Top 6 MLB Free Agent 1B/DH For 2026

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Pete Alonso (Photo by Chris Arjoon/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Our coverage of MLBâ€s free agent season continues with a deep dive on the best first basemen and designated hitters available this year.

Below is a data-driven approach to ranking the available SP options, leveraging data from FanGraphs, Baseball Prospectus, Baseball Savant and Baseball Reference. Where applicable, weâ€ve left out players that are likely to have their club options picked up. Should that change, this list will be updated to reflect the new market reality.

1. Pete Alonso

Predicted Contract: 7 Years, $175M

Alonso bet on himself last offseason, and it’s looking like a great career decision. He enters this offseason as the clear-cut best option available at first base. Let’s take a look at his Statcast breakdown:

Every extra tick of exit velocity translates to roughly a half grade of power, which puts Alonso’s game power in the 75-80 range based on his metrics. This won’t come as a surprise given that he has averaged 39 homers a year over the last five seasons.

Alonso would be a huge upgrade for pretty much any team next season, and he should cash in on a massive bidding war.

2. Kyle Schwarber

Predicted Contract: 3 Years, $110M

Over the past four seasons, Schwarber has averaged 46.8 home runs. He’s also extremely patient, with an elite 15.2% walk rate over that time. These two skills at this level are two of the most stable you can find. Homers and walks don’t typically rely on random variation, and so they provide a tremendous floor of production.

Schwarber’s bat speed is top of the scale, giving him lots of room to fight that aging curve for a while yet. He also made some tweaks to his game that unlocked even more performance:

metric2022202320242025Launch Angle19.219.015.020.1Hard Hit Launch18.718.516.420.5Zone Swing %61.5%56.0%61.5%65.0%Max Exit Velocity114.8115.2115.6117.2Fly Ball Exit Velo94.392.994.394.9

In 2025, Schwarber did an even better job of getting the ball in the air, possibly due to him dialing up the in-zone aggression to a four-year high. It all points to a player who not only had a career year with the surface-level stats but one who also put up the best metrics of his career.

This is what an elite slugger looks like:

True 80-grade game power with plus swing decisions and enough zone contact to make it all work. Schwarber is dangerous against all pitch types and especially so against fastballs.

3. Josh Naylor

Predicted Contract: 6 Years, $120M

Naylor won’t get the buzz that Alonso will, but he’s been consistently excellent and is much younger, making a long-term contract far more palatable on the surface. However, if we dig a little deeper, we can see why he may not project as well long term:

Naylor isn’t a Statcast darling. His exit velocities are closer to league average, and his line-drive approach doesn’t lend itself to hard contact in the air. This means he’s unlikely to suddenly transform into a big home run threat. Most of Naylor’s value is built on making a lot of contact, and he shows decent enough results even when he chases. His combination of aggression and contact allows him to run high batting averages with relatively few strikeouts.

While it’s a formula that works well for him, since 2023, Naylor has seen a decline in his bat speed, going from 73.2 mph to 70.9 mph in 2025. How long can he maintain above-average production if his bat speed continues to decline? That’s a question teams will have to grapple with if they want to sign him for six or seven years.

4. Marcell Ozuna

Predicted Contract: 1 Year, $20M

Back in 2022, Ozuna hit .226 with 23 home runs and a subpar .687 OPS for his second-consecutive season below major league average. He followed it up with the best two seasons of his career, posting batting lines 40 to 50% above league average. This past season, his batting average dropped, as well as his power output, and he dipped to just 21 homers

Whenever a batter gets to a certain age and they have a relatively poor season, our natural tendency is to write them off. There’s a natural cognitive bias to assume there’s a performance “cliff” that players fall off. In reality, it’s more of a gradual descent, like a gentle hill. Let’s take a look at Ozuna over the past three seasons to determine if he’s meaningfully dropped off or if he just had a bad year:

metric202320242025Bat Speed75.0 mph74.0 mph72.9 mphSwing Length7.5 feet7.4 feet7.2 feetMax Exit Velo115.3 mph114.8 mph112.1 mph90th Exit Velo107.9 mph107 mph106.3 mphLaunch Angle15.6 degrees14.5 degrees14.1 degreesHH Launch Angle18.5 degrees19.0 degrees17.7 degreesZone Contact%83.6%78.5%81.6%Zone Swing %70.7%72.9%60.0%Chase Swing %31.4%28.5%23.8%SwStr%12.9%14.7%10.2%

Looking at all his metrics, it appears that Ozuna changed his approach, becoming far more selective and posting a pristine 23.8% chase rate. This came at the expense of his aggression, both in how hard he was swinging and how often. He also shortened his swing slightly, which probably explains most of the bat speed decline year over year.

Ozuna looks like he mostly suffered from an approach change that made him a different, less valuable hitter. There doesn’t appear to be any significant red flag indicating he can’t be the player he was between 2023 and 2024. Look for him to sign a one-year deal in order to reestablish his market value.

5. Ryan O’Hearn

Predicted Contract: 3 Years, $45M

O’Hearn is slightly above average at all the things that matter as a hitter, which translates into an offensive player who’s roughly 20% better than average—tremendously valuable.

Over the past three seasons, he’s put up a .277/.343/.445 slash line, which is good for a .788 OPS and 121 wRC+. He should produce roughly the same numbers over the next three seasons.

6. Josh Bell

Predicted Contract: 2 Years, $24M

Bell has been an above-average hitter every season of his career outside of the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign. However, over the past three seasons, he’s been much closer to average, which is not ideal for a player with no defensive value. Look for him to sign a short-term contract with a team that needs a reliable veteran bat.

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