Five way-too-early 2026-27 MLB free agency questions - ESPN

We're about a quarter of the way through the 2026 Major League Baseball season, and while storylines for the rest of the year are coming together, let's skip ahead to the offseason.

There are many elements to consider already: Tarik Skubal's elbow surgery, labor negotiations getting underway, a potentially expedited pre-lockout free agency, big market clubs such as the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies swooning early, and a muddy free agent class beyond Skubal add to the intrigue around the upcoming winter.

Here are the topics that come up most often with MLB executives, scouts and agents surrounding 2026-27 free agency.

1. What will Skubal's market look like following his third elbow procedure?

Skubal had Tommy John surgery in college in 2016, had flexor tendon surgery in August 2022 and just underwent surgery to remove loose bodies in his left elbow earlier this month. The first two procedures had already come up when I asked executives, scouts and agents to project Skubal's potential payday over the past six months, but now there's another procedure on the 29-year-old's résumé.

The morning the latest surgery was announced, I was texting those same people as part of an industry straw poll on what Skubal's contract would be. Seven of them got back to me before the news broke. The average of those projections was 7.7 years for $357 million, or just over $46 million per year. Among pitchers, that would beat Max Scherzer's average annual value record of $43.3 million and Yoshinobu Yamamoto's guaranteed money mark of $325 million (over 12 years). I'm confident the results would have looked similar if I had gotten the 20 or so responses I normally collect for straw polls.

The assumption is that Skubal will return this