Ranking the top 10 free-agent hitters

Last offseason, there was one elite hitter (Shohei Ohtani) who stood head and shoulders above everybody else on the free-agent market. And, well, the same goes this time around.

When our MLB.com voting panel convened to construct our 2024-25 Free Agent Hitter Power Rankings, No. 1 on the list was an easy, and unanimous, decision. After that, though, there was much less consensus. Six other bats got consideration for the top three, and the variability widened from there. (Keep in mind, offensive contributions were the focus here, rather than overall, all-around value.)

Here is a look at the results. Each hitter is listed with his 2024 team.

• The top 25 free agents this offseason (plus one bonus!)

1. Juan Soto, Yankees
Baseball history has seen few hitters like Soto. Consider this: In his age-25 season, Aaron Judge won the AL Rookie of the Year Award. In his age-25 season, Soto surpassed 4,000 career plate appearances, becoming only the 16th player to do so at such a young age. Among that precocious group, he ranks second in OBP (.421, behind only Mickey Mantle), fifth in slugging (.532) and fourth in OPS+ (160, behind only Ty Cobb, Mantle and Mike Trout). Soto’s total of 769 career walks leads every other player by more than 100 through age 25, while his 201 homers tie none other than Trout and Albert Pujols for seventh. Coming off the finest full season of his career, Soto is set to be one of the most highly coveted free agents we’ve ever seen.

2. Pete Alonso, Mets
The Polar Bear has been an elite power threat since the day he arrived in the big leagues in 2019. Only Judge has homered more times than Alonso (226) since then, when the latter broke the former’s rookie record by launching 53 of them. His NL ranks in homers over his career go like this: first, third, third, second, third and fifth. Alonso even has two Home Run Derby titles for good measure. He’s not just a pure, all-or-nothing slugger, either. His whiff rates have hovered around league average for the past four seasons, and his chase rate has declined significantly over the past two. Alonso, who turns 30 in December, did set full-season career lows with 34 homers and a .459 SLG in 2024, but his postseason heroics are fresh in everyone’s minds, too.

3. Teoscar Hernández, Dodgers
If you remove Hernández’s short stay at pitcher-friendly T-Mobile Park from the equation, what you see is a consistently well-above-average hitter who balances loads of strikeouts with plenty of pop. Hernández has a .788 career OPS on the road, which dipped to .643 with the Mariners in 2023 but rebounded to .884 with the Dodgers in ‘24. Even in ‘23, his road OPS was a healthy .830. Hernández’s next team will have to live with a lot of swings and misses, but when he connects, he crushes the ball. His hard-hit rate, barrel rate and expected slugging rank at the elite level year after year. Among free agents, only Soto topped Hernández’s 60 barrels this past season.

4. Alex Bregman, Astros
Early this past season, it looked like Bregman’s decline might have begun in earnest. Through May 8, he was batting .189/.268/.252 with one home run in 33 games. Bregman put that storyline to rest, however, batting .280/.329/.509 with 25 homers in 112 games the rest of the way. In his age-30 season, Bregman remained an elite contact hitter (98th percentile in whiff rate, 94th percentile in strikeout rate), although his walk rate plummeted from 12.7% to 6.9% (his lowest since debuting in 2016). Bregman has never been known for high contact quality, but his ability to consistently pull the ball, in the air, has helped his power play up. While Minute Maid Park has been an ideal fit for that profile, Bregman actually has hit just as well on the road over his career.

5. Anthony Santander, Orioles
Once a Rule 5 Draft pick, Santander sure has come a long way. He also stepped up his game in his contract year, setting career highs in homers (44 -- 11 more than his previous best) and RBIs (102). His .506 SLG and 131 OPS+ also were personal bests outside of the shortened 2020 season. Only Judge outhomered Santander among AL hitters in 2024, and only three switch-hitters (Hall of Famers Mickey Mantle and Chipper Jones, as well as Lance Berkman) have ever topped that single-season total. Santander also brings great balance from each side of the plate -- his .822 OPS against righties and .793 OPS against lefties this past season are indicative of his career-long consistency.

6. Willy Adames, Brewers
If this were a ranking of free-agent position players in terms of all-around value, Adames would rank higher -- perhaps even as high as second. That’s in large part because he just turned 29 and is capable of playing plus defense at shortstop, whereas every other player in the top 10 plays a corner position (and even there, few are standouts with the glove). Alas, this ranking is specifically about offense, but don’t sell Adames short there, either. He has posted at least a 110 OPS+ in four of the past five seasons and is coming off a 32-homer, 112-RBI campaign in Milwaukee. (The latter figure tied him for fourth in the Majors.) Yes, Adames strikes out plenty, but he also draws walks and drives the ball in the air with regularity, making him a significant threat with the bat.

7. Christian Walker, D-backs
Unfortunately for Walker, an oblique strain cost him 31 games in the second half of the season, and his production sagged a bit after he returned in September. Outside of that blip, Walker has put up nearly identical offensive numbers for the past three years, including OPS+ figures of 125, 122 and 121. If not for the injury, he likely would have socked 30-plus homers for the third straight season as well. Walker has plenty of patience at the plate, as well as big-time power when he connects. As long as teams don’t feel he’s on the verge of a steep decline heading into his age-34 season, he should have plenty of free-agent appeal.

8. Jurickson Profar, Padres
Where did that come from? Sure, Profar once had uber-prospect hype, but that was more than a decade ago. Injuries prevented his career from ever taking off the way it was supposed to, even as he managed to become a solid role player. Then, out of nowhere, Profar authored a career year in 2024, thanks to pretty much across-the-board improvement in his offensive profile. Most notably, nobody improved their hard-hit rate by more (12.6 percentage points from 2023). Combine that with elite chase, whiff, walk and strikeout rates, and Profar posted an OBP (.380) that was higher than his 2023 SLG (.368). Now, can he sustain it?

9. Joc Pederson, D-backs
Pederson is the opposite of Adames, in that he would drop if this were about overall value. In 2024, the D-backs did not play him in the field for a single inning, and they started him almost exclusively against right-handed pitchers. But, again, we are focused on hitting here, and Pederson sure can hit. Among those with 400-plus plate appearances in 2024, he was fourth in OBP (.393), 15th in slugging and 11th in OPS+, with the quality-of-contact metrics to match. Pederson may have a limited role, but he excels in that role and doesn’t seem to be slowing down at all.

10. Tyler O'Neill, Red Sox
O’Neill’s talent continues to tantalize, and his injuries and inconsistencies continue to frustrate. Even in 2024, when he produced his best season since his 2021 breakout with the Cardinals, O’Neill was placed on the IL three different times and saw his performance fluctuate wildly from month to month. Despite that, he slugged .511 and smacked 31 homers, offsetting sky-high whiff and strikeout rates with bushels of walks and hard-hit balls. When O’Neill is healthy and putting the bat on the ball, he is as dangerous as anyone; the big question is whether he can do that a bit more often moving forward.

Others receiving votes: Gleyber Torres (Yankees), Ha-Seong Kim (Padres), Paul Goldschmidt (Cardinals), Max Kepler (Twins), Carlos Santana (Twins), Jesse Winker (Mets), Michael Conforto (Giants), J.D. Martinez (Mets)

Voters: David Adler, Jason Catania, Scott Chiusano, Daniel Feldman, Doug Gausepohl, Whitney McIntosh, Travis Miller, Ricardo Montes de Oca, Brian Murphy, Arturo Pardavila, Manny Randhawa, Shanthi Sepe-Chepuru, Andrew Simon, Ismail Soyugenc, David Venn, Tom Vourtsis, Andy Werle