid for what he can produce. If he declines the option, he can try to land with a team that thinks he’ll be the 2021-2023 version of himself again. Given how stressful the offseason was for him, as evidenced by him dropping agent Scott Boras, it stands to reason that a normal offseason will have Montgomery looking like his old self.
15. Robbie Ray – OPTED IN
Ray has an option for two years and $50 million, and it’s unclear if he’ll bet on himself and decline or go the safe route and take the option. It boils down to how much he trusts that the free agent market will pay for stuff, as his fastball/slider combo is among the best in the league, both from a pure stuff perspective and his results over the past few years. He tweaked his curveball this year, throwing it harder, and it jumped from a fringy pitch, to at least an average pitch. Assuming a fully healthy 2025 (hardly a safe assumption), it isn’t hard to see a repeat of 2022.
16. Merrill Kelly – Arizona Picked Up The Option
Kelly’s Stuff+ profile paints a very clear picture:
That’s consistently great command with two terrible fastballs and great off-speed stuff. That works, but can sometimes be a very volatile profile, especially if the velocity ticks down in the back half of his 30s. StuffPro isn’t quite as down on the fastball quality, so depending on how teams build their models, Kelly could either be a major target or a don’t-sign. For teams that value command, he’s a prime value target coming off a relatively poor season.
17. Alex Cobb
Cobb always produces when he’s on the field, but he’s never pitched more than 153 inning in any season since 2017 and is about to enter his age-37 season. This is the type of pitcher that teams will target on a one-year deal, and he’ll likely provide a lot of value, assuming he’s signed to be a 4th or 5th starter.
18. Nick Martinez
Martinez has thrived in a hybrid role, splitting time as a starter and as a reliever. He doesn’t strike a lot of batters out, but he also doesn’t walk anyone. Both his fastball and sinker rate as very poor pitches, which makes him a very risky pickup, as teams need to bank on his changeup carrying the profile. This is a little bit like the Wacha profile, so perhaps there’s something to the notion of what an elite changeup can do.
19. Kyle Gibson
Sometimes jut being a dude that can take the ball every fifth day and generate a lot of ground balls can let a guy carve out a long major league career. Gibson has never been dominant and likely never will be, but he’s a pretty reliable option to fill out the back of a rotation. He lost a tick on the sinker this season, which at his age puts a clock on how many years of effectiveness he has left.
20. Frankie Montas
Montas has tantalizing upside but, outside of his 2019 and 2021 seasons, has never quite had the on-field results that his raw stuff would suggest. This year, Montas introduced a sweeper, and it grades out as a double-plus pitch to go along with his easy plus splitter. Despite excellent velo, he’s never quite found the right fastball shape that works for him, but it’s close enough to average that he could be a decent fastball with three plus or better secondaries type of guy. He’s an ideal target for a team that believes in its pitching dev, as he’s perhaps a couple of tweaks away from being a No. 2 starter or better.
21-25: Mike Clevinger, Lucas Giolitio, Andrew Heaney, Michael Lorenzen and Jose Quintana
Clevinger was terrible this year, but pretty good the previous year. Giolito is young and was great, but looks to be reclamation project right now with a complicated option. Heany strikes out a lot of batters, but outside of that one season with the Dodgers, has been more middle-of-the-road. Lorenzen is a solid option but is likely limited to 130-150 innings. Quintana is useful, but he doesn’t miss many bats. You could put him higher on this list, perhaps.
Bonus: A bunch of guys nearing the end of the road
Is it the end for Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander? They can all probably benefit a major league team in some capacity, but they may not want to return as role players or bullpen pieces. Verlander, in particular, is interesting in that his stuff metrics were still fantastic. Charlie Morton lost a tick on his fastball, which is still harder than he threw in 2016, but he’s over 40 and teams may not want to be the ones holding the bag when Father Time comes calling. Will another team bank on Wade Miley’s ability to magically conjure an ERA in the low 3s without striking anyone out?
