Who’s the Better Free Agent: Max Fried or Blake Snell?

The champagne has been sprayed, the winners have been toasted, the parade has wrapped up, and the free agent speculation is beginning to fly. On the baseball calendar, that can only mean one thing: The offseason has officially arrived.

While some teams have already gotten into the swing of winter transactions, many clubs are finalizing their free agency lists and starting to dive headfirst into hot stove season with an exciting crop of players available on the open market.

Today, we’re going to put ourselves into the general manager chair for the Boston Red Sox, San Francisco Giants, New York Mets, and any other team that fancies itself a player for one of the top left-handed starters available by asking: Who’s the better free agent, Max Fried or Blake Snell?

On the surface, the two are similar pitchers. Both are just past their 30th birthday, both throw with their left arms, both have some injury history, neither is exactly what you would consider a workhorse, and both have been among MLB’s top starters since debuting in the mid to late 2010s.

Of all pitchers to throw 800 innings since 2017 (Fried’s rookie season), Fried ranks fifth in ERA (3.07) and Snell ranks eighth (3.16).

But once you dive a little deeper, you see that both have found big-league success using different formulas on the mound.

Fried has consistently been elite at avoiding damage and generating ground balls, using a deep arsenal to keep hitters off balance. A two-time All-Star, Fried nearly won the Cy Young in 2022, finishing second to Sandy Alcantara after positing the best full season of his career.

Snell, meanwhile, features some of the best stuff in baseball, and has used it to enter the history books as one of just seven players to win a Cy Young award in both leagues. After a botched free agent negotiation last offseason, Snell opted out of a two-year deal he signed with the San Francisco Giants on Friday to re-enter the free agent market in hopes of securing a longer-term deal.

So, with the table set, let’s dive into who is the better pitcher to sign this winter.

Who is the Better Investment in Free Agency?

With Snell set to celebrate his 32nd birthday in December and Fried turning 31 in January, both southpaws are likely to get a contract in the five-to-six-year range.

That means when comparing the totality of the deals, considering who will age better and who will be able to stay healthy will be an important factor for teams looking at both pitchers.

Starting with Snell, it’s clear his free agency extending into spring training hurt him in the early stages of 2024. Not only did he carry a 9.51 ERA through his first six starts, but he was also forced onto the injured list twice.

After a tough start against the Philadelphia Phillies in May, Snell admitted the delayed start did hurt him once he was able to get on an MLB mound.

“Big league spring training, you need it,” he said. “It’s tough to do it. I thought I did everything I could to be ready… You have to go to spring training. For me, I hope teams see that.”

However, once Snell returned from his second IL stint, there was no better pitcher in baseball.

After his return on July 9, Snell led baseball in strikeout percentage (38.1%), ERA (1.23), K-BB% (28.1%), batting average against (.123) and FIP (1.77) over 80.1 innings.

For the first six seasons of his career, Snell alternated good run prevention seasons with bad ones. Although the strikeout stuff remained each season, his high-Ks, high-walks approach clearly created some variance in his success year-to-year — and the fear of those fluctuations simmered his market coming off his second career Cy Young in 2023.

But his 80-inning stretch, which saved his season in 2024, ought to have eased some concerns about how consistent the 6-foot-4 hurler can be. He’s now posted three straight seasons with a sub-3.40 ERA and sub-3.45 FIP. While it hasn’t come with a very large sample of innings outside of 2023, he has strung together 412 innings of excellence.

It’s nearly impossible to say if his health will hold up over the course of a five-year deal, but it seems like the abbreviated build-up in 2024 might be instructive for Snell as to what he needs to do in preparation for a full season.

In addition to his results having stabilized the past few years, Snell’s stuff has remained just as electric. His fastball has actually ticked up slightly in four straight years, and his Stuff+ numbers have remained elite each year as well.

If Snell loses velocity as he ages, that’s where things could go wrong at the back-end of the contract he signs this winter. For a pitcher who relies on stuff as much as he does — and this can be said for nearly every pitcher — if he loses some of the bite on his fastball or some of the break on his curveball, he’ll undoubtedly be a less effective pitcher. But in the context of this conversation, Snell vs. Fried, it stands to reason that Fried may be able to withstand the aging curve of a pitcher a little bit better.

Before we discuss Fried’s ability to pitch later into a multi-year deal, it’s worth acknowledging that Snell has deepened his arsenal over the past two seasons. In 2023 and 2024, the Seattle native threw his fastball and slider less, increasing the usage of his curveball and changeup. So while, yes, Snell’s stuff is what makes him elite, there could be enough of a mix to his game that could help him combat any drop in velocity.

Sliding over to Fried, the Harvard-Westlake grad should be a solid bet to produce for the entirety of his contract — health permitting — because he’s already been so consistent over the course of his MLB career.

Fried has only posted an ERA above 4.00 once in his eight years in the majors, and the peripheral numbers have always backed up his success.

Stuff+ tracking dates back to 2020, and not once since then has Fried’s arsenal graded out at above league average. His slider and curveball have always been great pitches, according to the model, but his other four offerings have never received a number above 100. This doesn’t mean that they aren’t effective pitches, but it does signal that it’s not raw stuff that’s carried him through 884.1 MLB innings with a 3.07 ERA.

