The biggest free agent out there, in all ways, is No. 99 of the Yankees, Aaron Judge. He’s the guy who passed Babe Ruth this past season and finally passed Roger Maris and ended up with 62 home runs, more than any Yankee or any American League player ever hit. The Yankees obviously want him to stay. But Judge could go. It means that even now he is the player to watch in baseball.

But perhaps the most intriguing free agent out there might be Jacob deGrom, two-time National League Cy Young Award winner, one who is going to make the Mets -- or somebody else -- decide how big to go after him, and for how much.

deGrom has had injury problems the past couple of seasons, everybody knows that. Including his one postseason start against the Padres in October, he made just a dozen starts for the Mets in 2022, after making just 15 the year before. He did not make his first appearance this past season until the end of July, went 5-4 from there, with a 3.08 earned run average. He will turn 35 next June. But he knows the Mets signed Max Scherzer, who is four years older, to a very big deal a year ago.

So you have injury problems on deGrom’s resume. Teams have to consider that, of course. But they also have to consider that deGrom, even in his middle 30s, can make throwing a baseball 100 miles per hour look as natural and as effortless as any pitcher ever has. He struck out 102 batters in 64 1/3 innings this past season and 146 in 92 innings the season before that (7-2, 1.08 ERA). He struck out 104 in 68 innings in the pandemic-shortened season of 2020, 524 in 421 innings in his two Cy Young Award seasons before that. He has been, when healthy, a dazzling talent.

•  deGrom's free agent profile.

Now he is open for business.

So is Justin Verlander, who recovered from Tommy John surgery and came back to the Astros this season at the age of 39, and is probably about to win another Cy Young Award of his own. But deGrom is more than five years younger than Verlander. And even in another short season for him, deGrom gave up two runs or less in more than half his starts.

I asked Buck Showalter on Monday night what it was like for him this season to see with his own eyes just how much game deGrom truly has.

“For me,” Showalter said, “it was like, 'OK, I get it. I understand what everybody’s been talking about.' The only way to describe it is that I watched even great hitters walk back to the dugout in awe.”

And, Showalter went on to explain, the context for this was the bar that deGrom had previously set for himself, the expectations he carried with him to the mound every time he pitched, even at the top of a rotation that included Scherzer, another of the great starting pitchers of his time.

“People came to see [deGrom] pitch and expected guys to not even put the ball into play against him,” Showalter said. “Then he’d make great hitters miss by a foot. And when he was at his best, sometimes that was just a level that was just different from everybody else’s level.

“It’s like watching a pitcher with Michael Phelps’ body. I’ve said this before, but he’s a closer who starts. He’s Edwin Díaz as a starter.”

An expensive contract for even an elite starter is always going to be a roll of the dice, just because disaster is always just one pitch away, to a shoulder or in an elbow, even for someone as durable as Verlander had always been. This past season deGrom and Scherzer combined to make just 34 starts for Showalter, which in the best of times is normal production for one of them.

But the last two times deGrom was healthy for a full season, though, were his two Cy Young seasons. He had a 1.70 ERA in 2018, striking out 269 in 217 innings and walking just 46. The next year he struck out 255 in 204 innings and had a 2.43 ERA and walked just 44. So many of those starts ended with no-decisions, because the Mets just didn’t score enough for him. And deGrom, through it all, just kept pitching, just kept coming at hitters at 100.

And at the very end this season for the Mets, in their NL Wild Card Series against the Padres, after the Padres had belted Scherzer around in Game 1 and with the Mets facing elimination, deGrom gave his team six innings, struck out eight, gave up five hits and two runs, and the Mets won for the last time this season.

When he was asked that night about his future with the Mets, deGrom said this:

“No clue.”

He doesn’t know. The Mets don’t. No one does at this point. We all know that 2021 ended too soon for him and '22 began too late. But when he was healthy, Jacob deGrom could still blow people away. Now we all wait to see who’s going to blow him away.