MLB top free agents: Ranking A...

We’ve all been there: The restaurant with the book-sized menu. And worse: The one where everything seems appealing. In those moments, there’s nothing better than a decisive waiter, a guide who can lead you to the right page, and then to the right choice. MLB’s upcoming offseason has a bevy of drool-worthy free agent options, but not every great player fits every team’s needs or wants. That’s why ranking players in one big list doesn’t make the most sense. You can’t really stack the sushi up against the pasta bolognese, no matter how hard you might try. So instead, we’re going to divide baseball’s best hot stove options into categories, and then rank the players’ outlooks within those categories. As ever, when dealing with prognostications of future performance, this is an inherently subjective task, but I’ll do my best to explain why one shortstop or starting pitcher might be a better, safer or more promising target than the next. From there, you’re free to develop your own tastes.

Nov. 10: Free agency begins. This is the first day players can negotiate with all teams instead of their existing club. This is also the day when most contract options have to be figured out, which will fully flesh out the free agent class. It’s also the deadline for issuing qualifying offers.

Nov. 20: This is the deadline for a player to accept a qualifying offer. Any player who gets a qualifying offer (a one-year, $19.65 million deal this offseason), rejects it and then signs elsewhere would come with draft pick compensation. That means his new team would forfeit a draft pick and his former team would receive one.

GAME CHANGERS

Aaron Judge, outfielder (31)

In belting 62 homers, posting the 2022 version of a Barry Bonds batting line and even playing a passable center field, Judge established a tantalizing new ceiling, proved crucial gains in durability and contact rate, and all around stuck it to a New York Yankees front office that seemed to think it had the face of the franchise cornered last spring. The very public $213.5 million extension offer, $30.5 million per year for seven years, won’t cut it now. Judge doesn’t need to answer anything this winter, but the questions teams will ask have to do with the historical aging curve for sluggers who are super tall and/or over age 30. It’s a real issue to consider, but we can’t lump Judge in thoughtlessly. He has always been more athletic than most of the scary comparison points (Richie Sexson, Albert Pujols, etc.), and we have more information about how he produces. You can’t expect him to bash 62 homers or slug .686, but for the next two to three seasons, he’s probably the most impactful bat imaginable. The all-time MLB AAV record is $43.3 million, (Max Scherzer with the New York Mets) and the position player record is $35.5 million (Mike Trout with the Los Angeles Angels). At $44 million per year, Judge could eclipse the $300 million threshold in seven years. At $50 million, he could do it in six. That may not be his preference, we don’t know, but it is one way to make an appeal.