Although Fried saw his walk rate jump to its highest total since 2020 this past summer, he has always limited issuing free passes well to go along with his hard contact suppression. With his track record of not allowing home runs or walks, he’s demonstrated the ability to get MLB hitters out over and over again, and it’s those attributes that should give general managers confidence that he should age well into his late 30s.

Like Snell, Fried’s fastball usage has come down over the course of his career, with a sinker being more prominently featured in 2024. He’s always thrown his curveball a bunch, but his slider usage dropped to new lows in 2023 and ’24. He’s not quite a six- or seven-pitch pitcher, but he’s shown the ability to change his arsenal over time and introduce new offerings when needed — another selling point for any interested teams.

One thing that’s different between Fried and Snell this offseason is that the former has been issued a qualifying offer while the latter was ineligible to receive one.

That shouldn’t impact the conversation about who’s better all that much, but for potential suitors, if you think both are similar in what they will provide over the course of the contract, perhaps not having to cough up any compensation will lead to Snell becoming the top option of the two.

Otherwise, though, it’s a fairly tight race as to who will provide more value over the course of their upcoming contracts. Snell likely has the higher ceiling if he’s able to maintain his form, and Fried may be the safer option based on how consistent he’s been for the Braves, year in and year out.

How much will their next team matter?

Whoever does end up getting Fried and Snell will likely need them to be at their best right away, so it’s almost just as important to take into consideration what the 2025 versions of each pitcher look like as it is the 2029 versions.

According to Steamer, this is how each pitcher is projected to fare next season:

Steamer seems to agree that the two lefties are extremely similar despite preventing runs in different ways.

So, what other factors could play into who might be the better pitcher in 2025?

How about team context?

It’s not something we can evaluate without knowing where each is going to end up. However, it could be instructive about which teams might be able to get the most out of each starter.

Take the Red Sox for example. Boston finished in the bottom half of baseball in defensive runs saved (DRS) at three of the four infield positions, but tied for the MLB lead in outfield DRS.

So, for the Red Sox, signing Snell (who pitched to a 42% groundball rate and a 40.7% flyball rate in 2024) over Fried (58.8% groundball rate, 23.2% flyball rate) would clearly help them get the most out of their free agent addition.

Last season, Fried’s Braves were a better defensive group than Snell’s Giants, with Atlanta totalling 35 DRS while San Francisco checked in with -3. To a certain extent, Snell is a little more defense-proof than Fried, just based on how many hitters he strikes out.

Sure, Snell puts a fair amount of runners on via the walk, which puts pressure on the defenders behind him, but unlike Fried, the two-time Cy Young winner could reasonably expect to get himself out of a jam without using his defense.

If Fried were to be blown away by an offer from the poor-infielding Red Sox or a team in a similar spot, it’s hard to say with certainty that his run-prevention abilities would be able to withstand such a faulty defense.

Compared to Snell, who could probably sign with any of the 30 teams and still keep his big strikeout numbers.

It’s not exactly fair to Fried to use one of his greatest strengths against him, but with the two being so close in effectiveness, Snell could have a small advantage because he won’t rely on the team around him as much.

However, say Fried lands with a team like the Toronto Blue Jays — who are reportedly interested in the former Brave, according to Sportsnet’s Ben Nicholson-Smith — after they finished in the top 16 in MLB in DRS at all four infield spots and tied with Boston for the lead in outfield DRS, and you’d have to consider that he would get a boost from all the groundballs he generates.

Who’s Better: Blake Snell or Max Fried?

It really can’t get much closer between Fried and Snell.

At this point, you can’t really go wrong with choosing either. Snell offers a higher ceiling, and Fried a higher floor — it all just depends on what you’re looking for.

As with any big pitcher contract, there’s some serious risk that injuries could come into play, and as we’ve discussed, neither Fried nor Snell carries a clean bill of health into their negotiations this winter.

FanGraphs’ Ben Clemens projects Fried to receive a five-year, $140 million contract and Snell to get a three-year, $105 million pact. Of course, if Snell’s contract were to extend to four or five years, that AAV would come down.

The case for Snell in this argument is this: He’s a two-time Cy Young winner coming off arguably the most dominant stretch of his career. The early-season struggles were a byproduct of negotiations gone wrong, and he’s now strung together back-to-back-to-back excellent seasons. You know he’s unlikely to give you more than 180 innings per year, but the innings he does throw will be among the best in baseball.

And the case for Fried is: If you want a guy who’s going to limit runs just as well as Snell without the risk of a mid-4.00s ERA popping up any season, Fried’s your guy. He owns a career 3.07 ERA, doesn’t give up home runs and should age gracefully over the life of his new deal. You absolutely know what to expect when he takes the mound.

If you prefer the high-octane strikeout pitcher, Snell is probably going to be your guy, and if you prefer your starters to have some pitchability, you’re looking to bring in Fried.

If I was tasked with choosing one or the other in a vacuum, I’m probably leaning Snell. Coming off the year that he did, I think the ceiling is just too high, and the stuff is too bad to pass up if you’re trying to get a pitcher that you believe can dominate in October.

With that said, there really isn’t a wrong answer between the two, as whichever teams land Fried and Snell will be getting a southpaw capable of leading a rotation.