MLB free agency: Why to avoid Blake Snell, invest in Tim Anderson - ESPN

I recently shared thoughts on each player when I dove into my top 50 projected free agent contracts, but I didn't fully tip my hand on what players would be the best investments. Now I'll pick the three players from this free agent market in whom I'd be most comfortable investing from a team's perspective — and the three I'd stay away from, given what I think their contracts will look like.

There are broad ideas that generally apply to free agents for «smart» teams that chase a solid return on investment (ROI) — avoid long-term and/or nine-figure deals, especially on pitchers and particularly relievers — but there are counterexamples to all of them. So I'll focus more on specific players and their characteristics rather than basing my analysis on broad demographics.

To keep the invest/avoid lists diverse, each group of three needs to have at least one position player and one pitcher, one player projected for at least $50 million guaranteed and one player projected for a one-year deal.

1. Blake Snell, LHP

This is one player whom I did cover in some depth in my rankings. Snell could very well be the next Max Scherzer — a power-based starting pitcher who ages well when it comes to velocity and strikeouts, en route to a big ROI on what I predicted will be a $150 million deal.

After all, Snell just won the National League Cy Young — but on the other hand, he did so by outperforming his peripherals by about 1½ runs. He led the league in walks and has thrown 130-plus innings only twice in his career. That sounds an awful lot like Carlos Rodon, the worst free agent deal from last winter, and if that sounds like recency bias, the other two recent stuff-over-command lefty starters given nine-figure deals are Patrick Corbin and