This year’s free agent class features a recent — as in the past two years — MVP. He’s playing the same position he has his entire career and has suffered no recent major injuries: 151 games played in his MVP campaign, 154 in each of the two that followed. And yet interest in this legend of the game is expected to be limited.
On the Top 50 free agents list, Ben Clemens ranked him 41st, which is third at his own position and lower than eight — EIGHT! — relief pitchers. I don’t know why I’m being coy about this player’s identity, actually, because presumably you can see the headline and header image and already know I’m talking about Paul Goldschmidt.
Ben’s intro to the Top 50 listed Goldschmidt as one of the players he expects to be low on, relative to consensus, but I’m not so sure that’s true. Ben predicted one year, $13 million contract for the 2022 NL MVP; our readers were only trivially more optimistic, with a median predicted contract of one year, $14 million. When I write about a player, I like to take a quick look back through the archive of posts in which he’s tagged, just to make sure I’m not stepping on well-trodden ground.
Outside of Rotographs, Goldschmidt was tagged in six articles in 2024. There was the unflattering free agent ranking, a Sunday Notes column that has a one-line item about Goldschmidt’s 2,000th career hit, and David Laurila’s conversation with former Diamondbacks scouting director Tom Allison about Goldschmidt’s draft class. The other three articles were Jay Jaffe joints: One Cooperstown Notebook and two posts that have the phrase “Replacement Level” in display copy.
In short, I don’t think Ben really went out on a limb. I think the consensus — at least around here — is that Goldschmidt is begging for a temperature probe, because he looks pretty cooked.
Frankly, it’s what you’d expect from a lumbering 37-year-old first baseman who’s seen his offensive stats back up in a big way two seasons in a row. (For those of you who’d point to Goldschmidt’s multiple 20-steal seasons as proof that he wasn’t always lumbering, I submit that all he did those years is show that one can lumber quickly from one base to the next. The man has always been a building, from the moment he first set foot on a major league diamond.)
The 2024 season was Goldschmidt’s 13th consecutive year as a starting major league first baseman. There have been highs and lows, after a fashion, but Goldschmidt has been marvelously consistent through his career. Even in down years, he’s been a three- or four-win player.
Or I should say he had been that. In 2024, Goldschmidt established new career lows in WAR, wRC+, batting average, OBP, slugging percentage, isolated power, walk rate, and xwOBA. He did establish new career highs in two categories, however: chase rate and strikeout rate.
Even under ideal circumstances, Goldschmidt would be facing a tough road in free agency. I wrote about this 11 months ago in the context of Rhys Hoskins: Free agents who can only play first base or DH can run into trouble finding a home not because they’re not good players, but because there are only 60 lineup spots available to them across the entire league. And most of those spots — particularly those on good teams with money to burn — have already been claimed.
When Goldschmidt first appeared in the major leagues in the early 2010s, he was a precedent-breaking player. Right-handed hitting, right-handed throwing college first basemen were a virtual nullity in prospect circles. Their defensive value and flexibility is close to nil, leaving only a very narrow, very demanding offensive path to regular playing time.
Goldschmidt broke through and paved the way for others to follow later in the 2010s: Hoskins, Pete Alonso, and Christian Walker. Those guys, all mid-round draft picks (Alonso was a second-rounder and the highest-rated prospect of the bunch), were an impressive enough proof of concept that by the end of that decade, Andrew Vaughn and Spencer Torkelson were both picked in the top three overall. At which point the industry learned all over again why that draft profile was so risky, but I digress.
In this free agent class, there are limited landing spots for a veteran first base-only slugger, and Goldschmidt is at best third in line behind Alonso and Walker. Maybe as low as fifth, depending on how you feel about Justin Turner and Carlos Santana. Hoskins took one look at this landscape and opted into the second year of his deal with Milwaukee.
So what room does this future Hall of Fame candidate, this grandee of modern baseball, have for gainful employment and regular playing time in 2025? Particularly, regular playing time that isn’t, like, a $4 million contract to play out the string with the Pirates or A’s?
One highly speculative option is a change in swing and approach. Goldschmidt has generally subscribed to the David Ortiz Missile Command school of all-fields fly ball power. But that’s not really in vogue anymore. Nowadays, hitters want to put the ball in the air, to the pull side. That’s where the fences are shortest and you can hit the ball hardest. In 2024, Goldschmidt posted an in-air (i.e. fly balls and line drives) pull rate of 32.4%. That’s the highest mark of his career.
It was also 120th out of 287 hitters with at least 110 combined fly balls and line drives. Goldschmidt still tends to put the ball on the ground more to the pull side and get more fly ball-happy as his spray chart goes left to right: five grounders for every fly ball to the left side, two fly balls for every grounder to the right side. Which is the opposite of what you want.
With that said, consider the Iron Law of Old Dogs and New Tricks. This is not some 28-year-old career minor leaguer willing to sell his soul for one productive season in the majors. Goldschmidt is 37 years old, with 362 career home runs and 56.5 WAR under his belt already. He hit his first major league home run when Taylor Swift was still a country artist. Even if Goldschmidt were capable of reinventing himself as some kind of rich man’s Adam Duvall — which is far from a given — would it be worth the trouble? Perhaps not.
So let’s focus on what Goldschmidt can do, or what he has done recently. This isn’t going to come as a massive shock to anyone who’s seen a former MVP at the end of his career, but the one thing Goldschmidt can still do is hit lefties: .295/.366/.473, which is a 134 wRC+, in 167 plate appearances. Probably not enough to merit an eight-figure contract by itself, but proof that Goldschmidt’s bat hasn’t completely turned to dust.
I’m also very mildly encouraged by the fact that Goldschmidt got better as the season went on. His offensive numbers — mediocre by his standards at the end of the season — were absolutely horrendous at the All-Star break. But after the break he rebounded. Not back to the level he was at earlier in his career, but to what’s basically the median Hoskins season.
Hey, That Second-Half Split Isn’t So Bad
| Season | Split | BB% | K% | AVG | OBP | SLG | wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 1st Half | 7.4% | 28.2% | .230 | .291 | .373 | 87 |
| 2024 | 2nd Half | 6.8% | 23.6% | .271 | .319 | .480 | 120 |
You miss 100% of the straws you don’t grasp at.
Look, some GM is going to miss on Juan Soto and talk himself into Alonso as a cheaper option. Then some GM who missed on Alonso is going to talk himself into Walker as the hipster favorite and a better deal on a shorter contract despite his more advanced age. And the last GM at the party is going to wind up with Goldschmidt, who might be good if he either changes his swing or plays like he did during a very specific part of last season. It could happen.
